OK I am going to write some of my thoughts on why the Wii could really succeed and do well and also have some great games on it. This is the whole "innovation" thing but I'm going to try and explain it with two franchises that both have one game that is seen as the best in that particular franchise, both of those games are also seen as possible "best game of all time" contenders, especially one of them. I am going to talk about why they are seen as the best in their franchises and what it has to do with what the Wii is trying to do. The two franchises(and games that I said) are: Resident Evil from Capcom(Resident Evil 4) and The Legend of Zelda(Ocarina of Time) from Nintendo. However, I don't agree with one of these two games being the best game in their franchise but I am going to explain why most of the world thinks it is, and that is going to be my main point. The other game I do agree with. Here I go.
First it's Resident Evil, it's had some good games, Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 were both awesome games in the franchise but the newere game Resident Evil 4 is seen as superior to both of them getting near perfect ratings and selling well. Why? It was innovative, that's the bttom line, it was innovative. Now those who have played the game know what I'm talking about while those who havn't are probably saying, "What are you talking about? It was just another third person game." Trust me when I tell you this, Resident Evil 4 innovated the gameplay in Resident Evil games. Before Resident Evil 4, all the other games didn't have a real 3-D feel to them. It was as if you were stuck in a 2-D world with 3-D graphics. Basically, the camera angle was fixed in every room so you couldn't change your view until you moved out of the camera's view itself. That was very limiting in terms of exploration, every item you had to get was blatantly obvious, seriously, there is no way you could miss them which brought that part of the gameplay down(also in difficulty). The worst part of the camera view was that you could not see anything outside of the camera view, if you happened to be dieing and also be on the very edge of the screen, there was a possibilty that you would be killed by a zombie from behind and you couldn't even see it so you obviously couldn't defend yourself. Resident Evil 4 changed this with the over-the-shoulder camera angle. Finally it felt like a true 3-D Resident Evil game. You could now defend yourself from a zombie offscreen by moving the right analog stick to change the camera angle. You're probably saying, "These are just improvements, they're not innovative." This might be true depending on how you look at it, to me it was innovative to the franchise and it was something new that took it to a whole new level. As far as "real" "never before seen" innovation, yeah, it had some of that too. XD I remember the first time I died in Resident Evil 4, a cutscene. Yes, I died during a cutscene. XD I was just relaxing, I had gotten to a certain point where they showed a cutscene, so I turn my WaveBird off to conserve battery and then I see something like
this, so I push....my WaveBird was off, I died. This game has the funnest cutscenes ever!! XD All in all this game is quite possibly the best Gamecube game I've played, definetely top three.
Now, let's get to the LoZ franchise. I think this is the best game franchise ever, there is not one LoZ game out there(Phillips ones don't count!!) that is not good. So what do I think of OoT? Is it the best LoZ game ever? No.*gasp* In my humble and honest opinion Majora's Mask is the better game. I truly believe that Majora's Mask is the best LoZ game to date. The story was a darker one compared to the others, you could chnage into different characters with masks, and I thought the clock/timer was great. Before you guys attack me, let me ask you something? Why do you think OoT is better(for those of you who do)? Now, after you ask yourself that and start thinking about it, let me tell you why I think most people think it's better. I truly believe this is the main reason that people think it's better: Ocarina of Time came out first, it's as simple as that. Ocarina of Time broke so much ground and introduced so many new things first that Majora's Mask simply doesn't give you that, "new and innovative" feeling. Is this not true? Am I lying to you? I honestly don't think so. To me Majora's Mask had the better story, it was harder so it gave you more of a challenge and the different endings made it better for me. You could also go back and beat every dungeon and boss again if you wanted to but the mark that OoT left on the people was too great for people to not be biased and rate them equally. OoT was innovative, MM was not, MM had nothing new while OoT introduced a lot of things and the fact that it was the first 3-D LoZ game gave it even more of an advantage. You could argue against me and say I'm wrong but you can't change my view on this just like I can't change yours, I'm just trying to show you this and hopefully get you to admit that this is the reason OoT is seen as the better game. Not because of the story, not because of the length, not because of the difficulty but because of the innovation. If Majora's Mask had come out first then MM would be that game that everyone says is better. I think you get what I'm saying.
So what I'm trying to say is that innovation is the key to Nintendo's success with the Wii. Now, this isn't anything new, I've been saying that for a while now but this time I used some examples. XD Innovation can be anything from active cutscenes and a changed camera angle like in RE4 or a bunch of new things like in OoT(Z-targetting, time travel, etc.). To me a lot of this kind of innovation has already been...well...innovated so what's the next step in video game innovation? The way we play them which is what the Wii will try to do. Because of this we might see some games that are on the same level of greatness as OoT because of the innovation in controls that the Wii offers.
Edit: Okay I actually found this on an IGN review for Majora's Mask and it backs up my theory of this whole thing:
You might be wondering why we've decided to score the game a 9.9 when we clearly enjoy it just as much Ocarina of Time, a game we rated perfectly. The answer lies in innovation. Whereas Ocarina of Time pioneered everything from the z-targeting lock-on system to the usage of the Ocarina system for time travel purposes, Majora's Mask merely re-features them. Truly not a bad thing as the gameplay mechanics in Miyamoto's Zelda were top, but a little less jaw-dropping the second time around.
