17th March 2017, 5:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 17th March 2017, 6:20 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
But seriously, READ my example. It isn't very far off the mark. I barely exaggerated it at all. We're not talking about a world making it clear where you are supposed to head. That would just be a stylistic choice you and I differ on. We're talking about a game that doesn't believe you are able to figure out that your destination is the ONLY place you can actually go. It's literally the one place you can see anywhere on the island, and the game is acting like if it doesn't remind you 4 or 5 times and stick a marker on the map, you are going to just end up wandering off the edge and falling to your death or maybe drowning in the rain because you forgot to close your mouth. It's a waste of time when you already know exactly where to go and what to do.
Frankly, I like Skyward Sword. It lacks the explorative part of Zelda games past, but it excels in that uniquely Zelda "tangibility" factor, in that feeling that you really are doing the things you are doing. The motion controls aren't perfect (they dedicated a whole button to realigning the aiming, because they knew you'd need to do it constantly, and that's not a sign of reliable controls). The dungeons are okay. They are well designed when it comes to funneling you from one area to the next while giving the illusion of choices. I respect that, because if it's invisible to the player, then it works out. However, every dungeon really is a direct path from start to finish. They did a good job disguising it, but there is basically no exploration, no choice, in which room to tackle next. I really lost the sense that I'm the one actually picking my way through. I think the biggest proof of this is that the game doesn't even have a key counter. The game knows that due to the dungeon design, you will NEVER have more than one key, because it's impossible to explore things in any order except the one they designed.
Compare this to Zelda 1, 2, or LTTP, Link's Awakening, or even Ocarina of Time. Zelda 1 and 2 were so open they literally just let you buy keys, or take keys from one dungeon and use them in another, or skip certain optional parts until you got the "all-mighty" key that could be used repeatedly (so, like, a normal key in our world). In Zelda 2, you could fly through the keyholes in doors by turning into a fairy. Yes, it let you bypass the intended design of the dungeon, but it felt like a fair option, and it was an option. Later games, like Link's Awakening (and yes, yes I am going to constantly refer to how your favorite Zelda game does the thing I'm advocating) may not have let you out and out skip puzzles, but they still gave you enough freedom to have multiple paths you can take in a dungeon, and enough freedom to get the feeling you may need to backtrack, and enough freedom to get lost. The hints were spartan, often given as a riddle, and I know for a fact you've pointed out that LA DX's addition of more overt hints was a mistake that cheapened the experience. Now, at this point some glitches were found that would let players bypass certain areas, but end up with one fewer key than the dungeon required to finish it. I think this started Nintendo's obsession with locking down dungeons and treating any discovered "sequence break" as a glitch that needed fixing. In the water temple of OOT, you could end the dungeon with one unusuable key, because they handed it out to be sure that if you did sequence break, you wouldn't be locked out of finishing the dungeon. That was a better way to handle things. Wind Waker was the start of dungeon design that, while masterful in how it could lead you to an item and then "back track" you without it even feeling like backtracking, still felt very easy. I myself commented back when it came out that I never actually got stuck once in that game, and felt that the interface itself had started to get insulting with it telling me instantly that "yes, you can hookshot this item, DO IT NOW", instead of leaving it to me to experiment and figure that out on my own.
In the case of Skyward Sword, that game needed to trust the player more. The whole layout of the world and it's dungeons already led the player to the conclusions they intended. Like a closed design or not (that's where we differ), I respect how well it worked, but clearly Nintendo themselves didn't trust their own design enough to get the job done, feeling the need to constantly interrupt you to force-feed you information the world design had already very clearly indicated. I accept Skyward Sword as a good game featuring an "invisible funneling "design that I don't personally prefer, but I CAN'T accept that annoying sidekick constantly telling me the blindingly obvious that NPCs had already told me over and over again. I remembered that tower with the propeller on it, and even if I didn't you've just given me a dowsing option to quickly locate it from across the world. Why did you feel the need to remind me of that twice, then tell me specifically where to "start" looking for it even though I can dowse? Why did you feel the need to give me a tutorial on HOW to dowse even though I clearly already know how to do that, being 4 dungeons into the game already? Dangit Fi, I am NOT that stupid! Say what you will about these constant reminders being intended for new gamers, but I never needed THAT level of hand-holding when I started playing Zelda back as a kid, back when the entire genre wasn't even established yet. I had the manual to refer to for basic controls and a basic description of enemies and items, and the rest I figured out on my own. Heck I never even bothered taking notes in that "memo" section. The hint givers in that game phrased things so idiosyncratically that there was no way I was going to forget them. (Heck, while playing Breath of the Wild I casually mentioned going "Up, up the mountain path." before remembering where I first heard that line.) Skyward Sword would be much improved if they could assume both you and me were intelligent enough to figure we were supposed to head to that GIANT structure off in the distance, or that maybe after just uncovering 3 distinct doors around a desert along with three glowing rings right next to me, that PERHAPS I should head to those places. Seriously, you can't possibly tell me those aren't blindingly obvious hints, or that they would need not one but two NPCs to explain to me that I should head there to make a thing happen here, and then REMIND me of that fact after each mini-dungeon is completed. That's not something people are going to have trouble figuring out, because their use of the camera and recognizable landmarks makes it clear already. A "Fi is mute" option would have only benefitted the game. Heck, if Fi never said a word and just wordlessly danced with some slabs or something just pointing me the right way like the game already did, not only would I have zero trouble figuring out where to go next, I might actually have grown to care for that NPC, because I could plant my own interpretation of her emotions on her, and it would explain why she never said a thing to any subsequent master sword wielding Link in the "later" games in the timeline. (Also, he shouldn't have had a hat in this game. Minish Cap was the origin story of Link's hat, don't take that from Minish Cap because that's all it has!)
