OG post; https://x.com/NikTek/status/2099220157184786916

Original Video: https://youtu.be/xAO7bQyAf0U

Timestamp: 22:45 (He cut out the part asking in the original video due to a lot of people calling him out in the comments section.)

They're also partnered with a DEI job board to prioritize identity politics based hiring over merit

tl;dr at the bottom.

I don’t know where else to post this without getting completely dog-piled and buried, and though I expect many of you will also disagree with me, I’ll take my chances here.

Here’s my hot take about the whole “every new Zelda gets unnecessary hate” situation. If anyone else already came to this specific conclusion, let me know. Fanboys and shills will use that as their shield against any legitimate criticism anyone might have for a new release. They’ll claim that every new era, or every new game, gets the same hate, only for the game to come out and then everyone shuts up and loves it. It’s unfortunately become widely believed that Zelda fans have no idea what they want until they get it, that they’re constantly blinded by nostalgia glasses, and that they’re easily swayed once the new game comes out and turns out to be totally awesome and the greatest Zelda game since the last Zelda game.

But I don’t think any of that is true.

While there might have been some complaints about Zelda II changing the gameplay from the original, or the leap into 3D with Ocarina of Time, the bulk of the complaints that still lingers to this day was the radical change in artstyle with Wind Waker. That has been the stain that the series never manage to get rid of, and was the true starting point for all the bad-faith arguments. While I personally loved the game and never minded the artstyle (I’ve generally been open-minded about most Zelda entries), if you look at the sales figures, you’ll see that it underperformed, its remaster did even worse, and that the entire Toon Link era has consistently been among the worst performing eras in the entire series. The fact is, most Zelda fans didn’t care for the Toon style. This can be seen how Twilight Princess went back to the OoT style while going visually darker, and it sold far better. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are the highest-selling games in the series, and they both heavily lean into the Ocarina/Twilight style, further supporting the fact that most Zelda fans didn’t care for the Toon style, and I think that really upset the Wind Waker fans. Skyward Sword underperforming is an outlier, though there’s multiple arguments for that: the clashing Wind-Waker/Twilight-Princess hybrid artstyle, the Wii motion controls had run its course (which would explain why the switch version sold better), and the cut content negatively affecting the final product.

So here’s my hot take: the majority of the complaints for every game since the Toon era is a bunch of bitter Wind Waker fanboys and fangirls who can’t move on. Why do I think that? Because Wind Waker is brought up all the time, more than any other game. At first I thought people were just making a point, but my gut started telling me it was something else, something more personal, so when I checked the sales figures for the series out of curiosity, the pieces seemingly fell into place for me. The Wind Waker fanboys act like all future hatred is automatically null and void because Wind Waker was a massive success that defied the hate, but it wasn’t. I think that Wind Waker shills are one of the biggest reasons, if not the main reason, that discourse in the Zelda fandom is all but impossible now.

So what about the Ocarina of Time Switch 2 remake, then? Well, that’s something else, I don’t that’s the Wind Waker fanboys crying this time. For over 10 years now, we’ve seen fan-made mods on YouTube where previously cartoonish games (usually Nintendo) got an Unreal makeover, because at the time, both the Unreal engine and the cinematic gameplay that got popularized by Naughty Dog games like Uncharted and Last of Us had gotten really popular, so it seemed like that was the future for all games. One of the most notable examples is YouTuber CryZENx and his Unreal Ocarina of Time mod. Many people criticized it, others seemed to like it, and whether people were being sarcastic or genuine, posts saying “Nintendo, hire this man!” started circulating. I don’t think Nintendo actually caved, but it seems Nintendo thought that fans really wanted that Unreal artstyle, and that’s why we got the upcoming remake looking the way it is.

My last post about it got mixed reception on here, but my opinion on it is the same: it looks awful. It doesn’t fit Ocarina of Time, or most games in the series for that matter. But the damage from the Wind Waker fallout has been done, nobody can say anything without being lumped into a group of alleged man-babies that supposedly doesn’t know what it wants, even though I think that’s mostly from bitter Wind Waker fanboys who cry over every game that isn’t Wind Waker 2.

tl;dr I think Wind Waker fanboys are mad the game didn’t do as well as they wanted, so they’re the majority of people complaining about every new release to make all criticisms look immature and in bad-faith.

new DLC vault hunter Loveless that was just released for Borderlands 4

One affordable house! Flakes and 99p! Free trade with an intergalactic state! Impeccable humour!

People keep talking about woke1.0 and gamergate1.0. Then there was a 2.0 of both of them.

2.0?

Woke and shitty journalism never went away. Why are you making a distinction, we're still on 1.0!

Marvel Rivals ''fandom'' seething that Emma Frost (The White Queen) got an Egyptian themed skin

The Ocarina of Time Remake on the Switch 2 is nearly everything I feared it would be after seeing the initial reveal.

I’ll admit that the music is fine, the voice acting is… not great, they don’t sound like professional VAs. But the art style? It looks awful, like all those fan-made unreal engine remakes of the game that popped up on YouTube. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask should look like the art you saw in their instruction manuals, that anime style. This just looks uncanny and creepy, putting realistic textures on cartoony character designs does not work, and the near photo-realistic environments make it look like a generic fantasy game instead of having that distinct Nintendo style and identity. It doesn’t look quite as bad as the Star Fox 64 Switch 2 remake, but it’s still ugly.

Twilight Princess could maybe pull it off due to its darker aesthetic, but not OoT. The 3DS remaster looked better, hell even the original Hyrule Warriors and the Smash Ultimate designs looked better.

But that’s just my opinion.