Cyber War, Familial Bonds

There are many films that add many different elements together to make something unique.

 

Just look at Captain America: Winter Soldier. Combines the superhero genre with political intrigue. Ghostbusters is probably the most famous example of combining horror with comedy, which is hard to pull off, considering how different the two genres are. The movie I’m going to be reviewing today, the 2009 Japanese animated film Summer Wars, directed by Mamoru Hosoda, is another one of those movies.

t combines elements of cyberpunk science fiction with slice-of-life family drama. The film handles both of these two genres extremely well, weaving two parallel plots together to make something new and really awesome.

Ok, let’s get the intro out of the way. In the near future, almost everyone in the world uses a huge virtual reality online network known as OZ. People do everything in this virtual world. Socialize and date using their crazy and weird online avatars. Conduct business meetings and auctions. Play games, go to school, even get married.

Kenji Koiso, a high school math genius who works on the OZ network as a moderator/maintenance worker in his spare time with his friend, is suddenly asked by the girl he’s secretly sweet on, Natsuki Shinohara, to come with her to attend a huge family get-together out in the country in honor of her great-grandmother Sakae Jinnouichi, who is going to be celebrating her 90th birthday in a few days.

On the way there, Natsuki fills Kenji in on a few details about her family. One, they are very large. Two, they are very proud of their heritage, being able to trace their family history back nearly 800 years. Three, they are very close-knit. So all poor Kenji can do now is just go with the flow and try to make it through the next four days.

She neglected to mention that she needs him to pose as her fiance in order to appease her meddling aunts, uncles and cousins, and to make her great-grandmother happy that she has finally found someone to bring home.

If things couldn’t get anymore complicated, Kenji accidentally lets loose a super-virus called “Love Machine” after breaking an encryption puzzle anonymously sent by email, which goes out into the cyber playground of OZ to wreck havoc  on the world, real and virtual. Even worse, he’s branded as a cyber-criminal on national TV by the police in front of the whole family. Once everything is explained, it’s up to Kenji and his newfound family to save the world from history’s biggest cyber attack.

Before I get into why I love the film so much, let me bring up one of my major nitpicks about the story. While the design and scope of the “OZ” network is visually stunning and creative, it doesn’t feel like something that would ever exist in real life. Don’t get me wrong, everything you see people do in made-up virtual world, does happen on the real Internet.

But think about this. Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, Instagram and Facebook are all extremely popular Internet services. But they’re not on the same “network” or provide every type of service to everyone that uses the internet, and they are owned by different companies, who compete in separate markets. We’re never told whether OZ is some kind of  a joint project run by every major internet company. So that means that whoever created OZ has a monopoly on the world’s online activities. Sure, we can speculate on explanations as to how OZ works, but with not much in-universe explanation, the way OZ works just bugs me a lot.

Also, other aspects of the movie are dated, even if it came out only 7 years ago. That’s not really the movie’s fault, to be fair. But it feels really weird to see something as advanced as OZ, and see everyone using flip-cell phones of all things to access it. It’s not just the fact that there are no smart phones in this world;. there’s no AR, or any futuristic technology besides OZ. Every piece of tech, like computers, phones, etc.  is what was currently available in 2008/2009. It’s sort of disconcerting to me, since I read a lot of sci-fi. But it shouldn’t be a problem for most people.

Now that that nitpick is out of the way, let’s talk about what I actually like about this thing. The movie depicts family life very realistically. When I say “realistic”, I mean that, even if you don’t have a large family or attend many family gatherings, you will see interactions, personalities and dialogue, that immediately feels familiar and natural to you over the course of this story.

The best example of what I’m talking about happens during the big family dinner, which also marks the end of the first part of the story.

The really little kids running around the table yelling excitedly, a few babies crying over the noise of conversation. High school and college age kids getting into old arguments with their parents. The aunts are swapping anecdotes while they needle the poor boyfriend for info about his background and career prospects. The dads and uncles are talking about work and joking around. A small group is clustered around the TV, because one of the other kids is participating in the Koshien baseball tournament  (which in Japan is a REALLY BIG deal). Sakae, the woman of the hour and family matriarch, is holding court at the head of the table, calm and soft-spoken.