This is a very common criticism of not just Skyward Sword, but any video game series that decided long boring explanations were needed where none were asked for. The later Megaman X games are very guilty of this. No one ever asked for a radio operative to explain to X that, yes, those giant plues of fire shooting out of the ground are best avoided, or that, hey, the moving train is moving. Good level design will explain everything you need to know just by paying attention. You ABF were smart enough to solve those Link's Awakening dungeons with not a single NPC explaining what to do at every puzzle. So long as the level is smartly designed, all the hints will be visually apparent, or clear based on established trends earlier in the game. Skyward Sword DID have this smart design. There weren't any components of puzzles or how enemies worked that contradicted previously established gameplay. Certain aspects of enemies were also readily apparent just by looking at them. If a bat is on fire, it probably does fire type damage. I don't need to ask Fi to know that my wooden shield is probably not going to protect me very well against that. An electric bat probably does electric damage. While metal shields being weak to electricity wasn't established in previous Zelda games, all it took was one "zap" for me to figure that out, and the game stayed consistent with that rule so when I ran into moblins using electric weapons, I knew I should change to a wooden shield instead of my metal one. Fi didn't need to pause the action and explain that to me for me to figure it out.
I'm kinda going the long way around, as long-winded as Fi, but my point is that Nintendo didn't trust their own game design to lead the player in Skyward Sword. Closed world design? Fine. It was a well designed one (to a point, I sure could have gone without backtracking to the same places 3 times each, plus a 4th "meta backtrack" for good measure). However, if you're going to go that route, commit to it. Trust in it. Trust that you did a good enough job making the world and the visual cues that you don't need to explain my goal to me 4 times each.
....
So, back on Breath of the Wild... You're right about the dungeon thing. I mean, we really do differ on the dungeons being THE best part of Zelda games (if a Zelda game was literally just 4 dungeons strung together with no overworld to explore, I would consider that lacking, and well, it would basically be Four Swords), but it is still important. Breath of the Wild definitely focused mostly on the overworld. It's a great overworld, but that does mean dungeon design suffers. Here's how they have it worked out. There's a huge number of shrines (don't go telling me the exact number! Part of the fun is not knowing if I've found the last one, so I'm never hunting down shrines specifically, just running into them as I go, which is better.), but each shrine is basically one puzzle. They do switch things up. For the most part, each dungeon has it's own distinct puzzle to solve, and they get creative with them. However, it's clear that by only having ONE puzzle, they can't iterate upon that puzzle design, and at no point do you feel "lost exploring a dungeon". It's a small diversion at best, not an engaging experience to sink into, and it doesn't let it really "play" with any puzzle idea to put unique twists on it or really take it to it's ultimate level. As a result, the puzzles are all pretty easy. Further, while Zelda only rarely does this, I love when a dungeon's entire layout functions as one gigantic puzzle that requires you to think about how the entire dungeon's design fits together to solve it. The best examples of this sort of lateral thinking are in the Tower of Hera (LTTP), Eagle's Tower (LA), Water Temple (OOT), and Great Bay Temple (MM). I think there's a few in the Capcom Zelda games that touch on this too. Having to think about how EVERYTHING fits together to solve a dungeon's meta-puzzle is an amazing experience when it happens, but Breath of the Wild's shrines can never do that. It's funny how you don't want a dungeon to hold your hand and explain the puzzles to you, but you want the overworld to. To me, the overworld is basically the game's biggest dungeon, not just a "hub world". To that end, I'll explain where I think Breath of the Wild is trying to go with dungeon design.
The shrines are all tributes to "traditional puzzle" design, but it does seem as though the designer's intent was that the overworld be the "real" dungeon. Numerous locations are essentially "outdoor dungeons". Most of them ultimately lead to a shrine (in these cases, the shrines just give you the reward after explaining that just making it to them is proof enough that you deserve it). I've so far found a mountain that functioned as a giant boss fight with the puzzle being finding ways to reach distant peaks and find some way to fall "onto" the boss. I've found a straight-up labyrinth, with the guardian robots functioning as minotaurs. I've found a bizarre spiral in the ocean where I needed to find a way to get a sphere to the very center of it while working past groups of enemies. I've found a number of island connected by bridges. All of these are different kinds of "dungeon" experiences, but susceptible to things like weather and the occasional blood moon ritual, and all of them are open to numerous methods of tackling their challenges. So far, the most interesting of these outdoor dungeons has been an island I just barely saw in the distance. I took a break from where I was originally heading (because I ALWAYS get distracted by seeing weird things in the distance and will ALWAYS immediately veer off my path towards that neat thing over there, because that's just how I've always played video games and I will never ever stop doing that for anything short of an actual in-game timer, my greatest nemesis) to head to this island. I froze the ocean to walk over there one block of ice at a time (since the runes you use are infinite, you're free to do stuff like this). I could have grabbed a raft and sailed it there, but I picked this way. Took a while... Anyway, once I reached it a mysterious force stole all my equipment, leaving me stranded on a dangerous island with the task of setting 3 spheres in 3 special spots. The challenge there was one of stealth, sneaking around and taking down threats while all my equipment was OSP (on-site procurement). It really stands out to me, and I hope more such experiences are waiting ahead. The "outdoor" design means they had to focus on allowing numerous ways the player could tackle it, right down to simply accepting that a player could come into that "dungeon" from pretty much any angle. As a result, they tend to be laid out like an onion, with outer layers leading to inner layers.
