Hello! It's Malo, back to report on my gaming habits, haha.
Believe it or not, comments on my YouTube channel can motivate and inspire me to go back to certain games. For example, recently someone had randomly timestamped a moment on one of my Ocarina of Time videos, and that made me want to return to Zelda in general. That's the reason I started Twilight Princess when I did! I would have played it eventually, of course, though I'm very glad that I was able to get going on that. I feel more comfortable with the workload of Animal Crossing and one other series, so I'm taking the time now to go back and finish some other series' up, like Viva Piñata.
On the topic of Zelda, lately I've been having a good time with Ocarina of Time Randomizer. Ocarina is a very important game to me, so I always love going back to it. I feel it taught me a lot about stories and archetypes, about puzzles in gaming, about perserverance, and so on. Of course, we all know by now it's not a perfect game (and thank goodness it's not, how else would the speedrunners have broken it in such ridiculous ways?). Though for the time, it is an incredible feat of game design. I really can't overstate how pivotal it was, alongside its counterpart in Super Mario 64 (also a very good game).
Randomized Ocarina of Time is something I first learned about some 5+ years ago from a Zelda speedrunner named ZFG. I enjoyed his ability to use all the speedrunners' tricks to find the shuffled items he needed despite there being no logic to any item placements (as in, game progression was not considered for a normal player). It's an exercise in remembering what key items can unlock what places in order to potentially find more key items (or just keys in general). Randomizer with logic, as a regular player who can't really pull off any difficult tricks, is a great way to revisit the game and rediscover lots of details. There's still times I learn something entirely new about how the game works.
Over this past weekend, I finished a randomized playthrough with only one look at the spoiler log (which tells you where it hid each item), as I was stuck looking for the Longshot. Turned out it was because I had written off Dampé's race as finished, and had forgotten you could get a second prize for getting a good time. A pretty appropriate spot for that to be! Thereafter I was able to finish the Water Temple (which had the light arrows in place of Morpha's heart container) and beat the game! So yes, I do think streaming a playthrough would be fun! I've mentioned before, though, that my internet connection can't really handle that too well anymore, so until that changes, I'll be randomizing in my off time.
Not too long ago there was a Nintendo Direct with a teaser for an Ocarina of Time remake! I'm not really apprehensive about how they're going to handle things, honestly. I feel people forget that, for as Metroidvania-y Zeldas have historically been progression-wise, Ocarina was always the precursor to open-world design. Back when it released, I suppose you could say it was much more unsolved, which is what made it a real playground of a game. There's much more DNA of Ocarina in Breath of the Wild than people give it credit for. Though it's true that the style of progression in Ocarina went on to be an overused blueprint for Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and especially Skyward Sword. It all became very restrictive. Breath of the Wild went back to the roots of the original NES game with its openness, certainly, though much more I think it mirrors the intent of Ocarina.
I suppose that's enough of an essay for today, haha. Thank you for checking in on me! I hope you have a good week!