Nintendo Directs, 'Marvel's Wolverine,' and 'The Blood of Dawnwalker' Reactions | Button Mash

The Ringer-Verse

Ben Lindberg, Matt James, and Giovanni Colantonio dive into the week's biggest gaming news, covering Nintendo's two recent Directs, including the highly

Key takeaways

• The Ocarina of Time remake's realistic art direction has sparked polarized reactions, but many agree it evokes a nostalgic, storybook-like atmosphere despite character model inconsistencies.

Main topics

• Nintendo Directs: Ocarina of Time remake reveal
• Visual design and fan reactions to the remake's art style

Notable quotes

"I just want to see it in motion. I want to actually see it in the context of the game, see how it feels in the vibe of the game." – Giovanni Colantonio

Conclusion

The episode highlights how Nintendo's latest Directs signal a bold new direction in visual fidelity

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:13) And welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, Senior Editor for The Ringer and your host here at Button Mash, where we will not be revealing all the Disney locations in Kingdom Hearts 4, even if Valve already did. I will be revealing our guests for today. Ringer Deputy Speaker 1 (0:32) Art Lead Matt James Howlett. Hello, Matt. Hello. Hello, Ben. Happy to be here again. As Speaker 2 (0:38) Jean Grey says to Logan, we'll see you around, James. We always do. And rejoining us for this episode is one of our favorite Outside Games Media members, Polygon's own Giovanni Cohen-Colantonio. Hello, Gio. Hey, Speaker 3 (0:52) thank you. Thank you so much. For a second, I thought you were mispronouncing my last name, and then I picked up on it, and I was like, Speaker 2 (0:57) I Speaker 3 (0:57) see what you did there. Speaker 2 (0:59) That's beautiful. Well, we have much to discuss, including Cohen of Blood of Dawn Walker fame. But first up, we had two, count them. two Nintendo Directs this week, the rare Nintendo Double D. On Tuesday, a 40th anniversary Zelda Direct, in which we got a good look at the Ocarina of Time remake. On Wednesday, a broader September Direct about all manner of upcoming games. But we will also be sharing our spoiler-free reviews of two AAA $70 games that are already out, both of which feature resilient, tortured protagonists. with a flair for detective work, Marvel's Wolverine, and the blood of Don Walker. And also, since we had double directs, why not double button mashes? The Ringiverse is a family much like Team X. Not too much like Team X. That would be bad. And I will be back tomorrow with the rest of that family, the Midnight Boys, in a Midnight Mash crossover event to dive a little deeper into Wolverine and find out what Van, Jomie, and Steve thought of the game. So let's... go straight to Nintendo and then Wolverine and then Don Walker. We did our button mash 40th anniversary Zelda episode months ago, but take your time, Nintendo. It is still the 40th anniversary year. If you were hoping to hear about a brand new Zelda game, I'm sorry. If you were expecting a trailer for the movie that's coming out in seven months or so, no dice, but. If you wanted to see some more of the new old game that we now know is coming out in less than two months, I've got good news because Nintendo has finally fully lifted the lid on the Ocarina remake. We got to see it all. We got the Eiji Aonuma demo and people have opinions about the appearance of this game. Gio, what's your opinion? I get why there is like a Speaker 3 (2:49) strong feeling about it, right? Because obviously just people. love ocarina it's it's widely considered one of the greatest of all time right i i consider it like one of the greatest games of all time um and i think it's always jarring Speaker 2 (3:01) bold bold of you there i Speaker 3 (3:03) know i know it's like saying the beatles are your favorite band it's like yeah okay cool yeah good cool opinion going out on Speaker 2 (3:10) a Speaker 3 (3:10) limb there yeah but you know like i i get it right like there's always going to be strong opinions when you feel uh really really close to to material like this and you feel like a connection to this artwork that that is so entwined with the game um so i think like a lot of people i i did have a similar reaction at first where you see this art it is you know it looks realistic at first glance right and it just kind of you saw like the same joke over and over right people were like nintendo hired this fan oh it's unreal engine you know and everyone was just making the same like can joke immediately um but the more i sat with it the more i looked at it I think people were oversimplifying a little bit what this art direction looks like. And I think... that's not to say that anyone's wrong or anyone is right. I actually think there's really, really valid cases to make about the art looking great and the art looking bad. And I think there's like a good reason that you would have wide opinions on that. But I think where I stand now is I just want to see it in motion. I want to like actually see it in the context of the game, see how it feels in the vibe of the game. I actually really love the environmental work. Going back through that trailer, looking at some of the... environments like they look like they're out of a storybook right it's just like the the lighting is so warm and and i don't know it just they they said it in the direct but