So, it's a very interesting design. The "puzzles" in the outdoor "dungeons" aren't of the traditional design. They're focused entirely on the "emergent gameplay" style this game has. You mentioned the game doesn't really provide a whole lot of items like previous ones did. That's true, and heck the game gives them all (well, most of them) to you in the starting location. Being a game where you are free to go where your feet will take you, they wanted to be sure you'd be equipped to tackle any challenge you came across, regardless of the order you tackled them in. Well, aside from the difficulty. Some locations have much stronger enemies than others, but you're free to take them on anyway, if you're up for a challenge. It means you get to pick your difficulty. (That's part of the reason the "harder difficulty mode" in the upcoming DLC is getting so much flack. People who have played the game don't really see the point in adding a "hard mode" to a game that already let you decide if you want a challenge or not via the gameplay design.) So, you've got a shrine in the middle of a large enemy camp. How do you want to do this? Do you want to set off some explosions and lure a few enemies out of the way so you can sneak by? Do you want to climb a hill and glide over all of it, hoping none of them take some pot shots at you? Do you want to just go in swinging your sword? Maybe you want to pick them off with arrows? Or, let's get really creative! Is it raining? Are they standing in a puddle of water? Electrocute them all with a zap arrow. Nah, not creative enough. Looks like some sparks are going up on that weapon you've got equipped. That could be trouble, hey, let's just throw that metal weapon in the middle of their camp and let nature take them all out. Maybe you want to do some engineering. Set a few bombs (two at a time in this game), and put some octo-balloons on them. Now blow them over to the camp with a korok leaf and set 'em off. Got like 100 balloons? Grab a raft nearby and turn it into an airship, then while constantly replenishing balloons, start tossing bombs off the side and rain death from above. (Play Ride of the Valkyries for effect.) Do they have wooden weapons? There's a field of grass nearby, and the wind is blowing towards them! Fire! FIRE! Like, actual fire, burn them all! Use the updraft from the massive fire you just lit to ride over them while they're distracted by the flames! That's just what you have available to you in a combat situation. I've been having a lot of fun just figuring out some new and creative way to tackle every group I've run into. Now imagine what you can do with the more legitimate puzzles. Here's a rock, there's a hole. It seems clear I'm supposed to put that rock in that hole (and never once does anyone have to tell me, it just seems like that rock is just a bit TOO close to the edge and that hole is just a bit TOO perfectly round and too exactly the same size as that rock). I could try and push the thing up the hill. That's one way. I could use bombs to blow it over there. I could float it with those balloons and blow it over there. I could use stasis (think Dead Space) on it and hit it a bunch of times to load it up with kinetic energy that flings it over there. In another situation, I want to cross from this side of a gulch to the other. If I have an axe, I could chop down a tree and can use it as a bridge. I could also set fire to the tree, using the updraft to carry me across. I could also use stasis on a rock as before, fill it up with energy, and then climb onto the rock and RIDE it across the ravine. These are ALL things I've actually done. Every last one is an example of a thing I actually did. The game just... lets you do this stuff!
Along those large "dungeon style" areas are an amazing number of puzzles just oozing out of every crack in the world. I mentioned seeing the occasional large stone and a hole and just thinking "hmm, I wonder if", but that's just one example. I saw a bunch of circles of stones everywhere, all of them missing a couple of rocks in them. Well, I started thinking "I wonder what would happen if I just picked up a rock and finished the circle?" and sure enough, that was entirely the intent. I might see an odd flower, try to pick it only to see it vanish and reappear somewhere else, and I just HAVE to follow it to see where it goes. I might see flower arrangements that change color when I touch then, and notice hey, each arrangement has a different number of flowers, I bet that's the order... yep! Sometimes it's just a single rock perched on the top of a hill, and I just know I should totally pick that rock up and, YES! If it looks like a puzzle, it IS a puzzle.
Of course, a large part of being able to enjoy a game like this is attitude. For some people, they are dead-set on reaching a specific objective, and everything else is just "in the way" of the thing they want to do. That's one way to play a game, I suppose. For me, a destination is just that, a destination. I will generally be heading in that direction, but my main focus is on looking at every little thing I can see on my way to that destination, and if I see or hear something interesting, or even just suspect that something that MIGHT be interesting is just over that hill that's not THAT far off the path I'm taking, I WILL investigate it, every single time, and maybe, if I'm lucky, I might actually reach my original destination by the end of the real-world day I first picked that destination. I somehow ended up wandering into the middle of a volcano before finally making my way to my original destination, the Zora Domain. I COULD have just headed straight there, but the prince popping up to tell me I'm nearly there had the GALL to say "oh, and it's constantly raining here, so forget about climbing those rocks, just stick to the path". I wouldn't stand for that! I climbed them anyway, to SPITE him, and it was clear the developers knew I was going to do this, because yes, up there was the ENTIRE WORLD OF EVERYTHING and I had a fun time running around finding little secrets and reading lore about the history of the Zora kingdom. Eventually, I went back to the path, but I kept getting distracted, of my own volition, because they would put something interesting in my field of view.
You may not play it this way. To that end, I want to assure you that the game does a very good job of "bread crumbing". That is, they'll set up your main objective in the game at the very start, and then provide you with a first optional destination. That place, should you choose to go there, will lead you to another town, which will point you to another location, and along the way you'll get some other major questlines. You can ignore them, or you can follow them, or you can do as I did and "get around to them eventually". My point is that at no point do you feel completely lost about what to do. If you get lost, it's your own fault, and if you forget something, the quest log will remind you (it categorizes the quests between "shrine quests" (you occasionally pick up hints on where shrines are located), "side quests" (stuff NPCs ask you to do) and "main quests" (stuff that will prepare you for the final showdown, such as regaining your lost memories). Instead of revealing the entire map to you at the very start, you find segments of the map. This isn't so hard. They stick area maps in gigantic red towers visible from almost everywhere in a zone (often visible from several zones away in fact, thanks to the crazy draw distance in the game), so you always have a clear idea where to go if you want to see what's in the new area right away. You can place a massive number of markers on the map too. If there's a puzzle of interest to you but you'd rather just come back later, stick a marker on that section and you'll remember where to come back. Every village, shrine, and map marker also will be added to your map automatically as you discover them. Every single shrine also functions as a fast travel location, with a lore related reason why fast travel is a thing in this world. You will never feel burdened with a massive checklist of miscellaneous stuff to collect either. The towers give you a vantage point to look around and a map, but that's it. No need to look at a list of treasure chests saying "incomplete". If you don't want to bother, just don't.