It’s a depiction of family life that seems to be occurring less and less in TV and film. Not too sappy sweet, but not too depressingly dysfunctional either. Almost every member of the family is loving and supportive, but they also squabble and and have their differences.

Of course, every family has their black sheep. This is one of my problems with the movie.

Uncle Rinnosuke crashes the party, and things get really tense, really fast. Of course, Natsuki is completely oblivious to all this, because all she sees is that her cool, easy-going “uncle Suke” is back in her life. It’s clear that the guy has a genuine soft spot for his niece; their interaction is genuinely sweet to watch.

Ok, so what’s the problem? Well, here it is. Rinnosuke is the bastard child of Sakae’s late husband, the product of an affair. After the old man died, the kid ran off to America with his share of his father’s inheritance.That’s it, that’s the whole “scandal” with this guy. The way all the adults react the second he appears at the party, you would think he did jail time for selling crack to children, or stealing from a hospital fund. All he actually did was a) be born out of wedlock and b) he acted a bit like a selfish jerk. Yes, we do find out later that he made a main contribution to the crisis happening with “Love Machine”, but even then, it’s unclear what was the writer’s intent here. Are we supposed to side with the family from the outset, or are we supposed to side with Rinnosuke, because his family is being unfairly judgemental? Maybe this is just a part of Japanese culture that doesn’t translate well to a Western mindset like mine.

Another aspect of the movie that I will praise, with all my heart, is the animation and visuals. Everything looks great and all the movement is fluid and feels natural when the human characters move around and interact with each other. Everyone has their own unique look and way they express themselves. That amount of subtle realism takes a lot of work, and I applaud the staff for taking the effort.

The cast is great in both the original Japanese and the English dub. No matter how small the part, everyone brings their A-game to make each character come off as a real person, and all these people feel like part of a real family.

At the heart of this movie are two themes, one familiar, one more specific and much more urgent.

“Always treasure and respect the bonds you have with people, no matter if they are family or not”. By the middle point of the movie, the family is split between dealing with a big loss to the family, and focusing on stopping “Love Machine” from destroying humanity. The point the movie makes is that neither side is in the wrong for feeling or thinking the way that they do. A loss is meaningful and important, no matter how many people it affects. A crisis is a crisis, no matter if it is personal or of national importance. When something is in front of you at home, it’s hard to think of the world at large. But everyone is a part of a family, and human society is composed of families.

The second theme of the movie “Don’t adopt new technology without knowing the possible dangers involved, or get too comfortable with it.” I feel that this is a very important cautionary part of the story. You may think that “Love Machine” is a fantastical invention of the screen writers, but computer viruses in real life, like Stuxnet, can and have created that much damage and chaos in the world today. The Internet is shockingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, and it will only get worse the more people become part of the online community. It’s not that technology is itself a bad thing; it’s that our ignorance and our irresponsibility are as much to blame for what happens, and technology can help us fix the problems that it creates.

So in conclusion, what we have here is a beautifully animated, well-acted family drama with a fair bit of inventive sci-fi action. Regardless of what gets your attention first, the genuine human warmth of the movie will win you over. The actual plot points and story may have been done before, but they haven’t been done quite like this yet, as far as I know. 

 The result, is a smile on your face when the credits start rolling. You’ll keep smiling no matter how many times you watch this movie.

King of the Fourth Wall: A Tribute to Tex Avery

Animation may be younger, than say, literature and painting; ok, far far younger, yet it undeniably has an interesting history.

Now well over a century old, the medium of animation has had it’s share of high and lows, innovation and stagnation. We live in a world where Norm of the North and Foodfight! can exist on the same shelf as Toy Story and The Lion King at the entertainment section of our local Wal-Mart.

My post today is about a man who is both famous and obscure. This can occur in a niche of media like animation. There are always enthusiasts and fans in the know, especially in the Digital Age, but many people, studios, techniques etc., still lie outside of common knowledge. 

My purpose is not to correct an oversight, but to provide insight for those who are not familiar or who only have a passing interest in animation.

