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An open world with linear dungeons?

Alita the Pun

Dmitri
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Oct 6, 2016
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A Mellophone Player... Mellophonista?
I totally agree, the open world was great. but it was so open it felt like there was no direction at all. if we would have had some real dungeons like in the past Zelda games, the game would really pop. like it would be awesome to journey into a deep cavern, beat up baddies and solve a few puzzles, all in the BotW art style. but unfortunately, we are only given 4 mechs with lame and predictable puzzles.
 
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No, I don't really want to go back to linear, overlong dungeons. I would be okay with the next game having the same kind of dungeons as BotW.

During the Wii/DS era, the dungeons basically took over, to the detriment of everything else. SS basically removed the overworld and made the outside areas dungeons of sorts, while ST gave us an overworld on rails (no pun intended). As a result, I found both games to be complete chores to play. It felt like the gameplay was entirely about puzzles and dungeons, with no freedom or exploration. That was a direction the series had been heading to for a while. TP (whose dungeons I felt were waaay too long and tedious, not to mention the empty overworld and overlinear story) and TMC (with its small overworld and linear progression) were big offenders too, but SS and ST were the epitome of everything wrong with newer games for me.

Miyamoto once said "Zelda has an epic story and all, but the truth is, to me it’s all about hiking". I couldn't agree more with him. My favorite part about the series has always been the exploration, not the puzzles and dungeons. Once I realized that, I also realized why I couldn't enjoy the newer Zeldas. As a result, I honestly thought that SS would be my last Zelda game.

Then ALBW and BotW happened.

I applaud Nintendo for finally opening its eyes and shifting the focus back to the overworld and exploration. I also agree with Miyamoto that BotW is a return to Zelda's core. I wouldn't mind if they added more main dungeons in the next installment, but I hope they keep them short and secondary to the exploration.
 
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DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
SS basically removed the overworld and made the outside areas dungeons of sorts,

This is what the overworlds have been until OoT came in and ruined that. Hell, until PH and ST, the 2D overworlds were still like that.

That was a direction the series had been heading to for a while.

Quit the opposite. The games have been getting longer, but much more emphasis has been placed on the overworld than when the series started. In LoZ, dungeons take up 2/3 of the gameplay in an 100% run. By the time we got to TP, Dungeons only took up a mere 50% of a main quest run. OoT changed the concept of what an overworld was. Instead of being a dangerous wilderness where you had to fight your way to the next dungeon, it was a boring, barren large empty area with much fewer barriers than its predecessors.

MM made the overworlds slightly closer to their original counterparts, but was still in the same vein as OoT's. The game increased dungeon length significantly, but still focused more on the overworld. tWW had more dungeons than MM, but less than what you would expect from a proper Zelda title. They kept MM's length, but put more focus on the overworld yet again. TP, despite having a full set of dungeon and with proper length, added a lot of overworld sections. Like MM, nearly every dungeon had an overworld section preceding it sans Hyrule Castle.

Before OoT, overworld segments were rare or completely non-existent. Once you beat a dungeon, you made your way to the next dungeon. The overworld has its own challenges and its own side content, but it behaves like a dungeon and you won't spend too much time here. And while I wouldn't say overworld segments aren't bad (for the most part) the massive increase in overworld size is. Because when you aren't engaged in an overworld segment, you're simply traveling to the next area and since the overworld is much more open than it originally was, the developers can't really offer challenges for you. You just wait until you get to your destination. This basically pauses the entire game for an obnoxiously extended period of time. It takes all of the joy you could have with exploration and makes "exploration" nothing more than a tedious long car ride.
 
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This is what the overworlds have been until OoT came in and ruined that. Hell, until PH and ST, the 2D overworlds were still like that.
No they weren't. The overworlds in LoZ and ALttP were open and could be freely explored for the most part. They didn't impose tedious tasks like "search for a bunch of scrotum-shaped creatures in a maze-like forest" on you before letting you advance. In ALttP, as soon as I beat the starting dungeon, I could freely walk from one extreme of the overworld (Lost Woods) to the other (Hylia Lake). I could explore it and discover stuff like hidden caves, heart pieces or secret items and upgrades, on my own.

Contrast that with, say, SS's Eldrin Volcano, in which you had to continuously plod through a maze, alternating between dousing for stuff and solving puzzles in order to advance. You weren't exploring it, you were just performing mandatory task after mandatory task. And you certainly couldn't walk from one extreme of the world to another, not only because they had the brilliant idea of fragmenting it into three parts, but also because of how overly linear and scripted everything was.