What I'm getting at here is this game may be more enjoyable than you think. You may have watched videos of people wandering around "aimlessly", but know that that's just how those people WANT to play the game. If you don't want that, know that you can just head to the main locations in the game and ignore the side objectives and you'll do just fine.
Whatever you do, don't approach shrines with a "I'm just going to hunt for shrines now" attitude. Every time I've seen someone online get frustrated with the game, that seems to be the reason why. They set finding shrines as their objective, and get frustrated because there's no clear "shrine markers". Treat shrines as a bonus you MIGHT find and it becomes a lot more fun when you do.
Dunkey seems to be loving it anyway:
As for the story, Zelda games tend to have simple stories. If all you want is a basic outline, then this is it. You lost to Ganon last time, imitated Rip Van Winkle, and are back to beat him/it (Ganon seems to have been at this so long he's lost his mind almost entirely). If you take the time to talk to everyone you meet though, you'll find everyone is very well characterized. The general mood is very much in the vein of classic fairy tales. Everything is the thing of legend, but that's just how the Zelda series rolls. Moving past that, you'll find out all sorts of information about the various races, how they organize, how the kingdoms all came to be one, and even find out about the sad history of the Sheikah tribe in particular. Frankly, one can understand why some of them might betray the kingdom to work for Ganon. The major NPCs also get some fleshing out, and this is possibly the most well-rounded Zelda in ANY of the games to date. She has actually been fighting Ganon by herself nonstep for a century, ever since Link fell in battle during their first attempt. She's the sole reason Hyrule is even still around after all this time, scattered though everyone may be. She "needs your help" as always, but I will say this. For the first time, Link and Zelda's roles can EASILY be reversed and barely anything would need to be changed. Zelda could easily have been the one to fall in battle, with Link battling Ganon for 100 years and her waking up to come to his aid. Recent games have at least done a good job of having Link and Zelda fight together during the final battle, so it works out either way. Even the flashbacks you gain wouldn't need to change, and that's where things get interesting. First of all, Zelda wears pants. Yes, she's worn them before, but only as an "alter-ego" like Tetra or Sheik (and yes, the fanbase still has lots of people insistent that Sheik is physically a man, because we all know she couldn't be a ninja without a penis, and no, making her physically a man does nothing for the trans community because having a penis has nothing to do with gender identity, and that's your Social Justice Warrior outburst for the day). This is the first time in a main straight-from-Nintendo release that she's got a decent pair of pants to traipse across the land in. Also, she's got some weird ornate royal breastplate on, with exaggerated pecs, which is a nice change of pace from the thing female breastplates normally exaggerate. Her design is very well done. (Okay, I suppose the first Zelda to wear pants was in the 80's cartoon.) Anyway, all these memories show someone who's questioning everything she's been taught and seems to resent this "role of legend" decided for her by the gods before she was even born, while also not even sure she can live up to that role. It's the first time I've ever seen the series question it's own notion of "destiny" before, and it was very interesting. There's four other warriors travelling with you, a merry little band, and their characterization is pretty interesting too, especially considering you know what happens at the end of these memories. It's some great stuff and about as introspective as I've ever seen the series get. Yes, the overall story is simple, but in that simplicity they're able to explore some interesting character ideas. Zelda is as progressive a character as she's ever been. Sure, you still don't get to play as her (as I said above, this would have been the perfect game to do it, as they literally could have swapped them without altering the story, just some of the NPC dialog), but she's the one leading the party in the flash backs. She's the one who saves Link, and she's the one who's been dealing with Ganon, by herself, for a century (odd thing is, lots of NPCs are over 100 years old, explicitly, including the Sheikaih who I had thought were just a tribe of Hylians and not their own race). I've said before that Zelda has always been a much more progressively written princess than Peach, but there have still always been problems. This game however, well, I'd say it handles things very well. She even has multiple conversations with female characters about their OWN futures that don't necessarily talk about Link specifically. She speaks about her own concerns to Link, rather than just talking about her feelings about how Link ties into her life all the time, and that's pretty huge coming from Japan. I mean, don't expect a LOT (she's not going into issues of legal decrees or land development or the mistreatment of the Sheikaih minority), but it's something, and it's notable. If only they'd done the extra work to just let you pick between them at the start. Maybe a character name/select screen could appear in the form of some quasimystical computer interface, as though the machine keeping you in a coma was verifying data on you (Crystalis did this at the start of the game).
Also, as always, the character designs across the board are engaging and colorful. I've loved the character design of the Zelda series since Wind Waker. I mean, there's nothing wrong with their design in previous games. They work well enough, and I've got a soft spot for the first Zelda's concept art. It's just that starting with Wind Waker they reached a whole new level, both in overall silhouette and in the incredible attention to functional details. Beedle, for example, has always been a character that more or less is a part of his shop, and has been since Wind Waker. In this game, he carries his entire shop on his back in pack shaped like a beetle. Everything about his design is informed by what he does and his inventive personality. His giant pack also has banners flying off of it, and a large shade covering him that also resembles the little shades over street vending carts. When you speak with him, he quickly pulls a table from under this shade which he attaches to his waste. I'm jealous of how skilled their designer is at coming up with this stuff, time after time, and I'm not even slightly an artist. The monsters also have very unique designs. The bokoblins, ever since Wind Waker, have essentially replaced moblins as the standard enemy you encounter, with moblins now pushed to "bigger bad" status, similar to how they were used in OOT. I had hoped they might go retro with the "bulldog face" look they had in the first two Zelda games, but the pig look they picked works because it is just so different than what I expected. They are giants, but lanky ones. Long arms, long legs, and a really long snout (that's almost their entire head) really make for an alien looking moblin. The "sacred beasts" (giant robots based on animals, so... zords) are very clearly robots, but their design looks magical and legendary, like something out of the mists of time. They don't spoil the aesthetic of the rest of the world at all. They fit right into it perfectly. The shrines in particular have some sort of "living Buddah" corpse as their main objective with an overall design that both looks high-tech and mystical all at once.