So, most likely, when I tell you that Fred “Tex” Avery (1908-1980) was a giant of the animation industry, most of you will simply nod your heads and say “yeah, so what?”. Then I’ll say “Well, among other things, he created Daffy Duck and gave Bugs Bunny his catchphrase.” And then you will say “oh!”, your eyes lighting up (hopefully) with interest, and I’ll then proceed to tell you more.

But you can’t sum up someone’s life with a bunch of facts. Well, ok, technically you can, but where would be the fun in that? So the rest of this post will be composed as part biography, part analysis, and, part shameless fanboy gushing. I'm sorry, can't help myself. Let’s begin.

This is probably going to sound very weird to you, but Tex Avery and Dante Alighieri have several things in common. Both did things that were innovative in their lifetime, while borrowing from other people and sources  as a launching pad. Both have been so influential, their work has been copied so much, that it doesn’t seem original anymore if you were to do any sort of reading/watching without context. Oh, and they both both made tons of pop culture references and put in material that was shocking for its time.

For Dante, it was making himself the hero The Divine Comedy and putting his political opponents (people both dead and alive when he wrote his great work, mind you) suffering in Hell.

Why am I comparing Avery with Dante of all people? Well, ok, I’ll get to the point.

For Avery, cartoons could do anything. Or rather, animators could make anything happen in a cartoon. Wile E. Coyote hangs in the air until he realizes that there is no solid ground underneath him, and he’s flat as a pancake when he hits the ground, hurt, but somehow ready for more in the next scene.

Avery knew that’s what people expected. But he took it to the next level. Whatever it took to make a gag funnier, well, it happens in an Avery cartoon. 

Characters pulling object from nowhere. Bodies contorting and stretching in impossible ways. Women with more curves than a major league pitcher. No fourth wall whatsoever. Cartoon characters knew that they were in a cartoon; what, you thought Gary K. Wolf came up with that idea? Ha! You even saw the audiences in the theatre pop up from time to time. The fourth wall was obliterated in an Avery short. 

Cartoons have always been funny; Avery just took everything to another level. Sometimes, more can be more.

He wasn’t the first to come up with the ideas, the gags or the pop culture jokes that became his signature. Like Dante, he combined old things in ways that made them fresh, and, again like Dante, he has been imitated by so many other talented people that Avery seems unoriginal now.

For lack of a better word, Tex Avery created the “wackiness” that we all associate with cartoons to this day when started working for Warner Brothers in the 1930s. Not to take away from other legends like Chuck Jones and Walter Lantz, but when it came to visual gags, when it came to the visual creativity we all associate with animation, Avery and his team were in a league unto themselves.

In fact, it was because of the fact that others had come before him that Avery’s style works so effectively. 

One of his most famous cartoons, “Red Hot Riding Hood” (1943), is one of the best examples of Avery's great visual comedic chops. It has everything that Tex Avery is associated with now, made at the height of his career, and it is also considered to be one of the greatest cartoons of all time, by the way.

The cartoon begins like your typical adaptation of Red Riding Hood. Our heroine skipping through the forest to Grandma’s house, cute woodland creatures frolicking around her, the wolf sizing her up from behind a tree. The narrator is narrating. For the first 30 seconds, everything is by-the-numbers.

Then, the little girl, and the wolf and the animals, pause, and scowling towards the narrator, start complaining to the narrator that they are doing the same thing as everyone else, and they're sick of doing the same thing. Exasperated with everyone else's constant whining, the narrator finally throws up his (invisible) hands and says “OK! We’ll do it another way!”

Fade to black, then the second title card pops up. 

“Red Hot Riding Hood” is in bright, modern neon letters. The subtitle underneath promises the audience that “Something New Has Been Added”. While it may seem like a simple tongue-in-chhek wink to the audience, it’s actually a reference to cigarette ads that were well-known at the time.

It turns out that a LOT  of new things have been added. Instead of a forest, we have the modern night club scene. The wolf is now a top hat and coat tails clad playboy, and Red Riding Hood is now a gorgeous, lounge singer. Emphasis on the gorgeous, by the way. The word vavoom comes to mind.

The voice of Katherine Hepburn and the body of Lana Turner, a combination that any man would find irresistible, captured in paint and ink. The wolf understandably is smitten with her, and wants to make her his girlfriend, (maybe for just one night) instead of simply eating her up. 