Quit the opposite. The games have been getting longer, but much more emphasis has been placed on the overworld than when the series started. In LoZ, dungeons take up 2/3 of the gameplay in an 100% run. By the time we got to TP, Dungeons only took up a mere 50% of a main quest run. OoT changed the concept of what an overworld was. Instead of being a dangerous wilderness where you had to fight your way to the next dungeon, it was a boring, barren large empty area with much fewer barriers than its predecessors.

MM made the overworlds slightly closer to their original counterparts, but was still in the same vein as OoT's. The game increased dungeon length significantly, but still focused more on the overworld. tWW had more dungeons than MM, but less than what you would expect from a proper Zelda title. They kept MM's length, but put more focus on the overworld yet again. TP, despite having a full set of dungeon and with proper length, added a lot of overworld sections. Like MM, nearly every dungeon had an overworld section preceding it sans Hyrule Castle.

Before OoT, overworld segments were rare or completely non-existent. Once you beat a dungeon, you made your way to the next dungeon. The overworld has its own challenges and its own side content, but it behaves like a dungeon and you won't spend too much time here. And while I wouldn't say overworld segments aren't bad (for the most part) the massive increase in overworld size is. Because when you aren't engaged in an overworld segment, you're simply traveling to the next area and since the overworld is much more open than it originally was, the developers can't really offer challenges for you. You just wait until you get to your destination. This basically pauses the entire game for an obnoxiously extended period of time. It takes all of the joy you could have with exploration and makes "exploration" nothing more than a tedious long car ride.
No. In old games like LoZ, you had to explore the crap out of the overworld, looking for hints and secrets everywhere, in order to find the next dungeon. Though I guess if someone just follows a walkthrough and rushes from dungeon to dungeon, they wouldn't understand. But any person who played the game without a guide would spend most of their time exploring the overworld, whether they wanted to or not.

ALttP may have forced less exploration, as the player was told the locations of the dungeons from the onset, but the big explorable overworld was still there as an option. That's the way it should be as far as I'm concerned -- keep most of the overworld content open and optional.

OoT didn't add more "overworld segments". It had the smallest overworld in the series for its time, and the adult half of the game had you rushing from dungeon to dungeon with very little content in between. The child part had more out of dungeon gameplay, but most of it consisted in story segments, not overworld exploration.

As for TP, the overworld was big but empty and there was very little exploration, given the game's linear structure. I'd say the gameplay was about 50% dungeons, 40% story segments, and 10% exploration.

TWW was the sole exception, presenting the player with a huge overworld filled with content to discover. Too bad you couldn't explore it until reaching the second section of the game, but at least the first section wasn't very long.
 
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DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
No they weren't. The overworlds in LoZ and ALttP were open and could be freely explored for the most part.

Are you kidding me? Look at it.

http://www.mikesrpgcenter.com/zelda/maps/overworld.png

It's a bunch of maze-like hallways filled with enemies and obstacles, with a similar layout to a dungeon. There's one...maybe two small open areas in that entire thing.

They didn't impose tedious tasks like "search for a bunch of scrotum-shaped creatures in a maze-like forest" on you before letting you advance.

They did this all the time...and were much more obscure on what you had to even do. Bring item from store here. Find item that matches the symbol shown here.

No. In old games like LoZ, you had to explore the crap out of the overworld, looking for hints and secrets everywhere, in order to find the next dungeon. Though I guess if someone just follows a walkthrough and rushes from dungeon to dungeon, they wouldn't understand. But any person who played the game without a guide would spend most of their time exploring the overworld, whether they wanted to or not.

1) Technically speaking you are supposed to use a guide. Nintendo made the entrances as obscure as they were with the intention of players relying on their friends to find them all.

2) Ignoring that though, without a guide, all you can really do is OCD bomb all the wall tiles and burn all the bush tiles until the next entrance shows up. But y'know I wouldn't really call that exploration. Hmmm how could I best describe it? Well I think you hit the nail on the head with this:

You weren't exploring it, you were just performing mandatory task after mandatory task.


OoT didn't add more "overworld segments". It had the smallest overworld in the series for its time,

Compared to what?

and the adult half of the game had you rushing from dungeon to dungeon with very little content in between. The child part had more out of dungeon gameplay, but most of it consisted in story segments, not overworld exploration.

