Link's Awakening Overworld

[Golem]

I recently beat Link's Awakening, and the game aided my perspective on Zelda more than I thought it would. My traversal of its overworld left me with something to reflect on--is it more mazey than the LttP overworld? That is to say, is the path from, say, Mabe Village to Animal Village more complex than the path from the Village of Outcasts to Watergate Dungeon?

My thoughts on this subject are largely uncollected--what follows is unorganized and stream-of-consciousness, to abuse a phrase.

I'm measuring complexity on two levels here. One, the number of dead end paths. One hypothetical situation: what if you wanted to go southeast, but you couldn't just walk southeast, you had to pick the correct path? This correct path may take you north before going south, for instance. If you just walked southeast, you might not get to your goal, since that might be the wrong path. I'm not counting multiple paths here because it doesn't seem to me that they make the trek any more complex; the game isn't putting any complexity in your way, it's just offering a different way to get to point B. That was confusingly worded, so let's try this: if you hit a dead end, you need to think more about where you're going.

The second measure of complexity would be item use: how many items are used, what items are used, and how often are they used. If I've got to bomb a passage, then charge through some rocks, then mallet down some pegs and finally hookshot across a gap, that's a complex path.

There's also something to be said for the claustrophobic feel of Link's Awakening. None of the screens scroll--each area is one screen large, no larger. This means passages are a lot tighter than the ones in LttP. I'm not sure how to take this into consideration, though...

Curiously enough, I didn't feel that these things affected dungeon design. Dungeons felt more claustrophobic but not more complex, even in the later ones! This is something that could use some proof, or as I'd like to say and probably offend people with real research, empirical showings.

I'm also tentatively working on some overworld comparisons in terms of complexity...

Least complex
Ocarina of Time - Low
Link to the Past, Wind Waker - Medium
Link's Awakening - High
Most complex

I can get in serious trouble here because Wind Waker has boatloads more sidequests and characters going on. Wouldn't that make it the most complex out of those four games? However, here I merely refer to overworld traversal and exploration. Sidequests and characters are, at least for the moment, out of the equation.

What do you guys think of this? Do you agree, disagree? How did the other handheld Zelda overworlds play out? I don't recall Minish Cap's overworld being complex, though I only played through two dungeons of that game.

[basement24]

I would agree with this. The map was fairly cluttered, and it felt a bit more confining in comparison to ALttP which was released before it.

It was the game to base a comparison on due to the similar design and appearance, and ALttP seemed more intelligently laid out. They had more freedom of direction it seemed. Granted, there were some "You can only leave this screen in two directions" areas, but not as frequently as LA.

LA seemed to be more of a series of interconnected pathways rather than ALttP's series of interconnected areas. One of the things I remember most about the LA map was seeing an area I wanted to get to on the other side of a bank of trees. I would have to traverse a long pathway around to get there, only to get caught up on a different path and forget my original destination.

If it weren't for the vague overhead map, it would have been a real pain to sort out. Even then, it was still a bit of a nightmare. Maybe that was the idea, since this was the island of dreams...? :)

It really made the area a bit claustrophobic, although perhaps the screen size had somethign to do with it as well. I think if the sprites were a tad smaller, (ie - the camera a bit more zommed out) then it might've been a bit easier to navigate without felling trapped. Although then the characters might be the size that they were in Super Mario Land, and while the areas there felt huge, the character size might've been the biggest failure of that game in my opinion.

Playing LA on the original Gameboy might've been worse, which was my experience of the game. There was no colour coding of areas, everything was just black and green. There was no sense of direction based on memorizing a certain coloured area. Although when I look at the coloured photos, sometimes I only see a mess of technicolour pain, so maybe it was worse...?

Now, I haven't played any of the other handhelds except for PH, so I really can't base LA to the other handhelds with the "ALttP style" maps. Compared to other overworld maps I'm used to though, including LoZ and AoL, LA was definitely a cofusing way to travel an overworld. The others had more of a sense of flow to them, and were smartly designed.