Anyway, I still haven't beaten the game. As you may have figured, I'm in no rush to do so.
Frankly, I like Skyward Sword. It lacks the explorative part of Zelda games past, but it excels in that uniquely Zelda "tangibility" factor, in that feeling that you really are doing the things you are doing. The motion controls aren't perfect (they dedicated a whole button to realigning the aiming, because they knew you'd need to do it constantly, and that's not a sign of reliable controls). The dungeons are okay. They are well designed when it comes to funneling you from one area to the next while giving the illusion of choices. I respect that, because if it's invisible to the player, then it works out. However, every dungeon really is a direct path from start to finish. They did a good job disguising it, but there is basically no exploration, no choice, in which room to tackle next. I really lost the sense that I'm the one actually picking my way through. I think the biggest proof of this is that the game doesn't even have a key counter. The game knows that due to the dungeon design, you will NEVER have more than one key, because it's impossible to explore things in any order except the one they designed.
Compare this to Zelda 1, 2, or LTTP, Link's Awakening, or even Ocarina of Time. Zelda 1 and 2 were so open they literally just let you buy keys, or take keys from one dungeon and use them in another, or skip certain optional parts until you got the "all-mighty" key that could be used repeatedly (so, like, a normal key in our world). In Zelda 2, you could fly through the keyholes in doors by turning into a fairy. Yes, it let you bypass the intended design of the dungeon, but it felt like a fair option, and it was an option. Later games, like Link's Awakening (and yes, yes I am going to constantly refer to how your favorite Zelda game does the thing I'm advocating) may not have let you out and out skip puzzles, but they still gave you enough freedom to have multiple paths you can take in a dungeon, and enough freedom to get the feeling you may need to backtrack, and enough freedom to get lost. The hints were spartan, often given as a riddle, and I know for a fact you've pointed out that LA DX's addition of more overt hints was a mistake that cheapened the experience. Now, at this point some glitches were found that would let players bypass certain areas, but end up with one fewer key than the dungeon required to finish it. I think this started Nintendo's obsession with locking down dungeons and treating any discovered "sequence break" as a glitch that needed fixing. In the water temple of OOT, you could end the dungeon with one unusuable key, because they handed it out to be sure that if you did sequence break, you wouldn't be locked out of finishing the dungeon. That was a better way to handle things. Wind Waker was the start of dungeon design that, while masterful in how it could lead you to an item and then "back track" you without it even feeling like backtracking, still felt very easy. I myself commented back when it came out that I never actually got stuck once in that game, and felt that the interface itself had started to get insulting with it telling me instantly that "yes, you can hookshot this item, DO IT NOW", instead of leaving it to me to experiment and figure that out on my own.
In the case of Skyward Sword, that game needed to trust the player more. The whole layout of the world and it's dungeons already led the player to the conclusions they intended. Like a closed design or not (that's where we differ), I respect how well it worked, but clearly Nintendo themselves didn't trust their own design enough to get the job done, feeling the need to constantly interrupt you to force-feed you information the world design had already very clearly indicated. I accept Skyward Sword as a good game featuring an "invisible funneling "design that I don't personally prefer, but I CAN'T accept that annoying sidekick constantly telling me the blindingly obvious that NPCs had already told me over and over again. I remembered that tower with the propeller on it, and even if I didn't you've just given me a dowsing option to quickly locate it from across the world. Why did you feel the need to remind me of that twice, then tell me specifically where to "start" looking for it even though I can dowse? Why did you feel the need to give me a tutorial on HOW to dowse even though I clearly already know how to do that, being 4 dungeons into the game already? Dangit Fi, I am NOT that stupid! Say what you will about these constant reminders being intended for new gamers, but I never needed THAT level of hand-holding when I started playing Zelda back as a kid, back when the entire genre wasn't even established yet. I had the manual to refer to for basic controls and a basic description of enemies and items, and the rest I figured out on my own. Heck I never even bothered taking notes in that "memo" section. The hint givers in that game phrased things so idiosyncratically that there was no way I was going to forget them. (Heck, while playing Breath of the Wild I casually mentioned going "Up, up the mountain path." before remembering where I first heard that line.) Skyward Sword would be much improved if they could assume both you and me were intelligent enough to figure we were supposed to head to that GIANT structure off in the distance, or that maybe after just uncovering 3 distinct doors around a desert along with three glowing rings right next to me, that PERHAPS I should head to those places. Seriously, you can't possibly tell me those aren't blindingly obvious hints, or that they would need not one but two NPCs to explain to me that I should head there to make a thing happen here, and then REMIND me of that fact after each mini-dungeon is completed. That's not something people are going to have trouble figuring out, because their use of the camera and recognizable landmarks makes it clear already. A "Fi is mute" option would have only benefitted the game. Heck, if Fi never said a word and just wordlessly danced with some slabs or something just pointing me the right way like the game already did, not only would I have zero trouble figuring out where to go next, I might actually have grown to care for that NPC, because I could plant my own interpretation of her emotions on her, and it would explain why she never said a thing to any subsequent master sword wielding Link in the "later" games in the timeline. (Also, he shouldn't have had a hat in this game. Minish Cap was the origin story of Link's hat, don't take that from Minish Cap because that's all it has!)