And how is it not exploration? You need to talk to Saria in the Kokiri Forest. Where is she now? Go explore and find her. You need something from Kakariko Village. Go explore and find it. Where do I go now? Well something's up with Zora's Domain. Go explore the area and find the way forward.

As for TP, the overworld was big but empty

Welcome to every 3D Zelda overworld.

and there was very little exploration, given the game's linear structure.

Actually there was quite a lot. The Tears of Light literally focuses on nothing but exploring the world and find the tears. One of the few examples of exploration done right in modern Zelda IMO.

You're saying that there's no exploration because a games linear, but you're not making an argument on why. It literally makes no sense when several Open Worlds have a huge focus on exploration, but are even more linear than Zelda. i.e. Xenoblade.
 
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Miyamoto once said "Zelda has an epic story and all, but the truth is, to me it’s all about hiking". I couldn't agree more with him. My favorite part about the series has always been the exploration, not the puzzles and dungeons. Once I realized that, I also realized why I couldn't enjoy the newer Zeldas. As a result, I honestly thought that SS would be my last Zelda game.

before BotW the Zelda series consist of appoximately 15 games in their main series and in only 1 of them overworld exploration is one of the main focusses of the game, that being the first game LoZ, not that it is not present in other games but there it is not at all one of the main focusses of that game, and still LoZ had certainly more dungeons screens then overworld screens

if Miyamoto would still have been involved (or more involved) in the creation of Zelda games, BotW would never have lacked actual real dungeons for sure, the overworld exploration would still be the main focus of that game but the (actual real) dungeon section would not have been neglected as it was now and would have certainly been an important part of the game as well, not as important as overworld exploration but pretty important too
 

Dio

~ It's me, Dio!~
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BoTW has many complaints but dungeons and the lack of direction were pretty major ones. The problem with doing what BoTW did is that you can't have a linear progression of difficulty when you can do shrines and dungeons in any order and they aren't crucial to the story which was optional anyway. This means you can do the hardest shrine in the game at the beginning and then all the rest are easy in comparison.

This just feels wrong. I think it would be better to have dungeons of progressively increased difficulty as the player moves through the games story. This means there would be a set order to dungeons but it doesn't have to be totally fixed if they wanted to give a sense of freedom.

What they could do is have different clusters of dungeons for instance a group of three easy dungeons that can be done in any order, then once the player has progressed to the next part of the story a couple more dungeons become available of moderate difficulty then the same thing progressing to the hard dungeons. This gives a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that the player is getting somewhere and that he skills aquired earlier have helped with the later areas.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
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Oct 28, 2012
This means you can do the hardest shrine in the game at the beginning and then all the rest are easy in comparison.

That's not the problem IMO. If a player wants to go do the hardest challenges first, then that's their choice. The problem, from my perspective, is that you could do the hardest shrine...and not even realize you've done it. Because:

1) The hardest shrine isn't going to feel that different from most other shrines.

2) The reward is the same regardless. As it is, simply being able to do things out of order is a very small choice, especially for a Open World game. But making the reward the same regardless of what you do just diminishes this further.

Let's pretend they handled enemies differently and at the start of the game there were several "bad zones" filled to the brim with DarkNuts and other powerful enemies who will hunt you like a dog and ruthlessly kill you. The chances of killing any of them when you just left the Great Plateau are very low. On top of this, there are also thieves who live here and will steal your rupees and gear. However there is a cave here that apparently has an amazing treasure you can't get anywhere else.

So what choice is more significant and meaningful?

A: Do Shrine A or Shrine B first? Both are roughly the same difficulty and have the same reward.

B: Should I go into this danger zone now and risk my stuff for the sake of this amazing reward? Or should I play it safe and come back later?

This just feels wrong. I think it would be better to have dungeons of progressively increased difficulty as the player moves through the games story. This means there would be a set order to dungeons but it doesn't have to be totally fixed if they wanted to give a sense of freedom.

You are right though. In the end, I feel dungeons need to be set linearly. If they aren't, Nintendo's just going to scale them all down so there's no risk of someone making the game hard for themselves based on their choices.

What they could do is have different clusters of dungeons for instance a group of three easy dungeons that can be done in any order, then once the player has progressed to the next part of the story a couple more dungeons become available of moderate difficulty then the same thing progressing to the hard dungeons. This gives a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that the player is getting somewhere and that he skills aquired earlier have helped with the later areas.

So ALBW then? =P
 
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I don't mind them, Ocarina of Time was exactly that way, and the dungeons in that game are very memorable. There's also the mini-dungeons, which is in most Zelda games.
 

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