Odd of me to rant twice in a row about a game I haven't played in over 2 years, but ideas come to me as they come to me.
So, in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo decided to add a new aspect to the series--an actual limit to how much money you can accumulate based on the size of your wallet. Now granted, RPG gamers are used to dealing with numerical limits to various parts of their characters--the infamous 999 or 9999 damage limits in most games, the standard 255 stat limit for the Final Fantasy series, etc. We expect a certain limit on the amount of money we can gain by looting corpses in a game. It's just part of the programming, and usually it's high enough that you're unlikely to ever normally reach it anyway--and you certainly would never NEED to most of the time.
Well, TLoZOoT changes all that. You're limited in the beginning of the game to being able to carry a measly 99 rupees, which is barely enough to buy anything of interest, and you can increase that amount to 200 and later 500 by getting bigger wallets. Well, on this matter, I'm going to have to call Bullshit. Once you actually work the money-limit into the plot, you get absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Are we expected to believe that if Link has 99 rupees and his wallet can't carry any more, that he's going to just look at a red one (worth 20) and say "Gee, I sure do wish I could take that, but my wallet just can't hold it, so I guess I'm out of luck?" Look, if I see a glittering gem on the street worth $20 that no one's claiming, I'm gonna find SOME way to carry it, regardless of whether my pocket's full. You trying to tell me that Link couldn't just throw a few of those absolutely useless Deku Nuts away to make a little space in his inventory for a few extra bucks? That he couldn't just empty one of his bottles of the fairy or bug or juice or milk or whatever the hell he's keeping in it to eat later and put in a few cool 50-Rupees? Hell, for all I care he can stick them down his damn tights; from the looks of him, it's more than likely he's got little else to fill that space. I don't care HOW they wanna work it, but Nintendo needs to stop fucking me over every time I find a golden 200-Rupee prize and can't do a damn thing with it because my tiny useless little wallet refuses to carry it.
EDIT FROM THE FAR FUTURE: I am totally not the only person who thinks this is bullshit.
The initial 99 rupee limit is pathetic (and I think it carried over to Majora's Mask, too, although that game lets you stash money in a bank, at least). Coming to Ocarina of Time after Link to the Past, I always thought it sucked how his wallet got downgraded from a 999 maximum to 500 at best.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if there are rupees worth 200, why doesn't Link just carry one of those instead of one worth 20 rupees. They seem to be pretty much the same size, anyway...