This is a very common criticism of not just Skyward Sword, but any video game series that decided long boring explanations were needed where none were asked for. The later Megaman X games are very guilty of this. No one ever asked for a radio operative to explain to X that, yes, those giant plues of fire shooting out of the ground are best avoided, or that, hey, the moving train is moving. Good level design will explain everything you need to know just by paying attention. You ABF were smart enough to solve those Link's Awakening dungeons with not a single NPC explaining what to do at every puzzle. So long as the level is smartly designed, all the hints will be visually apparent, or clear based on established trends earlier in the game. Skyward Sword DID have this smart design. There weren't any components of puzzles or how enemies worked that contradicted previously established gameplay. Certain aspects of enemies were also readily apparent just by looking at them. If a bat is on fire, it probably does fire type damage. I don't need to ask Fi to know that my wooden shield is probably not going to protect me very well against that. An electric bat probably does electric damage. While metal shields being weak to electricity wasn't established in previous Zelda games, all it took was one "zap" for me to figure that out, and the game stayed consistent with that rule so when I ran into moblins using electric weapons, I knew I should change to a wooden shield instead of my metal one. Fi didn't need to pause the action and explain that to me for me to figure it out.
I'm kinda going the long way around, as long-winded as Fi, but my point is that Nintendo didn't trust their own game design to lead the player in Skyward Sword. Closed world design? Fine. It was a well designed one (to a point, I sure could have gone without backtracking to the same places 3 times each, plus a 4th "meta backtrack" for good measure). However, if you're going to go that route, commit to it. Trust in it. Trust that you did a good enough job making the world and the visual cues that you don't need to explain my goal to me 4 times each.
....
So, back on Breath of the Wild... You're right about the dungeon thing. I mean, we really do differ on the dungeons being THE best part of Zelda games (if a Zelda game was literally just 4 dungeons strung together with no overworld to explore, I would consider that lacking, and well, it would basically be Four Swords), but it is still important. Breath of the Wild definitely focused mostly on the overworld. It's a great overworld, but that does mean dungeon design suffers. Here's how they have it worked out. There's a huge number of shrines (don't go telling me the exact number! Part of the fun is not knowing if I've found the last one, so I'm never hunting down shrines specifically, just running into them as I go, which is better.), but each shrine is basically one puzzle. They do switch things up. For the most part, each dungeon has it's own distinct puzzle to solve, and they get creative with them. However, it's clear that by only having ONE puzzle, they can't iterate upon that puzzle design, and at no point do you feel "lost exploring a dungeon". It's a small diversion at best, not an engaging experience to sink into, and it doesn't let it really "play" with any puzzle idea to put unique twists on it or really take it to it's ultimate level. As a result, the puzzles are all pretty easy. Further, while Zelda only rarely does this, I love when a dungeon's entire layout functions as one gigantic puzzle that requires you to think about how the entire dungeon's design fits together to solve it. The best examples of this sort of lateral thinking are in the Tower of Hera (LTTP), Eagle's Tower (LA), Water Temple (OOT), and Great Bay Temple (MM). I think there's a few in the Capcom Zelda games that touch on this too. Having to think about how EVERYTHING fits together to solve a dungeon's meta-puzzle is an amazing experience when it happens, but Breath of the Wild's shrines can never do that. It's funny how you don't want a dungeon to hold your hand and explain the puzzles to you, but you want the overworld to. To me, the overworld is basically the game's biggest dungeon, not just a "hub world". To that end, I'll explain where I think Breath of the Wild is trying to go with dungeon design.
The shrines are all tributes to "traditional puzzle" design, but it does seem as though the designer's intent was that the overworld be the "real" dungeon. Numerous locations are essentially "outdoor dungeons". Most of them ultimately lead to a shrine (in these cases, the shrines just give you the reward after explaining that just making it to them is proof enough that you deserve it). I've so far found a mountain that functioned as a giant boss fight with the puzzle being finding ways to reach distant peaks and find some way to fall "onto" the boss. I've found a straight-up labyrinth, with the guardian robots functioning as minotaurs. I've found a bizarre spiral in the ocean where I needed to find a way to get a sphere to the very center of it while working past groups of enemies. I've found a number of island connected by bridges. All of these are different kinds of "dungeon" experiences, but susceptible to things like weather and the occasional blood moon ritual, and all of them are open to numerous methods of tackling their challenges. So far, the most interesting of these outdoor dungeons has been an island I just barely saw in the distance. I took a break from where I was originally heading (because I ALWAYS get distracted by seeing weird things in the distance and will ALWAYS immediately veer off my path towards that neat thing over there, because that's just how I've always played video games and I will never ever stop doing that for anything short of an actual in-game timer, my greatest nemesis) to head to this island. I froze the ocean to walk over there one block of ice at a time (since the runes you use are infinite, you're free to do stuff like this). I could have grabbed a raft and sailed it there, but I picked this way. Took a while... Anyway, once I reached it a mysterious force stole all my equipment, leaving me stranded on a dangerous island with the task of setting 3 spheres in 3 special spots. The challenge there was one of stealth, sneaking around and taking down threats while all my equipment was OSP (on-site procurement). It really stands out to me, and I hope more such experiences are waiting ahead. The "outdoor" design means they had to focus on allowing numerous ways the player could tackle it, right down to simply accepting that a player could come into that "dungeon" from pretty much any angle. As a result, they tend to be laid out like an onion, with outer layers leading to inner layers.