Red, in a nice twist on the damsel in distress angle, rejects the villain's advances in a loud outburst,  slamming him  into a wall with a table lamp, and quickly makes her way to Grandma’s hous-er, I mean “pad”. Yep, we’re dealing with a groovy and hip granny here. Seriously, did you think that trope started in the ‘80’s?

From then on, gags as far the eye can see. 

And things get really crazy when granny sees the wolf and decides to pursue him herself. Woof. 

Naturally, this is not what the wolf had in mind. Now he tries to scramble away. Doors lead to nowhere or are bricked up, cutting off his escape. So finally, in desperation, he jumps out of the window. This being a cartoon, he's of course hurt, but still on his feet, through the magic of slapstick. 

The short ends with the wolf at the same nightclub, bandaged up and annoyed to the breaking point. Just as he swears off beautiful women forever, the stage curtain opens to reveal Red again.

 Not willing to go through all that trouble again even for a girl that hot, he shoots himself, point blank, with a  very large gun. However, his ghost pops up out of his cooling corpse, whistling and cheering at Red's performance as if nothing had happened in the last six minutes. 

Now that is how you bookend a story!

 I could go into an analysis about it, but that would be boring and it would take up too much time. A lot of Avery’s humor is in visual gags anyway, so reading my descriptions does not do it justice. 

Red Hot Riding Hood has all of Avery’s staples in full force. The fourth-wall breaking, the pop culture references. And for the time, the humor was very risque. Hell, the original ending, with wolf marrying the grandma and having wolf-human babies with her, was cut by the censors for explicitly showing bestiality. 

How they produced this short at all with the Hays Office at the height of its poweris a miracle in itself.

I also brought up this cartoon to show you Avery’s biggest weakness. While he was very creative, he also tended to repeat himself a lot in his other cartoons. When he liked an idea, he really stuck with it. Or perhaps he was the victim of his own success, trapped by his renowned signature style. 

 There are of course, variations and differences in his filmography. But Avery style is unmistakable, but it's copied so much, it's power has been watered down with the passage of time. To sum up, Avery’s work tends to blend together after a while. What’s worse, for kid’s like me, who grew up in the 90’s, many of the references, gags and fourth-wall breaking would seem lame, or we just saw Animaniacs and Tiny Toons do it first. Trying to tell someone who has watched Family Guy or the South Park that Avery’s work was groundbreaking and shocking as these shows when they were released in the '40's, they’ll likely just shrug and say “So what?”

My answer to that response is, that Avery has inspired all those shows. Let that sin for a sec; all of them Family Guy’s cutaway gags were taken from Avery. Animaniacs whole fourth-wall breaking schtick was because of Avery. He even gave us animation’s first (deliberate) sex symbol, for good or bad. You think Hello Nurse or Jessica Rabbit, or heck, even Fujiko Mine were original and provocative? Red could just as easily stand toe to toe with them today.

There’s a reason why his work has been copied so much. He was the guy who contributed to making animation, well, animated, if you’ll excuse the pun. As for the pop culture jokes? Well, who’s to say what we will recognize in a 100 years. Maybe psychiatrists won’t all look and sound like Freud one day. Maybe the internet meme in that new episode will go over everyone’s heads in a year or two (most likely). 

Avery couldn’t help living in the times he lived in anymore than we can. He was one those artists who could be both timely and timeless. Same way many of his contemporaries like Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Walter Lantz could be

I want to pay respects to the man who helped change animation forever. He doesn’t stand alone, but he is indisputably a legend. 

Unfortunately, just like with Disney’s Nine Old Men, his legend seems to be fading with the passing of years. This post is my attempt to keep this genius from being forgotten. Maybe that is a little hyperbolic. But I fear that, as more and more copy what he pioneered, he will be crowded out of the public memory by imitators. The imitators may capture the spirit of what he did, the essence of his creativity, and that is all fine and good. Inspiration should never be frowned upon.

However, there was only one Tex Avery in the world. Hopefully, we will never forget why that matters.

A Seussical Tribute (In Prose, Because I Suck at Rhyming)

It's hard to believe it, but Dr. Seuss has been gone for almost 25 years. Hard to believe, that when most Millennials were still learning to read by using his books, the man himself had passed on. My parents had well over 20 of Seuss' books on one shelf.

