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Fun Club Nintendo has ABANDONED Towns

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Remember when Nintendo used to make towns? God, they were so good at it too.

Booting up Wind Waker and being greeted with one of the greatest title screens of all time:

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You're immediately introduced to the tone and scope of this brand new world, and what's the location that's set to see you off before you embark in your grand adventure? Outset Island, with one of the greatest town OST's ever:



It's pristine, beautiful, and somehow melancholic all the same. I'm getting choked up here.

Flash forward, how is Zelda handling towns nowadays? Let's take a look at TotK:

temple-of-time-in-totk-v0-12zbqf0d85ua1.jpg


What is this? A whole bunch of tents? Who'd want to visit this place, let alone live there? BotW created such fantastic new towns too...

A whole new sky? No towns. A duplication of the same map upside down? Guess what bozo, we duplicated everything EXCEPT the towns.

Anyway, enough Zelda. Lets take a look at the most recent installment in the Xenoblade series, a JRPG franchise known for such iconic towns such as Frontier Village, Gormott, Uraya, Colony 9 and more! Surely Xenoblade 3 follows suit

Xenoblade_Chronicles_3_beginners_guide_3.jpg


Nahhh, they're actually a whole bunch of tents around a mech. What happened here? Tents, tents, tents. Let's go even safer.

Animal Crossing is peak cozy town vibes, lets look at the most recent entry in the series. There's no way they're messing this one up

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TENTS. DESERTED ISLAND

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It's actually a meta-commentary on society accepting and normalising homelessness, resulting in 'tent cities' in many major metro areas. In a mirror, darkly.
 
Xenoblade 3 honestly has great worldbuilding with why there are no towns, so I can accept that.

Tears of the Kingdom just needed a town in the Depths, which would have been neat but alas.
 
I'm confused.. Tears of the Kingdom has 5+ towns. That's about...the same as other Zelda games if not.. more. They also have more going on in them... lol

They're pretty comparable to anything you find in Windwaker/Ocarina/Twilight lol

Upcoming Paper Mario TTYD also has a bunch.

I seriously doubt Samus will be visiting societies in Metroid Prime 4 but you never know.
 
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I really love towns/cities/cultural hubs in games and how unique they can be and I genuinely am sad that Xenoblade X/3 and TOTK didn't have much.

BOTWs in a vacuum are pretty good though (I especially like the Gerudo area). They just feel like a smaller part of the games due to how much overworld stuff there is and maybe the fact there isn't a second half to the story that sees you go back and see characters. (Well you could argue TOTK is the second half I guess, but that feels bad to me).

The tent/mechs in Xeno 3 are fiiine and definately appropriate to the setting but I feel like the locations/characters in those camps could have been expressed a little more, even in that setting. Like I could see one area have some flower gardens because some character like planting/honey production, or some have a lot of scrap/technology piled up for tinkering, or one may have tombstones or graveyard aesthetic, as the soldiers their like to honor the dead or something. Would make it even more sad that they live such short lives when they are expressing a new culture they are developing.
 
Mario vs. Donkey Kong? No towns.

Princess Peach Showtime!? No towns.

Paper Mario TTYD? A town made of paper, so we can all agree that doesnt count.

Luigi's Mansion 2? Mansions aren't towns...

Nintendos 2024 lineup... a ghost town.
 
grobla123 said:
The tent/mechs in Xeno 3 are fiiine and definately appropriate to the setting but I feel like the locations/characters in those camps could have been expressed a little more, even in that setting. Like I could see one area have some flower gardens because some character like planting/honey production, or some have a lot of scrap/technology piled up for tinkering, or one may have tombstones or graveyard aesthetic, as the soldiers their like to honor the dead or something. Would make it even more sad that they live such short lives when they are expressing a new culture they are developing.
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they did almost exactly those, lol. they were still roped into their country aesthetic and were garrisons, so that limited just how flexible they were though
 
VintoWin said:
I'm confused.. Tears of the Kingdom has 5+ towns. That's about...the same as other Zelda games if not.. more. They also have more going on in them... lol

They're pretty comparable to anything you find in Windwaker/Ocarina/Twilight lol

Upcoming Paper Mario TTYD also has a bunch.

I seriously doubt Samus will be visiting societies in Metroid Prime 4 but you never know.
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Totk... Had the same towns as botw. And TTYD has the same towns as it did when it first released more than likely
 
They'll never match Toad Town in the original Paper Mario

If you could, you'd live there
 
Ab said:
Totk... Had the same towns as botw. And TTYD has the same towns as it did when it first released more than likely
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Still doesn't count as "abandoning towns" only RPGs and stuff have towns... what Nintendo games qualify? I think we named them all.
Zelda... Zelda.... Zelda... oh and Zelda.

and the RPG games, Pokemon, Mario RPGs, Xenoblade.
 