like we wanted it to feel nostalgic and it kind of does right it has that like fairy tale like reading a book as a kid feeling to it and i think that's wonderful yeah uh the character models a little weirder and i think this is where it kind of like makes sense that people would feel mixed because the character models like kind of have a doll-like look which i think is really cool but i don't think it's really what the environments are doing. Like if this whole game had a doll aesthetic, I think I'd be like, oh yeah, that's awesome. But I do kind of feel like there's a clash between like the really great environments and these like uncanny weird dolls. And I almost just wish they'd gone all in on the doll thing. That's kind of where I stand right now. Speaker 2 (5:10) Yeah, people are speculating that maybe it's Miyamoto's love for Japanese marionette figures, that that was an influence here. And I could see that. I get what you're saying that. that Link maybe looks fine in isolation, but also looks a little out of place in the surroundings. Because I agree that I do like the environments. The great deco tree looks amazing and super atmospheric. And, you know, I guess it has sort of a fable-ish, mossy kind of look. There's something slightly non-Nintendo about it, which is maybe what people are responding to. But I wish I had a hotter take because I do feel that... it largely looks great. And maybe it is just whenever the design of something familiar changes, anytime you change the UI of a website or whatever, people are pissed because things look different. Things are in a different place. And then you get used to it and suddenly you love it and you wonder why it wasn't always like that. I really think saying that it looks great is the hot take. Speaker 1 (6:11) Yeah, maybe so. Yeah, it feels like it, right? But like, Ben, what you're saying, like, remember when they brought Spider-Man to the PS5 from the PS4 and they changed Peter Parker's face in it and the Internet exploded in disgust that they Speaker 2 (6:26) would change Speaker 1 (6:26) his Speaker 2 (6:27) face. And, you know, Speaker 1 (6:29) everyone got used to it. I thought you were going to Speaker 2 (6:30) bring up when they shrink the puddles because that led to an even larger outcry. But you can put Puddlegate Speaker 1 (6:35) aside for a second. But change is hard, man. Like people, people. need time to adjust to things. And I think that like a lot of people having trouble with the look of this game, I get it because environmentally, this is a level of kind of like, I don't want to say realism, but maybe detail that Nintendo typically hasn't shown in its AAA games. I mean, you know, we'll talk about the new Kirby game that was announced, but... that Kirby game looks like what you'd expect a Kirby game from Nintendo to look like. And we're seeing that like a day after seeing these incredibly detailed Ocarina of Time remake environments. And you'd be hard pressed to believe it was the same, you know, company putting out those two games if you didn't know any better. And I think that's going to, I think we're at the point where Nintendo for the first time has the capability of delivering. environments like this. And it won't be the last time, but it is going to be a tough adjustment for people to kind of view that level of detail as something Nintendo-like, which I think will be increasingly easier and Speaker 2 (7:50) easier over Speaker 1 (7:51) time. That's what I Speaker 2 (7:52) was getting at when I was saying that it's sort of un-Nintendo. It's like Link's tunic is too detailed. You know, there's too much texture there because people hating on that Speaker 1 (8:00) hat, man. Speaker 2 (8:02) Yeah, you're accustomed to Nintendo. Yeah, kind of like pulling back on the detail a bit and going with a more stylized look because at least in recent generations, the Nintendo console has never been the fastest processor and the prettiest graphics. And so they compensate with a distinctive design. And here it does feel a little bit like, OK, we have more horsepower here, at least PS4 caliber horsepower. And maybe we're running wild with that a little bit. I think the... The feedback that maybe the characters or particularly Link looks a little plastic or shiny, maybe that is what people are picking up on when they're saying, oh, it looks like an Unreal Engine fan remake or something. I get what they're saying. Part of that, I think, is that some of the screenshots were when he was wet and it was raining. And so he was especially glistening. But there is something. Somebody dry that boy off. Yes. Get him a towel. something to that. But I think when we get our hands on it and when we acclimate to it, I think people will probably be impressed by it. I think so, too. I'd be surprised. And Speaker 3 (9:10) I'll say like this is the exact same thing that happened with Star Fox this year. Right. Like that was another game that people felt very strongly about the art style for Star Fox. They revealed that. And then I think same reaction immediately. People were like, this looks awful. Oh, my God, it's it's so jarring. And then, you know, people sat with it and were like, well, this kind of is fully realizing. Nintendo's like old puppets that they use to advertise this game, right? And like, you can see them using the tech to be like, hey, what if we fully realized some of these ideas where