Thanks to the arrival of my little brother, we didn't have to donate them to the library once I went Gr. 2.

Many of us had our favorites. He wrote so many, for so long, there must be at least some you still remember.

Fox in Sox was a favorite, because I would try to read the book out loud without losing my breath. Green Eggs and Ham was another, because I felt that the book could've gone on for 30 more pages about all the ways Sam I Am tried to get someone to like green eggs and ham. Cat in the Hat, of course, because what kid doesn't want to have that much fun on a rainy afternoon? I've Got a Wocket in my Pocket was also a lot of fun to read, just because of the idea of an ordinary kid surrounded by all these weird creatures, when he's trying to go about his day was cool to think about.

The one book I remember the most fondly is O the Thinks You Can Think! Based off of a graduation speech he gave, is a book all about the potential of kids and their imaginations, what they can accomplish, not so much by following their dreams, as being able to come up with new ideas and concepts. The final line never fails to stir the soul: "Kid, you'll move mountains!"

That was the man's legacy. Not just the silly rhymes or the clever designs. He found a way to teach kids important lessons in a style that was all his own. That is the reason why, at 29, I still admire him today, and decided to write this tribute.

There's an on-going debate about children's literature should count as capital "L" literature. While you find many academics who will point to the hundreds of classic children's stories out there, for others, they can never think of kids stories as worthy of serious scrutiny. I bring this up because it is very easy to think of Dr. Seuss as just a man who wrote fun fables with creative drawings and a knack for rhyming. While you can think of him that way, I don't think that was all there was to the man.

Think of Horton Hears a Who. On one level, it's a story about a talking elephant saving a group of really small people. It's also about standing up and doing the right thing in the face of overwhelming scepticism and opposition. That's a lesson I'm sure we can all take to heart.

I haven't read of watched The Lorax, but considering how divisive and controversial environmental issues have become, especially human-made climate change, arguably this book has become more important than ever.

You might not think there is much to talk about Seuss. But like Green and Ham taught us, don't be too quick to try new things. Like O The Thinks You Can Think taught us, don't be afraid to consider things in new ways.

You may not like Dr. Seuss' style, but it is undeniable that the man had style, one that is beloved by generations of children. Which is why, I can think of no better way to end this post than in the good doctor's way.

Have no fear, Dr. Seuss, your legacy lives on!

May it continue forever, at least a thousand years on!



The Legend of Zelda: Evolution of a Virtual World

I may be a Millennial, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm on top of everything when it comes to technology. That category. of course, includes video games. I was born in 1987, so I  grew around that amazing, magical time, where gaming exploded in popularity during the now legendary Console Wars of the '90's between Nintendo and Sega.

Every kid on my street had a console or a computer, and we were all playing games at least some of the time. I think my parents bought me an NES  when I was 5 because they assumed that was what I wanted. Honestly, it's hard not to blame them. I barely played on my NES though, either because the  blocky sprites were too crude or the gameplay was too confusing to hook me in like so many other kids.

My relationship with games have taken a few turns over the years. The first console I can remember actually wanting (and begging, lots and lots of begging) was the Playstation. I had never seen anything like it. It still amazes me how time can make you look back and think "was I ever really impressed by games like that"? Try explaining to kids born around 2000 or later, that the crude polygon models of the PS was cutting-edge once upon a time.

Indeed, games and gamer culture has evolved so much so fast, that my outlook has changed just as drastically, if not as quickly. Of course, I don't need to tell most of you this.

But for me, for a few years, I really didn't play games that much, so all these changes going on escaped my notice. I would play on my best friend's N64 & Xbox whenever I came over to visit, but outside of a few RTS classics like Warcraft 3 or playing with my little brother on my (now ancient) dependable SNES well  into the 2000s.

 Of course, I wouldn't be writing about the Zelda franchise if I still didn't care about video games. On the contrary, I have been left in awe but how far games have come since my childhood. Every trailer, every game demo, presents me with sound, visuals, emotion and depth, that I could not see coming all those years ago.