ILikeFeet said:
they did almost exactly those, lol. they were still roped into their country aesthetic and were garrisons, so that limited just how flexible they were though
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Kind of but they were much much more limited than I would like even with the result in that context. They could have pushed it further. But didn't. The war theme took precedent which is fine. The very little flourishes didn't even really feel like much of anything which is kind of the point I suppose.
 
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The only relevant town in Wind Waker is Windfall Island. All the other ones are bad so it feels like OP is being nostalgic. Also Hateno Town is probably the best town in the series outside of Clock Town
 
the open world structure absolutely ruined Pokemon towns in SV, and the fact a lot of them don't even have building interiors (with menus that are simpler looking than bare ass Ys on PC88, which at least had character portraits) just is very sad to me. TOTK had fun towns with stuff to do and I was hoping for something akin to that where you just walk right on into someone's home or shop, but noooo, we had to get dull menus.

Still bitter about that. Would rather take a linear game for Pokemon Gen X but I know I'll never get it
 
The problem with open world. They keep making up their stories to fit some past time or some war time or some time where we can have full cities all over
 
It especially hurt with how BAD the towns were in Tears of the Kingdom. Splatoon 2 teetered on the edge of making Inkopolis feel truly alive, Splatoon 3 gave up to push gameplay and spectacle (which works, The Square on Day 2 during a Fest looks STUNNING.)

Nintendo has definitely been focused somewhere other than "believable worlds". I'd genuinely like to see the next 3D Mario tackle this if it really is fully open world. Remove the "floating in infinite space" aspect of Odyssey, and make the buildings enterable and interactive, and you have a good base for decent towns. Let us slide down the rain pipes, jump up the chimneys, you don't have to sacrifice fun to make a believable, lived in-town. I don't like Sunshine, I think Delfino Square is a bad HUB, but it is a WONDERFUL town, Sunshine had problems but it definitely felt lived-in.
 
Hailinel said:
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people Wind Waker is a game of wide-open exploration.
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It is! For the part everyone hates.
Sampdoria said:
The only relevant town in Wind Waker is Windfall Island. All the other ones are bad so it feels like OP is being nostalgic. Also Hateno Town is probably the best town in the series outside of Clock Town
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It depends on what metrics you're judging them on. BotW and TotK have the best written townsfolk since MM and it's not even close, but there are things they do worse than other games too. I mourn the loss of a unique weirdo design for every single NPC, for one thing.

A major recurring problem in this series is that the towns are frequently really confusing to navigate. In real life, some expected features of towns include things like signs, and buildings with doors that all face the street. These things are not a given in Zelda. Kakariko in OoT has no two doors facing the same direction at the same elevation, I'm pretty sure.

Some on the other hand have a lot of houses that all look basically the same spread out in a vaguely gridlike fashion, which is death, essentially. The Hyrule HOA is a greater menace than any dungeon. BotW towns and the original ALttP Kakariko are especially bad with this.

Then there's readability, which is more of a 3D-exclusive issue. If the town is too dense or is laid out in a way that obscures itself, it can be hard to look around and figure out where things are in relation to you. Verticality tends to be a major culprit, any 3D Zelda town built on a hill is going to have a problem with this. Ocarina Kakariko again is a chaotic mess, Windfall is another prime example.

To give counterexamples for each problem, the clear subdivisions of Clock Town (MM) or Castle Town (TP) do a lot to make large towns understandable. Also worth mentioning is Hyrule Town (MC), which is divided by a river on the left and has upper and lower portions as well as a town square marketplace. Despite all being one "map", it's very well-compartmentalized, and different parts of it have their own feel and identity. By miles the best town in a 2D Zelda.

Kakariko Village (ALBW) is a huge improvement on the original in ease of navigation simply by making every building look unique and populating the town with more people. The layout is basically identical, but the huge uptick in unique assets gives you so much more to go on.

Outset Island (WW) leaves a lot of open space between each house, making it really easy to tell where you are in relation to all of them since they're all easily visible from anywhere else in town. There's also Kakariko Village (TP), which lines the walls of a canyon, again making everything easily visible. The real answer though is mostly just "don't build uphill".

Of course, this is all just one factor. I don't know if anyone particularly likes TP Castle Town because it feels very impersonal with the large crowds and very few notable characters, and oddly segmented by the loading zones. Honestly I think the best "town" in Twilight Princess is legit a toss-up between Kakariko (where most of the houses are abandoned and all but three of the locals are implied to be dead in a one off line) and the Fishing Hole (which has literally one resident). That's how much it drops the ball on this.

Meanwhile, it might be a bit annoying to find the exact house you're looking for in BotW Kakariko when they're all so similar, but I will never forget finding one of the little girls standing under a tree and learning that she cries in the rain so her mother in heaven won't see her doing it, a scene most players probably never even came across because of how specific the conditions for it were.
 
You know which game had towns? Super Mario Sunshine. Yet you guys didn't appreciate it at all. Now look at where we are. I don't want anyone complaining about towns until you all apologise to Super Mario Sunshine and admit it's the best.
 
