General Zelda Dungeons in Quantity or in Size?

[SpiritGerudo]

Does not this kind of contradict itself?

No, this is my point. I think it's much better for the game to have story content guiding the player in between every few dungeons, rather than to just have this list that says "Go beat all of these dungeons," and be completely left alone for five dungeons straight . . . sorry if my wording was weird.

 

[HyruleHistory10]

I have to agree with you. Part of how I base my Zelda experience is from the dungeons. Other than that too me as long as the are challenging I really do not care. Variety is fine and more is good but then you run the risk of having too many new items that you do not use, but on the other hand a long dungeon can get stale esp. if they are not in your favorite interest or developed well.

Based on that I would have to say variety.

 

[A Link In Time]

Reading through this thread my response is an antithesis of sorts to JJ's original post. As a disclaimer, I'm not directly responding to anyone in this thread.

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Twilight Princess showed that a game can feature many dungeons with each being unique and different from the last. The Forest Temple focused on turning bridges with the Gale Boomerang and using rescued monkeys to access new portions of the dungeon; Goron Mines is easily the most technologically advanced dungeon in the series with iron boot's magnetism coming into play; the Lakebed Temple is a traditional water dungeon; the Arbiter's Grounds is a plainer dungeon but made interesting use of rail elements; Snowpeak Ruins is a blend of overworld and dungeon with one of Zelda's deeper dungeon backstories; the Temple of Time is a rich throwback to Ocarina of Time with a cunning if misused item; the City in the Sky switched things up with an open top; the Palace of Twilight centered around dark magic and the Twili.

Majora's Mask succeeded with fewer dungeons because the three day cycle added an extra layer of tension to the experience and the transformation masks provided new gameplay possibilities. Whether hovering as a Deku, rolling around as a Goron, swimming as a Zora, or battling a boss as giant Link, I always felt like I was doing something different. Skyward Sword, on the other hand, offered a more mundane experience. Forest theme, fire, desert, technology, water themes? Been there, done that.

With a larger number of dungeons, there is a greater probability that Nintendo is compelled to experiment with new ideas due to the usual themes being drained up quickly. Twilight Princess is just one example. A Link to the Past has the most dungeons of any installment and I never felt I was retreading ground, constantly doing something new and admiring how much Nintendo could squeeze out of one SNES cartridge.

 

[JuicieJ]

Twilight Princess showed that a game can feature many dungeons with each being unique and different from the last. The Forest Temple focused on turning bridges with the Gale Boomerang and using rescued monkeys to access new portions of the dungeon; Goron Mines is easily the most technologically advanced dungeon in the series with iron boot's magnetism coming into play; the Lakebed Temple is a traditional water dungeon; the Arbiter's Grounds is a plainer dungeon but made interesting use of rail elements; Snowpeak Ruins is a blend of overworld and dungeon with one of Zelda's deeper dungeon backstories; the Temple of Time is a rich throwback to Ocarina of Time with a cunning if misused item; the City in the Sky switched things up with an open top; the Palace of Twilight centered around dark magic and the Twili.

Oh, Twilight Princess definitely had a large variety of dungeon THEMES. You won't get any argument from me there. (Yes, I know you weren't responding to me, I'm not saying you were. It's just a saying.) What I was saying was their core structures were too similar. Almost all of them followed the extremely basic and simplistic "solve basic puzzles, fight miniboss, obtain item, use item to escape miniboss room, solve puzzles with item, find Big Key, fight and kill boss with item" pattern, which resulted in them feeling too similar from a gameplay standpoint. They certainly did a much better job than The Wind Waker did in this regard, but I used TP as an example because it had a much higher dungeon count than TWW.

 

[Random Person]

I'm gonna have to go with quality on this one. (Though I wouldn't necessarily call size quality.) As stated in the OP, MM has very few, yet extremely memorable dungeons. All very challenging and distinct from each other. Simply adding more dungeons will not please us fans, nor is it a quality gameplay. One common complaint about TP's dungeons, and alot of other things about TP, is how ridiculously easy they are. While I disagree with this notion in regards to TP in general, having temples that don't challenge you tend not to hold as much as ones that do. TP tried to make up for it through it's diversity and suceeded with some of us fans (that means me!) but there were still people upset about it. And then we have SS which some can agree it stepped it up in the difficulty department, but the unique experience went down the tubes. We had two fire theme temples, two technological time traveled themed temple, and while I liked the last temple, I have heard many complaints about it being a mash of everything combined. Many of the temples in SS also did not provide "unique experiences" in regards to the series as a whole. What's the point in playing a section of a new game, when I've already played it before? Now, the general concept of the OP was stating to have more temples for more varied experience. Obviously, if we have more temples with great and unique experiences, we'd be set. But quality over quantity any day.

 

[Spirit]

for as much as people complain about SS's first 2, probably 3, dungeons becuase they were so short, i think that short dungeons are a good direction for Zelda to go.

I love TP but some dungeons felt far too long; Arbiter's Grounds for example felt clumsy in its pacing, we first had to pay homage to OoT and collect the Poes before going further into what the dungeons should have been to begin with with all of the spinner puzzles, the Poe collecting just felt unnecessary. and while i love the forst Temple and think it is the strongest starting dungeon of all time within Zelda, its bloody long...