Zelda, among a few select other franchises like Mario, Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy, have stayed as relevant as they have ever been to the industry they help shape. The fact that these titles have stayed relevant over decades of incredibly fast change, where developers are constantly innovating and giving gamers around the world new experiences, new worlds, new hardware, new stories, is truly remarkable. You really need to see it to truly get what I'm saying. Just compare the original Legend of Zelda released 30 years ago in 1986:

To, for example, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, at the time of its release one of the greatest and innovative games of it's time (and according to many, still is) released just 12 years later in 1998:

Now of course you can see the differences between these two games because the jump from to 2D to 3D is a pretty drastic change. The next game in the series Twilight Princess, doesn't look much different but still pretty impressive, and this game was released just eight years after OoT, in 2006:

Now,  here's what The newest Legend of Zelda game, titled The Breath of the Wild, has in store for us in 2017. If the other trailers looked good to you, get ready for an awe-inspiring 3 minutes.

Amazing,  isn't it? Here's where it gets truly mind-boggling for me. The latest Zelda game is being released on two consoles, the Wii U and Nintendo's newest console, for now codenamed "NX" due to be released next March alongside the game. Neither of these systems are cutting edge; a pretty safe statement to make, even though we currently know very little is  about Nintendo's latest hardware.

The way consoles are released, is that the designers and company must strike a balance between affordability and improving the performance of the hardware significantly. If consoles were truly made with top-tier parts, they would cost anywhere from $1000-2000. So what you buy for $500 dollars is a mid-level system at best, that will be obsolete in about 5-6 years. In the Wii U's case, it's a good system but there's no denying that it is significantly less powerful than the PS4 and the Xbox One.

With that out of the way, think about this. What you saw in the above trailer was made to work on older hardware. Yet, the game still undeniably looks next-gen. I can't even image what the next Zelda game will look like, and technically speaking the "current game" isn't even out yet!

I'm sure you've noticed a lot of interesting things in the trailer, but I'm also sure a lot of you are wondering exactly what the big deal is. Sure, it's big and it looks pretty, but why exactly am I gushing so much about this game.

Well, there's good news. During the E3 convention held in June of this year, Nintendo released a lot of gameplay footage. I mean,  A LOT of gameplay footage. Most developers will only show you demos lasting around around maybe 10-20 minutes, sometimes half an hour, to give you a sense of the gameplay, the world that the developers created, the characters and of course, other things like the shiny new graphics engine and improved AI.

According to one member of the popular gaming forum NeoGAF, the Nintendo Treehouse livestream event showed off 5 HOURS of total footage of this game. Journalists for the video game news site IGN have at least an hour and a half of archived gameplay on their Youtube channel, which I'm sure is being dissected by millions of fans as we speak.

These two sites are my main sources of info about the game. I haven't played any of this. Heck, I haven't even played a Zelda game in years. But I can still give everyone a solid breakdown of the game, and show you how it reflects a lot of the major changes in the video game inditry as whole, as well as being a major change for the franchise itself.

Scope and Detail

When any game is made on more powerful hardware, and especially since this is the first "true HD" Zelda game in the franchise, the developers have a lot more sophisticated tools to bring Hyrule to life and more importantly, have more space to fill up to make the world feel immersive and give the player a lot of things to do. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the game is bigger and looks better.

The game is still staggeringly huge. According to the game's producer Eiji Aonuma, Breath of the Wild is twelve times the size of Twilight Princess which at the time it was released, was considered the best game in the series. He went on to say that the starting area players saw in the gameplay demo, known in the game itself "The Great Plateau", is just one percent of the final game. I watched people playing constantly for almost a full hour, and I saw an almost non-stop barrage of new things presented. This one area has everything: beautiful fields of tall grass, a waterfall, a small snow-capped mountain, and a few shrines place around the area filled with secrets and puzzles. I also saw very little backtracking or repetition. This game definitely does not lack for content.

To be fair, there are several games I've played in the past that offer almost as much gameplay as this. Super Mario World and Crash Bandicoot immediately spring to mind. But that doesn't take away the fact that this game was a massive undertaking and risk for the BIg "N".

The size of the game is complemented by lots of little touches that add to the fun and immersion.