Ahmed said:
You know which game had towns? Super Mario Sunshine. Yet you guys didn't appreciate it at all. Now look at where we are. I don't want anyone complaining about towns until you all apologise to Super Mario Sunshine and admit it's the best.
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Strong argument against towns which kinda goes against the spirit of the thread.
 
Criticisms of only one new town in TotK are fine. It's disingenuous to use the survey tents near Hyrule Castle as an example in the OP when Lookout Landing is a few paces away from that exact spot and is the de facto 'hub' of the game. Regardless of how one feels about it.
 
Serif said:
Criticisms of only one new town in TotK are fine. It's disingenuous to use the survey tents near Hyrule Castle as an example in the OP when Lookout Landing is a few paces away from that exact spot and is the de facto 'hub' of the game. Regardless of how one feels about it.
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To be fair, lookout landing is rather a military base and with the amount of houses I definitely wouldn’t call it a town.

Also the post is rather comical, the tents are part of the joke.
 
Ahmed said:
You know which game had towns? Super Mario Sunshine. Yet you guys didn't appreciate it at all. Now look at where we are. I don't want anyone complaining about towns until you all apologise to Super Mario Sunshine and admit it's the best.
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Absolutely agree, but we‘ve to find the root of …. the Hate, to fight it./s
 
Darknut85 said:
To be fair, lookout landing is rather a military base and with the amount of houses I definitely wouldn’t call it a town.

Also the post is rather comical, the tents are part of the joke.
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The lack of towns is really getting to people, making them feel in tents and on edge.
 
Kinda depends. I don't remember much about the towns in Breath of the Wild but Tears of the Kingdom had some of the best towns in the series in my opinion, especially Kakariko village.

I think one reason it might seem like these newer games don't have as much of an emphasis on towns, besides the obvious traveling everywhere aspect, is that they don't really have central towns. Which I think that's what Lookout Landing was meant to address ... but it was ... kinda bad at that? Like I have a lot of fondness for the relaxing music and the feedback loop of going back to it as a rest stop, but besides that the way NPCs and quests worked was pretty uninspiring, and seeing it evolve was cool but wasn't as major as you'd expect. I think I'd even put Twilight Princess's hub above it.

I think the best hub town in recent memory was definitely Skyward Sword though. Maybe i'm smoking but playing that for the first time with the HD remaster, it literally felt like they just tried to make another Clock Town in terms of bringing back importance to hub towns. NPCs all felt very charming and unique, which is funny because again the quest structure behind them was often quite bad, but the NPCs made up for it. Helps that it has fantastic music and is one of the most beautiful areas in the series.

So yeah, I'd say the problem now is moreso having a good hub town. Towns seem still pretty well integrated otherwise.
 
WW has 2 noteworthy towns in its entire sea, 3 if I'm being generous and counting the "town" of the Ruto. I'll gladly take Xenoblade 3 and BotW's ones over it.
 
I completely disagree. Nintendo's made some pretty great towns this gen. Animal Crossing is all about hanging out in a town with your funny animal buddies. Fire Emblem Engage has my gay little floating island where I get to live the dream life of doing cosplay photoshoots and sleeping in a canopy bed. The towns have never been better

Edit: Just saw that you mentioned Animal Crossing in the OP. Actually it's great and tents are cool
 
neil said:
Here's a tip for some of you. If a thread very strongly makes an absurd argument, that thread is probably a joke.
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Half of OP's post reads pretty seriously with honest facts. Hard to tell in writing if it's satire. Now that he added "fun club" I know.
 
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Nintendo definitely has abandoned towns. There’s tons of ruins of ancient settlements lying around in Zelda.
 
I'm playing Game Builder Garage and there are no towns either. And don't even get me started on Pokémon """""HOME"""". Nintendo's always gonna Nintendo.
 
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VintoWin said:
Still doesn't count as "abandoning towns" only RPGs and stuff have towns... what Nintendo games qualify? I think we named them all.
Zelda... Zelda.... Zelda... oh and Zelda.

and the RPG games, Pokemon, Mario RPGs, Xenoblade.
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Honestly thought this was a thinly veiled dunk on Game Freak again cause towns in Gen 9 were mostly just set dressing, you couldn't even go into any buildings apart from the school, the (subway)-sandwich restaurants, the Pokémon League and the the two houses where you live and the onw down the hill.

Beanstar40 said:
Square once said hd towns are hard, and now they have given us some of the greatest hd towns in rpgs with ff7 rebirth
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BotW and Totk towns arw fine but rhis feels so true looking at Pokémon, Game Freak feels like a decade behind.
(I mean they had to jump from Handheld games directly to HD Switch games so no wonder)

I was also konda disappointed Totk lacked new towns, especially in the sky.
That and Pokémon kinda make this thread not a joke a to me.

I hope a new worldmap in the next Zelda and some more oven-time for Game Freaks games brings us the goods.

I actually loved the village in Legends Arceus.
 
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