One of the key developers behind GTA has praised the ‘amazing’ modern Zelda games on the Nintendo Switch, comparing their impact to the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
It’s almost too obvious to need saying but The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and its sequel Tears Of The Kingdom are two of the best video games ever made, but it’s always interesting when someone of note within the industry echoes that sentiment in an eloquent way.
Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, who served as lead writer on the GTA and Red Dead Redemption games before he left the company in 2020, has done exactly that via an unexpected comparison to the works of legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock.
Speaking in an interview with Lex Fridman, Houser discussed the early years of 3D on the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation, remarking how ‘all of those early 3D games were very amazing when you first saw them’.
As the conversation turned to the impact of 1998’s The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, in setting the standard for 3D games, Houser brought up the most recent entries, Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, and how they sit within the industry.
‘The new ones, they almost, to me, feel like Hitchcock,’ Houser said. ‘They’re just speaking the language of video games. You know everything’s going to work this way and that way. It’s quite systemic, but how it all glues together is so amazing, it feels like when you watch a Hitchcock film.’
You might think thwacking Bokoblins in Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is quite a different experience from watching Psycho or Strangers On A Train, but Houser goes on to explain how they both represent a masterclass of expression unique to each medium.
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‘It’s not reality, he’s speaking the language of cinema…with a very strong accent almost,’ he added. ‘It’s very, very cinematic, it’s not realism at all. And that’s what those Zelda games kind of feel to me, like that they are these amazing things that could only be video games. They couldn’t be anything else.’
In the past, Houser has said how Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina Of Time had a profound impact on GTA’s transition to 3D, with 2001’s GTA 3.
Speaking to the New York Times in 2012, Houser said: ‘Anyone who makes 3D games who says they’ve not borrowed something from Mario or Zelda is lying – from the games on Nintendo 64, not necessarily the ones from today.’
Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom might only work as video games, but Nintendo is trying to expand the IP into movies. A live action Zelda film is slated to release on May 7, 2027, but we’ll bet every rupee in the world it won’t be as good as Rear Window.
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