we were working with like real crafts and things like that? And we can do that now. And I think you see that in Ocarina as well, where like, again, like this doll-like look and the shininess and the plasticiness of the faces and whatnot, I think probably is in some way like an old Nintendo vision that they wanted to accomplish on some of these games, right? And now... Like, I mean, even super like the old Super Smash Brothers games, like they're action figures, right? They're literally like little plastic toys. So I think it is very Nintendo in a lot of ways. But I agree. It's just going to be a period of adjustment to be like they can just do that with high fidelity now instead of, you know, really a couple of polygons. So, yeah. Speaker 2 (10:15) Yeah. It's as if the infamous 2000 Space World demo of Link fighting Ganondorf in a what was at the time hyper realistic style. that got everyone excited for that design and then led to the initial backlash to The Wind Waker, which now everyone agrees, oh, this was wonderful and it aged incredibly well. But it's as if we're in an alternate history where the GameCube or whatever was capable of this kind of realism. And so it's almost like a Twilight Princess approach to Ocarina, which again, it's just sort of strange. It takes a little getting used to, but... I think on the whole will pay off. And, you know, we're talking about the visuals and leading with that because that's what we can see. And we have not actually played the thing. However, we did watch it being played. And that is perhaps just as revealing because we didn't really know the nature of this thing. There was a lot of speculation about will this be a beat for beat remake? Will it be a modernization? Will it be Ocarina meets Breath of the Wild in some way? And. On this podcast, we assumed that it would be pretty faithful to the original. And it is. But it looks like a bit of a hybrid, somewhere in between, in that they have updated it to an extent. And they have added some modern trappings and quality of life improvements. Modern trappings Speaker 1 (11:38) like jumping. Speaker 3 (11:39) Yes. Speaker 2 (11:41) I know it's, you know, if you wanted to say that Nintendo has lost some of its original nature, some of its spark and creativity, I guess you could focus on Aonuma bragging about how there's a jump button now. And also you can fully rotate the camera around you. You know, it's 2026, but I get it. I like that Speaker 1 (12:02) part. They were like explaining like you couldn't do that because there was only one control stick. Who's following that Nintendo? Whose fault is that? Speaker 3 (12:10) It's Speaker 1 (12:10) also Speaker 3 (12:10) like the first thing they talked about. I went back and looked at that video and it was like, they're like, here's the game. Look at the camera. It's like, wow, this is like the most important thing that they had to communicate off the bat. Speaker 2 (12:21) Yes, there was a little nod to we know that this is not unusual now, but obviously we're going back to 1998 here. And if you're a purist and you say, do not tamper with maybe the greatest game of all time, it should be exactly the way it was. And you should be stuck with the camera getting in weird places. And Link should only be able to jump if you move him toward a gap. Then maybe you'd be upset about that. But I think that will be welcome because. I went back and played Majora's Mask recently for that game's anniversary. And by the way, I'm already bracing myself for if we get the Majora's Mask remake in this engine, what that would look like and the weirdness of the many masks in that game. It was creepy enough at the time. In fact, maybe it was creepier with N64 era graphics than it would be with more modern hyper realistic graphics. But who knows? Yeah. Anyway. it was jarring to have to go back to the days of Z targeting and just not being able to look at things that I wanted to look at. And we may remember, obviously, what Ocarina was like to play back then, but probably the majority of people who will be playing this will not. And so it is actually important to say, hey, this is new. And also, Nintendo is not remaking this solely or even primarily for us, for people who have played this game before and just want to revisit it. they want to introduce this game to a new generation of players who never went back and played the original. And yes, obviously, there's tie-ins with movie ambitions and theme parks and all the rest of it, because Nintendo is not just a video game making company anymore, even if it still is primarily. But this is about expanding the tent. And that will be really interesting to me, I think, because you look back at the sales figures for these classic Zelda games and... They paled in comparison to Breath of the Wild, which was the big breakout for that franchise in terms of mass appeal and then Tears of the Kingdom to a lesser extent. And so probably a lot of the many more millions of people who played Breath of the Wild will now say, oh, OK, I'm going to go back and play Ocarina in this game. Maybe I've never played it, but I've heard that it's incredible. And you could imagine them being a bit disappointed, potentially, by the smaller scope and the linearity. And so they did sort of take care to set expectations in this direct for that audience to say, hey, this is not Breath of the Wild exactly. This is more