So, it's a very interesting design. The "puzzles" in the outdoor "dungeons" aren't of the traditional design. They're focused entirely on the "emergent gameplay" style this game has. You mentioned the game doesn't really provide a whole lot of items like previous ones did. That's true, and heck the game gives them all (well, most of them) to you in the starting location. Being a game where you are free to go where your feet will take you, they wanted to be sure you'd be equipped to tackle any challenge you came across, regardless of the order you tackled them in. Well, aside from the difficulty. Some locations have much stronger enemies than others, but you're free to take them on anyway, if you're up for a challenge. It means you get to pick your difficulty. (That's part of the reason the "harder difficulty mode" in the upcoming DLC is getting so much flack. People who have played the game don't really see the point in adding a "hard mode" to a game that already let you decide if you want a challenge or not via the gameplay design.) So, you've got a shrine in the middle of a large enemy camp. How do you want to do this? Do you want to set off some explosions and lure a few enemies out of the way so you can sneak by? Do you want to climb a hill and glide over all of it, hoping none of them take some pot shots at you? Do you want to just go in swinging your sword? Maybe you want to pick them off with arrows? Or, let's get really creative! Is it raining? Are they standing in a puddle of water? Electrocute them all with a zap arrow. Nah, not creative enough. Looks like some sparks are going up on that weapon you've got equipped. That could be trouble, hey, let's just throw that metal weapon in the middle of their camp and let nature take them all out. Maybe you want to do some engineering. Set a few bombs (two at a time in this game), and put some octo-balloons on them. Now blow them over to the camp with a korok leaf and set 'em off. Got like 100 balloons? Grab a raft nearby and turn it into an airship, then while constantly replenishing balloons, start tossing bombs off the side and rain death from above. (Play Ride of the Valkyries for effect.) Do they have wooden weapons? There's a field of grass nearby, and the wind is blowing towards them! Fire! FIRE! Like, actual fire, burn them all! Use the updraft from the massive fire you just lit to ride over them while they're distracted by the flames! That's just what you have available to you in a combat situation. I've been having a lot of fun just figuring out some new and creative way to tackle every group I've run into. Now imagine what you can do with the more legitimate puzzles. Here's a rock, there's a hole. It seems clear I'm supposed to put that rock in that hole (and never once does anyone have to tell me, it just seems like that rock is just a bit TOO close to the edge and that hole is just a bit TOO perfectly round and too exactly the same size as that rock). I could try and push the thing up the hill. That's one way. I could use bombs to blow it over there. I could float it with those balloons and blow it over there. I could use stasis (think Dead Space) on it and hit it a bunch of times to load it up with kinetic energy that flings it over there. In another situation, I want to cross from this side of a gulch to the other. If I have an axe, I could chop down a tree and can use it as a bridge. I could also set fire to the tree, using the updraft to carry me across. I could also use stasis on a rock as before, fill it up with energy, and then climb onto the rock and RIDE it across the ravine. These are ALL things I've actually done. Every last one is an example of a thing I actually did. The game just... lets you do this stuff!
Along those large "dungeon style" areas are an amazing number of puzzles just oozing out of every crack in the world. I mentioned seeing the occasional large stone and a hole and just thinking "hmm, I wonder if", but that's just one example. I saw a bunch of circles of stones everywhere, all of them missing a couple of rocks in them. Well, I started thinking "I wonder what would happen if I just picked up a rock and finished the circle?" and sure enough, that was entirely the intent. I might see an odd flower, try to pick it only to see it vanish and reappear somewhere else, and I just HAVE to follow it to see where it goes. I might see flower arrangements that change color when I touch then, and notice hey, each arrangement has a different number of flowers, I bet that's the order... yep! Sometimes it's just a single rock perched on the top of a hill, and I just know I should totally pick that rock up and, YES! If it looks like a puzzle, it IS a puzzle.
Of course, a large part of being able to enjoy a game like this is attitude. For some people, they are dead-set on reaching a specific objective, and everything else is just "in the way" of the thing they want to do. That's one way to play a game, I suppose. For me, a destination is just that, a destination. I will generally be heading in that direction, but my main focus is on looking at every little thing I can see on my way to that destination, and if I see or hear something interesting, or even just suspect that something that MIGHT be interesting is just over that hill that's not THAT far off the path I'm taking, I WILL investigate it, every single time, and maybe, if I'm lucky, I might actually reach my original destination by the end of the real-world day I first picked that destination. I somehow ended up wandering into the middle of a volcano before finally making my way to my original destination, the Zora Domain. I COULD have just headed straight there, but the prince popping up to tell me I'm nearly there had the GALL to say "oh, and it's constantly raining here, so forget about climbing those rocks, just stick to the path". I wouldn't stand for that! I climbed them anyway, to SPITE him, and it was clear the developers knew I was going to do this, because yes, up there was the ENTIRE WORLD OF EVERYTHING and I had a fun time running around finding little secrets and reading lore about the history of the Zora kingdom. Eventually, I went back to the path, but I kept getting distracted, of my own volition, because they would put something interesting in my field of view.
You may not play it this way. To that end, I want to assure you that the game does a very good job of "bread crumbing". That is, they'll set up your main objective in the game at the very start, and then provide you with a first optional destination. That place, should you choose to go there, will lead you to another town, which will point you to another location, and along the way you'll get some other major questlines. You can ignore them, or you can follow them, or you can do as I did and "get around to them eventually". My point is that at no point do you feel completely lost about what to do. If you get lost, it's your own fault, and if you forget something, the quest log will remind you (it categorizes the quests between "shrine quests" (you occasionally pick up hints on where shrines are located), "side quests" (stuff NPCs ask you to do) and "main quests" (stuff that will prepare you for the final showdown, such as regaining your lost memories). Instead of revealing the entire map to you at the very start, you find segments of the map. This isn't so hard. They stick area maps in gigantic red towers visible from almost everywhere in a zone (often visible from several zones away in fact, thanks to the crazy draw distance in the game), so you always have a clear idea where to go if you want to see what's in the new area right away. You can place a massive number of markers on the map too. If there's a puzzle of interest to you but you'd rather just come back later, stick a marker on that section and you'll remember where to come back. Every village, shrine, and map marker also will be added to your map automatically as you discover them. Every single shrine also functions as a fast travel location, with a lore related reason why fast travel is a thing in this world. You will never feel burdened with a massive checklist of miscellaneous stuff to collect either. The towers give you a vantage point to look around and a map, but that's it. No need to look at a list of treasure chests saying "incomplete". If you don't want to bother, just don't.
What I'm getting at here is this game may be more enjoyable than you think. You may have watched videos of people wandering around "aimlessly", but know that that's just how those people WANT to play the game. If you don't want that, know that you can just head to the main locations in the game and ignore the side objectives and you'll do just fine.