For example, when you stand in a field, you see the grass bending in the wind, and the world around you gets slowly darker or brighter because the game has a day/night cycle; with the sun and the clouds moving quickly across the sky. But where older games would just add effects like this into a game to show off the capabilities of the graphics engine and make the world feel  more ral, the wind and the time of day have a significant affect on how you play.

To give one example. if you set a small patch of dry grass on fire and a breeze happens to pick up just then, the fire will spread rapidly around the area, just like it would in real life.

Link has been given a stamina meter to make you time your moves better. While some players don't like this much realism is a game, considering that you have to stop running every ten seconds or so to "catch your breath", it adds another layer of strategy that you have to take into consideration.

Another interesting change is how climate affects you now. In previous Zelda games all you had to do was pick which outfit to put Link in that you felt suited him best. In this game, you can't go into an arctic tundra in just a tunic, or a desert wearing heavy clothing, otherwise Link will take damage. So the clothes now has a practical purpose

Breath of the Wild is hardly the first game to add this sort of complexity. In fact, several fans have already complained that it's borrowing too much from successful RPG franchises like Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls. No one is saying that making the world more detailed or adding more space and complexity is in itself a bad thing, but some Zelda fans don't want the series to change too drastically from they are familiar with.

Now, from my perspective as an admittedly non-fan of the series, all the changes I've described so far add a lot of layered strategy, choice and difficulty to the game. You can now set enemies on fire, roll a boulder down a hill, attack at night when the bad guys are asleep etc. Of course, previous Zelda games offered a wide variety of items to use or places to go. This one us just adding more to keep gameplay and exploration from becoming stale.

From what I can tell, it still feels like Zelda. Sure you have to gather and cook food to replenish health instead of going to a random patch of tall grass and start swinging away randomly with your sword, but the new doesn't doesn't seem much more time-consuming or difficult to me.


Gameplay and Content

Pack a lunch, because this section might take awhile. Since gameplay and content are two of the biggest things video game developers are constantly challenging themselves to expand on year after year, needless to say, there is a lot to do in Breath of the Wild. The franchise has taken pages out of a whole shelf of other books for this game.

You don't find hearts just lying in random breakable pots or patches of grass anymore. Much like games that add more realism to how you replenish health like Far Cry  you hunt and forage for food, and even cook it over a campfire to recharge your health or cook up an elixir that will make you temporarily stronger, faster, or temporarily make you immune to the elements.

As I said before, the time of day and the weather will affect how you play. You might want to wait for enemies to fall asleep, or avoid fighting the stronger enemies that wake up at night. If a thunderstorm should break out while you're running around, be wary of getting struck by lightning if you're still carrying that awesome sword on your back.

Weapons seem plentiful in this game. You can take them from enemies in a pinch, or you can wonder around, looking for a pitchfork or ax someone left lying around for young kleptomaniacal heroes like yourself to find.

Of course, there are temples, shops and hidden areas that have special items and gear, but if you don't want to go through hurdles to get all the fancy stuff, you can collect any old tree branch lying around on the ground, build a fire, set the branch on fire. and now you can set your enemies ablaze with your new, homemade firebrand.

There's been a lot of changes, some major some minor, that makes the combat interesting and fun, All the weapons and shields are breakable, so you have to keep track of how much punishment you've dealt out or received from enemies.  You can also slide on top of your shield too, whether it be on grass or on a snowy hillside. Finally, a video game that let's you pull off a Legolas maneuver!

When you dodge an enemy's attack at just the right time, Link will enter a "bullet time" state, like in the Max Payne series, where the enemies are basically frozen or move in slo-mo for a few seconds, allowing to finish them off in style.

You don't have to fight your enemies directly. Roll a boulder down a hill, fire a fire arrow into an exploding barrel, plant a bomb where they usually patrol around and detonate it remotely, or shoot arrows from the back of your faithful horse Epona as she runs circles around them. Who says you have to fight at all? You're perfectly free to avoid enemies as well, especially if they are much stronger than you.

Unlike previous Zelda games, you are given a lot more options to fight or to avoid fighting, I haven't even talked about the magic system or the awesome items you can get, like the Fire Rod, but I think we've talked enough about combat.