of a traditional Zelda adventure with a fresh veneer. Speaker 3 (14:51) This is the thing that I'm really curious about because Ocarina, like one thing I love about it is that it is like the foundation, right? I always talk about it as like in literature, you have your foundational texts. from like which all stories form, right? Like the Canterbury Tales or something, right? And like Ocarina is like the Canterbury Tales of like 3D adventure games. So much of what it does is the foundation that every single game has copied since. And if you're remaking it one-to-one, which I think is the right move, you know, I think like you don't want to mess with it too, too much. I think there's a case to be made of like, well, why remake it at all then? I think that's fair. But like, you know, I get wanting to do the respect for remake. You are just going to have stuff in this game that is like, this is every game, right? Like this is just what every single adventure 3d adventure game feels like. And I'm really curious to see how that like breath of the wild audience going back to that game. That's very, very traditional. And like, I don't know, are they going to respond to it? Are they going to be like, this is kind of boring. Like what, what's the big deal about this? And I think the one advantage that it has, and I was reminded of this when I was saying this to, to a colleague is that like, Don't forget, though, that Ocarina's storytelling, like, is surprisingly very good, like a really well-directed and put-together game. And if they are bumping that up, that might make up for it a little bit. Speaker 2 (16:07) Yeah, it's a little like when we talked about the Halo remake on this podcast, and we were like, well, this is good. It's still Halo, but that hits differently than it did 25 years ago. And so many games built on that foundation that if you didn't play it at the time, well, maybe you had to be there to understand just how groundbreaking it was. But it's still... timeless and incredible design that holds up. And that's certainly true of Ocarina. And also, I want there to be a continued home for dungeon based, more linear and finely crafted Zelda games along with the open world evolution, which is maybe the original vision of the franchise coming to fruition. So I hope that this does hit and that it is good. And it's interesting to see some of the things that they kept consistent. For example. they have maintained the loading screens when you go to different areas, which presumably they could have done away with because that's the way it was. But then they're also adding an objective screen and a tapestry that shows you what you've accomplished in your adventure. So it is a little old, a little new. And one nod, I think, to the Breath of the Wild era of the franchise is that we get our... big look at Hyrule Field, which everyone who plays this game in 1998 remembers being breathtaking. Oh my gosh. Yes, it's huge. And then you go back and you play it and you realize that, wait, actually, this was kind of small and pretty empty by modern standards. But this game seems to have something that. I don't think the original did, which is just this big sort of this jaw dropping moment when you go to Hyrule Field and you get almost a Breath of the Wild Great Plateau type like pull away to here's this great scope, even if the actual field is not bigger than it was in the 90s. They're sort of, you know, presenting it as if it's the Breath of the Wild's huge open world map. So again. Does that then make people disappointed when they realize that actually this has pretty tight boundaries? We will see, but hopefully they'll appreciate it for what it is. And we now know when it's coming out, November 5th, which is, of course, a mere two weeks pre-GTA 6. And this is not a shock to me. I think we kind of had an inkling that this was Nintendo's big holiday season game and that... There are only so many weeks on the calendar and that it had to be pretty close to GTA 6. And Nintendo is never afraid to do its own thing. And GTA 6 is not on Switch 2. And one would imagine that the two week buffer plus the lack of overlap in the audience, that makes sense to me. I don't think that this is going to cannibalize the audience or anything. Christopher Dring labeled this. Video games, Barbenheimer, the Ocarina remake into GTA 6. Brilliant. Maybe it will be. I don't know. I think it's distinct enough audiences that having them go two weeks apart is perfectly fine. Although that was the one week in this many months long stretch leading up to GTA when we did not have a Button Mesh episode scheduled. Now we do. So no weeks off here at Button Mesh forever. But that's fine. We enjoy podcasting. And also, if you want to pick up a 40th anniversary edition Switch 2, well, you can't because it's sold out everywhere, but it will be restocked at some point. So that's, I guess, one commonality with GTA 6 is that companies are viewing these games as system sellers. And Nintendo is obviously trying to cash in with the Zelda edition Switch 2 and controllers and the GTA 6 themed controllers have gone on sale and are already sold out. So these are cultural events. GTA 6, more so, obviously, than a remake of any game, however great. But these are the kind of games that can break through and that can maybe convince you to pick up a system if you haven't yet. Speaker 3 (19:54) It's such a smart bit