When it comes to studios that have shaped games and how they are developed, Rockstar Games is definitely one of the names that should come up. But Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has some strong words for how The Legend of Zelda shaped gaming, calling the games akin to the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
Speaking to Lex Fridman, Houser speaks about the early years of 3D gaming, saying "all of those early 3D games were very amazing when you first saw them," adding that "suddenly these games, they're alive, or they're believable in a different way." Houser and Fridman speak about Nintendo specifically, saying that Nintendo's approach to gaming always makes sure that no pixel is wasted, with Fridman saying, "Zelda pioneered the feeling of a world."
Houser singles out The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, saying that "the new ones, they almost, to me, feel like Hitchcock. They're just speaking the language of video games." He notes that you "know everything is going to work this way and that way, and it's quite systemic," adding that how it all blends together in Zelda is "so amazing."
Houser says: "It feels like when you watch a Hitchcock film, it's not reality, he's speaking the language of cinema in a very strong accent. It's very, very cinematic, it's not realism at all." He believes that the recent Zelda games are "these amazing things that could only be video games, they couldn't be anything else." That probably doesn't bode too well for his opinion on the upcoming Zelda movie.