The magical abilities have a lot to offer outside of outside of combat. Link has access to a new tool in this game, known as the "Sheikah Slate", which is basically a Hyrulean type of tablet computer that runs on magic. By finding and inscribing different mystical runes onto the tablet, Link can gain access to a wide scope of powers.

Dotted throughout the landscape are shrines which act as "mini-dungeons", areas of the game where you solve puzzles and get through obstacles in order to get some new powerful item or skill, or if you just want to explore as much of the world as possible. By using the runes, Link is able to to move around the shrines a lot easier. One rune for example, allows him to freeze time around an object, holding it in place for Link to either manipulate it, or just avoid it altogether. There re also larger temples, where the larger set pieces and boss fights take place, and where presumably you uncover the story of the game.

The runes are just another layer on top of an already impressively deep and complex gameplay system. And remember, everything I've described is from the opening area of the game. This post would've turned into a thesis paper if I had access to the full game right now. You will be pleased to know that this post is nearly done. Just one last thing to talk about.


Going Back to the Roots and Breaking From Tradition

Whenever an iconic franchise gets a new addition, obviously there is a lot of anticipation and dread from fans. The above header shows just how hard it is to please them sometimes. If it is too different from what fans expect, then they will complain that it's not a "true Zelda game"; if it's too similar to previous games, fans will accuse Nintendo of resting on their laurels (a not unfounded accusation) and not doing enough to innovate to give fans something different.

Here's the truly crazy, paradoxical thing about this game, though. It is undeniably a different Zelda game. It has taken a lot from other non-Zelda games. Just look at all the comparisons I've made throughout this post; that is no accident. But do know what the biggest influence was on the design of this game? The original Legend of Zelda. Try to wrap your mind around that one; and after I've been constantly praising this game for all the changes it provides!

In the very first game, players had a lot more freedom to do what they wanted. You didn't have to complete the dungeons in a specific order, or gather the pieces of the Tri-Force as quickly as possible to defeat Ganondorf. You could go in any direction, explore the levels the way you felt was right

So players get the freedom they used to have, with a lot more to do and lot more ways to do it, thanks  to decades of innovations in hardware and game design. Let's be completely fair here though; innovation is always what has kept the fans coming back to the world for more, and stay loyal to this series.

Yes, every game is about a hero named Link, who has to save a Princess named Zelda and save a world called Hyrule, by gathering the pieces of the Tri-Force to defeat the evil wizard Ganondorf . The core ideas of this world and these characters have always remained the same. But anyone can see that Link, Zelda and Hyrule, are very different than from where they started.

 The series has changed A LOT over the years.

The third game of the series, A Link to the Past  introduced, among other things: the Hook Shot, the Master Sword, heart pieces & containers, a new combat system where Link could slash side to side instead of just forward, arrows as collectible ammo, the concept of travelling between two worlds (in this game's case, a "Light" and "Dark" World), and a fairy companion for Link.

All these innovations have been around for so long now, that only older or die-hard Zelda fans would know that all these "classic" Zelda elements were not there at the very beginning. So, it seems to me, that the developers should be given due credit and encouragement to shake things up from game to game. It doesn't seem to have hurt the series' success in anyway.

It's even built into well-known Zelda lore. Each Link, each Zelda, each Ganondorf, are literal re-incarnations of the same people, finding themselves on the same world, in different eras, or, since OoT involves time travel, alternate timelines, Change and stability are reflected in every aspect of this world, it seems. It also gives the developers a very clever excuse to change and to keep what they want.

I am very glad than fans are so enthusiastic about this game so far, because this will help Nintendo keep Zelda (and Mario and Donkey Kong and Star Fox and...well, you get the idea) going for another 30 years and more. The fact that the series has managed to stay so relevant in an industry that changes so fast, is a great accomplishment in and of itself, let alone that many of the individual games are classics in their own right. I don't know how exactly, but the people at Nintendo keep refining what works while adding changes that, in retrospect,  seems to constantly improve on the formula. If only everyone else could do that so consistently. There would be a lot less crappy and infuriating reboots out there.

Happy 30th anniversary Link & Zelda. Happy 30th Ganondorf.  Happy 30th Hyrule.

From where I'm sitting, you've never looked better.