of counter-programming from Nintendo because, like, you know, you know that it's like Switch owners who just own a Switch 2 are going to be like seeing GTA come out and be like. We don't have that. Like, maybe we should go buy a PlayStation to play GTA 6. And they're like, no, no, don't worry. We've got the ultimate weapon, the weapon to surpass Metal Gear. It's the Ocarina of Time remake. Like, what a power play. Speaker 2 (20:20) Yeah. People are hyped, including Sam Altman, who tweeted that this is the best news in a long time and that he will be unavailable for the two days after this game comes out, which seems like good news, because if he takes a couple of days off, then that's... Two days he's not spending on making a new model that may kill us all or just rip off existing games and make people declare that traditional game development is dead. Shout out to GPT-6 Astra. So, yeah. Speaker 3 (20:50) Now, what we did not Speaker 2 (20:53) get at the September Direct was probably as big news as what we did get. But we will talk about both. People were hyped because September directs are traditionally a time for big announcements and unveilings. And there was a lot of leaking going on and a lot of reports about big name sequels in the works. And given the expectations, perhaps this was something of a disappointment. There was a ton of news, a ton of games on display and endless sizzle reel. Every game that ever came out for any other system is being ported to Switch 2 or just stealth dropped on Switch 2. And there's DLC for everything and there's remakes and remasters. But in terms of new announcements, very thin on the ground here. So we got two big ones, basically two new Nintendo announcements, one of which, if you are clued into the rumors and reporting, you were already aware of. We are getting. Metroid Ravenous on January 28th. And we are getting Kirby and the World Beyond Spring 2027. And it's interesting because as a lot of people have pointed out, the concepts for these Metroid and Kirby games seem sort of reversed in that Samus is consuming her foes and Kirby is exploring an unfamiliar world. At the very least, we got so many Truman Show memes out of the World Beyond trailer when it turns out that there is. a world beyond. It starts very traditional. It looks like we're in a happy-go-lucky Kirby adventure. And then it turns out that there's a hole in the world and there's another world beyond that that we will be exploring. So the big thing hanging over all of this is where is everything else? Where is 3D Mario, et cetera? And we can get into that. But thoughts on Metroid and Kirby Geo. psyched out of my mind for both of them. First Speaker 3 (22:49) of all, I think that like the, you know, when the Metroid Prime 4 kind of like cycle was starting up and people were like starting to get a little like, I don't know about this one. I hope this game's not a huge disappointment. It was like, it kind of is fine if it is because we have the 2D Metroid series now, which is like filling the role of Metroid, like, you know, Metroid Prime 4. isn't the only Metroid game anymore. And I'm really glad that they are continuing to trust Mercury Steam with the series. I think they did a phenomenal job with Metroid Dread. I mean, I really, really do. I thought that game was fantastic. And I think people forget that, like, that was like a Game of the Year nominee. the year it came out. Like that wasn't just like, oh, cool Nintendo game, but like it got a lot of critical praise, you know, like on the award circuit, which was surprising. Speaker 2 (23:33) It's the best selling game in the series. And when you were on to talk about Metroid Prime 4, we talked about how Metroid has sort of an outsized profile among longtime hardcore gamers, but hasn't really been a big mainstream hit. And you would think that one of the Metroid Prime games would have been the standard bearer for the series, but no. It's Metroid Dread. As far as I know, Metroid Prime 4, last I checked, still had not sold a million copies. So that continues the slump. But because this appears to be a sequel to Dread, that is, I guess, the best bid that Metroid has for mainstream attention. Speaker 3 (24:06) Yeah. And then similarly, I really do think Kirby, like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Land World, Land, probably Land. Kirby and Speaker 2 (24:13) the Speaker 3 (24:13) Forgotten Land is fantastic. Yeah, this one's World, that one's Land. Got it. Yeah. pick one just pick one that game was fantastic in 2022 and i think in a year that wasn't like dominated by elden ring like because it came right after elden ring it was like the first like major release after it i think we probably would have been talking about that even more and still did talk about it a lot excited for the direction they're going in i trust that team a lot i think it's more interesting than the kind of like 2d games that had stalled out uh before forgotten land you know we had curvy star allies 2019 which i think was kind of like what more can you do with Kirby? You know, it feels like this concept is done and it's great to see them figure out a way to escalate Forgotten World a little bit. Like it doesn't look like the same game. And I think that's exciting. The thing that I thought though, coming out of this Direct, which the Direct itself, whoa, what a boring thing to watch. But it's surprising