But I already know what will happen. There will be a big battle, I will win, and credits will roll. Nintendo will graciously thank me for playing. I will be expected to turn off my Wii.

Except that I will want to go back and fish. Or find some heart pieces. Or delve deeper into that Cave of Trials. Which I can't do unless I go back to the last save point before the big finale.

I know I've railed about this before - specifically about Kingdom Hearts - but why can't games like this let you go back into the game world after beating the end guy? I absolutely hate games that let you spend 60+ hours screwing around a completely free environment, exploring the map to your heart's content... and then shut you out once Satan has been expunged. How about letting us enjoy the afterglow?

Resident Evil 4 was linear. Once you left the forest, you did not get to wander back into the forest just to shoot up more not-zombie zombies. I can understand why a closed-environment game like that would roll credits and turn off. That's why RE4 has those kickass bonus games and compounded money stash - for replay value. And being linear helped RE4 maintain a cohesive plot... unlike Twilight Princess, where the urgency of Hyrule's fate is only as pressing as your willingness to stop fishing.

And let's be honest here: Twilight Princess's plot is not anything to write home about. Unless you happen to be one of the game's writers, who probably did write the whole thing in one single letter to home. "Dear Mom. I'm thinking of having Link save the princess and occasionally turn into a wolf."

It's not like there's any expectation that the assassination of Ganondorf is going to eradicate every single roaming moblin, buzzard and spider the world over. Why? Hyrule could reasonably be expected to be just as dangerous post-Ganondorf. Hell, nobody in town ever gave a flying fuck about the castle being enveloped in a magical barrier anyway... so why should they care if tektites and helmasaurs still wander around the water temple?

What I'm getting at is that you should still be allowed to run around smacking baddies and exploring, even after Ganondorf is made as dead as he ever is. The thimble-sized plot should not preclude that. (As I've found with previous Zelda games, it's not the A-story that keeps me playing... it's the fun sidebar tales found in each dungeon area. Most of which are only tangentially related to the whole Evil Sorceror Enslaving Hyrule crap.)

Look at the GTA games. Perfect example. You can avoid the storyline as much as you want. Or you can finish the story and walk right back out your door. Why does it work? Because in GTA, the stakes are not high. San Andreas will not explode if CJ fails the final gang war. The watershed moments are relatively minor. CJ moves to another town. CJ wins a street race. CJ learns to trust again. This lets you weave your own version of events by effortlessly combining the core missions and the extra missions.

Nintendo even got this right with Paper Mario 2, to my great surprise. After beating what's-her-face, you end up right back at port, where you can continue to tackle sidequests. How tough would it be to give LoZ the same freedom? Instead, if you want to play more, you're invited to reload your last save point and pretend that you never stuck the knife into Ganon.

So what I'm doing now is getting all the heart pieces and gold bugs BEFORE the final fight. I only have about four of each to go. The one heart piece that has been killing me is that stupid one at the end of the spinny disk canyon challenge over by one of the fields. That bit makes me want to scream.

Final note: is there anything in the world uglier than the Twilight Princess open screen? A brown, PS1-era castle and a bloomed-out Link-on-a-horse. It looks like an alpha shot of Ico. I would love it if finishing the game unlocked a Second Quest where everything was changed to look like Wind Waker.