But i don't like dungeons and the less time i spend in a dungeon scratching my head, not knowing what to do, spending hours looking at the same rooms where nothing changes is something i dont like doing. this is where SS shone for me, i didn't liek the dungeons in the game but i didnt have to stay in them very long. All i had to do in the Skyview temple was flood the main plaza and walk through a door, all i had to do in the earth temple was roll a ball... i did say 'is that it?' considering the last 3D Zelda was the monolith that was TP, but i was also thankful that it was over and could get outside back into what passed for an overworld in that game..

so for me, more dungeons would be okay if they were short. Id much prefer more dungeons in quantity rather than size, the longer i have to be in one place the more it annoys me, but i'm not the best one to ask. I dare you to find a Zelda fan who dislikes dungeons as much as i do...

 

[SpiritGerudo]

Almost all of them followed the extremely basic and simplistic "solve basic puzzles, fight miniboss, obtain item, use item to escape miniboss room, solve puzzles with item, find Big Key, fight and kill boss with item" pattern, which resulted in them feeling too similar from a gameplay standpoint.

Isn't this kind of the definition of a dungeon? I think if you don't include these core gameplay standards, it isn't really a dungeon, it'd just end up a mess of loosely connected, slightly random puzzles.

 

[Ventus]

Isn't this kind of the definition of a dungeon? I think if you don't include these core gameplay standards, it isn't really a dungeon, it'd just end up a mess of loosely connected, slightly random puzzles.

That isn't the definition of a dungeon, it's merely your perception of a dungeon as you've been treated to the Zelda formula time and again. Dungeons do not require puzzles, massive amounts of combat, a boss key, or even a boss. Heck, there might not even be treasure! A dungeon, by dictionary definition, is A strong underground prison cell, especially in a castle. You could be trapped and eventually killed in a dungeon - who is to say there has to be a way out (lol final boss scenario). Since the idea of a dungeon isn't SUPPOSED to be static, there are many ways to go about creating dungeons in Zelda. I doubt anything new will be implemented soon, but they're POSSIBLE.

 

[Jimmu]

I'd prefer more dungeons than just a few long dungeons. I don't mind spending up to 2 hours in a Dungeon but after that I start to get bored of the setting, having multiple dungeons would allow many different settings and more bosses. I don't want to get to a point in a dungeon where it just feels tedious so something short and sweet is good for me.

 

[SpiritGerudo]

That isn't the definition of a dungeon, it's merely your perception of a dungeon as you've been treated to the Zelda formula time and again. Dungeons do not require puzzles, massive amounts of combat, a boss key, or even a boss. Heck, there might not even be treasure! A dungeon, by dictionary definition, is A strong underground prison cell, especially in a castle. You could be trapped and eventually killed in a dungeon - who is to say there has to be a way out (lol final boss scenario). Since the idea of a dungeon isn't SUPPOSED to be static, there are many ways to go about creating dungeons in Zelda. I doubt anything new will be implemented soon, but they're POSSIBLE.

Ok, let me revise my statement to this: I think if you don't include these core gameplay standards, it isn't really a Zelda dungeon, and Zelda dungeons have the potential to be pretty dang good, and I don't think we should get rid of them. If you don't have puzzles, combat, or a boss, it's just gameplay-- which I LOVE, don't get me wrong-- but we shouldn't get rid of the classic Zelda dungeons for an purely out-of-Zeldadungeon-gameplay exclusive game.

 

[JuicieJ]

Isn't this kind of the definition of a dungeon? I think if you don't include these core gameplay standards, it isn't really a dungeon, it'd just end up a mess of loosely connected, slightly random puzzles.

Not really. Look at the N64 games and Skyward Sword. Not a single dungeon followed the same pattern. And you know what? They have some of the best puzzle-solving in video game history.

 

[SpiritGerudo]

Not really. Look at the N64 games and Skyward Sword. Not a single dungeon followed the same pattern. And you know what? They have some of the best puzzle-solving in video game history.

Don't they?? To me, there are three objectives in dungeons: get dungeon item, get boss key, find boss door (if it wasn't put right in from of you at the start). Sure there are variations and detours, like rescuing Gorons to get keys to get the dungeon item, but essentially they all have the same goals to meet. Off the top of my head, the only dungeon that lacked these goals was Snowpeak Ruins from TP, when the objective was only to get the items the girl (I forget her name) told you to get, and even there the point of doing that was "get to the boss room".

This means that your objective inside of dungeons-- any dungeon-- is the same, and regardless of quality OR quantity, and if there isn't our-of-ZELDAdungeon game play with different objectives, you're pretty much doing the same thing the entire game in differing environments, and that's something I really don't want to see in any game. Thus is my point.

 

[Sydney]

You could have 50 dungeons and all of them suck, and you could have the biggest of dungeons and have it suck too. Like some have said, quality easily beats out everything else. If I don't venture through a good quality dungeon, I will tell you now that I will not enjoy it. As a matter of fact, no one will.

 

[JuicieJ]

Sure there are variations and detours, like rescuing Gorons to get keys to get the dungeon item

Exactly. It's not the same exact pattern every time, unlike in the GameCube games. The final goal is the same, sure, but the journey isn't, and the journey is the bulk of the dungeon.

 

[SpiritGerudo]

Exactly. It's not the same exact pattern every time, unlike in the GameCube games. The final goal is the same, sure, but the journey isn't, and the journey is the bulk of the dungeon.

See, to me if the final goal is the same and you can generalize everything in between as "puzzles", anything dungeon-unique about said puzzles becomes irrelevant, which I guess is why the overworld game play becomes so important to me. I do see what you mean, though. I guess this just boils to perception.