Whatever you do, don't approach shrines with a "I'm just going to hunt for shrines now" attitude. Every time I've seen someone online get frustrated with the game, that seems to be the reason why. They set finding shrines as their objective, and get frustrated because there's no clear "shrine markers". Treat shrines as a bonus you MIGHT find and it becomes a lot more fun when you do.
Dunkey seems to be loving it anyway:
As for the story, Zelda games tend to have simple stories. If all you want is a basic outline, then this is it. You lost to Ganon last time, imitated Rip Van Winkle, and are back to beat him/it (Ganon seems to have been at this so long he's lost his mind almost entirely). If you take the time to talk to everyone you meet though, you'll find everyone is very well characterized. The general mood is very much in the vein of classic fairy tales. Everything is the thing of legend, but that's just how the Zelda series rolls. Moving past that, you'll find out all sorts of information about the various races, how they organize, how the kingdoms all came to be one, and even find out about the sad history of the Sheikah tribe in particular. Frankly, one can understand why some of them might betray the kingdom to work for Ganon. The major NPCs also get some fleshing out, and this is possibly the most well-rounded Zelda in ANY of the games to date. She has actually been fighting Ganon by herself nonstep for a century, ever since Link fell in battle during their first attempt. She's the sole reason Hyrule is even still around after all this time, scattered though everyone may be. She "needs your help" as always, but I will say this. For the first time, Link and Zelda's roles can EASILY be reversed and barely anything would need to be changed. Zelda could easily have been the one to fall in battle, with Link battling Ganon for 100 years and her waking up to come to his aid. Recent games have at least done a good job of having Link and Zelda fight together during the final battle, so it works out either way. Even the flashbacks you gain wouldn't need to change, and that's where things get interesting. First of all, Zelda wears pants. Yes, she's worn them before, but only as an "alter-ego" like Tetra or Sheik (and yes, the fanbase still has lots of people insistent that Sheik is physically a man, because we all know she couldn't be a ninja without a penis, and no, making her physically a man does nothing for the trans community because having a penis has nothing to do with gender identity, and that's your Social Justice Warrior outburst for the day). This is the first time in a main straight-from-Nintendo release that she's got a decent pair of pants to traipse across the land in. Also, she's got some weird ornate royal breastplate on, with exaggerated pecs, which is a nice change of pace from the thing female breastplates normally exaggerate. Her design is very well done. (Okay, I suppose the first Zelda to wear pants was in the 80's cartoon.) Anyway, all these memories show someone who's questioning everything she's been taught and seems to resent this "role of legend" decided for her by the gods before she was even born, while also not even sure she can live up to that role. It's the first time I've ever seen the series question it's own notion of "destiny" before, and it was very interesting. There's four other warriors travelling with you, a merry little band, and their characterization is pretty interesting too, especially considering you know what happens at the end of these memories. It's some great stuff and about as introspective as I've ever seen the series get. Yes, the overall story is simple, but in that simplicity they're able to explore some interesting character ideas. Zelda is as progressive a character as she's ever been. Sure, you still don't get to play as her (as I said above, this would have been the perfect game to do it, as they literally could have swapped them without altering the story, just some of the NPC dialog), but she's the one leading the party in the flash backs. She's the one who saves Link, and she's the one who's been dealing with Ganon, by herself, for a century (odd thing is, lots of NPCs are over 100 years old, explicitly, including the Sheikaih who I had thought were just a tribe of Hylians and not their own race). I've said before that Zelda has always been a much more progressively written princess than Peach, but there have still always been problems. This game however, well, I'd say it handles things very well. She even has multiple conversations with female characters about their OWN futures that don't necessarily talk about Link specifically. She speaks about her own concerns to Link, rather than just talking about her feelings about how Link ties into her life all the time, and that's pretty huge coming from Japan. I mean, don't expect a LOT (she's not going into issues of legal decrees or land development or the mistreatment of the Sheikaih minority), but it's something, and it's notable. If only they'd done the extra work to just let you pick between them at the start. Maybe a character name/select screen could appear in the form of some quasimystical computer interface, as though the machine keeping you in a coma was verifying data on you (Crystalis did this at the start of the game).
Also, as always, the character designs across the board are engaging and colorful. I've loved the character design of the Zelda series since Wind Waker. I mean, there's nothing wrong with their design in previous games. They work well enough, and I've got a soft spot for the first Zelda's concept art. It's just that starting with Wind Waker they reached a whole new level, both in overall silhouette and in the incredible attention to functional details. Beedle, for example, has always been a character that more or less is a part of his shop, and has been since Wind Waker. In this game, he carries his entire shop on his back in pack shaped like a beetle. Everything about his design is informed by what he does and his inventive personality. His giant pack also has banners flying off of it, and a large shade covering him that also resembles the little shades over street vending carts. When you speak with him, he quickly pulls a table from under this shade which he attaches to his waste. I'm jealous of how skilled their designer is at coming up with this stuff, time after time, and I'm not even slightly an artist. The monsters also have very unique designs. The bokoblins, ever since Wind Waker, have essentially replaced moblins as the standard enemy you encounter, with moblins now pushed to "bigger bad" status, similar to how they were used in OOT. I had hoped they might go retro with the "bulldog face" look they had in the first two Zelda games, but the pig look they picked works because it is just so different than what I expected. They are giants, but lanky ones. Long arms, long legs, and a really long snout (that's almost their entire head) really make for an alien looking moblin. The "sacred beasts" (giant robots based on animals, so... zords) are very clearly robots, but their design looks magical and legendary, like something out of the mists of time. They don't spoil the aesthetic of the rest of the world at all. They fit right into it perfectly. The shrines in particular have some sort of "living Buddah" corpse as their main objective with an overall design that both looks high-tech and mystical all at once.
Anyway, I still haven't beaten the game. As you may have figured, I'm in no rush to do so.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)