Hub Towns: How Well Are They Executed in the Series?

[Mido]

Lately, I have been playing a good amount of Twilight Princess HD since I never finished the original game over six years ago. So far through my recent playthrough, I've really begun to appreciate the atmosphere in the various hub areas of the game where civilization teems, especially with Hyrule Castle Town. The town itself brims with activity and sets the stage for a hustle and bustle atmosphere. It also serves as a center for various sidequests. Windfall Island in WW is another good example of an atmospheric hub town, especially with its memorable denizens.

This all being said, do you all think The Legend of Zelda as a whole does a good job with how their towns are managed in comparison to other games of the same type? Can improvements be made? I'm not sure I have a good answer for this myself to be honest!

 

[DekuNut]

Comparing Zelda to Elder Scrolls, I feel like we do much better. Elder Scrolls towns, while there are more, tend to be very bland and simple. Most characters aren't very memorable, and the towns feel similar. While the world is great, the towns aren't much to speak of.
On the other hand, Zelda towns are all very different and memorable, and so are the people. Draw almost any character from Windfall Island in TP graphics and you'd probably recognize them. People recognized the (possibly) TP-era Castle Town from a few second clip in the BotW trailer, despite the difference in graphics and delapidation of the landscape. I feel like Zelda makes their towns new and memorable, and that makes them superior.

 

[Morbid Minish]

Comparing Zelda to Elder Scrolls, I feel like we do much better. Elder Scrolls towns, while there are more, tend to be very bland and simple. Most characters aren't very memorable, and the towns feel similar. While the world is great, the towns aren't much to speak of.
On the other hand, Zelda towns are all very different and memorable, and so are the people. Draw almost any character from Windfall Island in TP graphics and you'd probably recognize them. People recognized the (possibly) TP-era Castle Town from a few second clip in the BotW trailer, despite the difference in graphics and delapidation of the landscape. I feel like Zelda makes their towns new and memorable, and that makes them superior.

I was going to say that I feel like there could be more towns in Zelda, because they're one of my favorite parts of the games, but you make a really great point. The towns and characters in Zelda games are extremely memorable compared to some other games, which may be due to the fact that there aren't a ton of them. They never feel repetitive or boring, and even the really minor characters have personality to them.

 

[Dio]

Lately, I have been playing a good amount of Twilight Princess HD since I never finished the original game over six years ago. So far through my recent playthrough, I've really begun to appreciate the atmosphere in the various hub areas of the game where civilization teems, especially with Hyrule Castle Town. The town itself brims with activity and sets the stage for a hustle and bustle atmosphere. It also serves as a center for various sidequests. Windfall Island in WW is another good example of an atmospheric hub town, especially with its memorable denizens.

This all being said, do you all think The Legend of Zelda as a whole does a good job with how their towns are managed in comparison to other games of the same type? Can improvements be made? I'm not sure I have a good answer for this myself to be honest!

I think castle town in TP has a good atmosphere when passing through but compared to other games such as Elder Scrolls it could do with improvement.

It's mostly a facade, like a set piece rather than a town. You can't go in many houses and you can't buy from most stalls. It's not a particularly big town either so I don't think that would have been too big of an ask.

We have Witcher 3 where in Novigrad you get the same sort of thing with not every building being able to be entered yet there are hundreds that you can and it just feels a bit more real because of it.

 

[Mido]

I think castle town in TP has a good atmosphere when passing through but compared to other games such as Elder Scrolls it could do with improvement.

It's mostly a facade, like a set piece rather than a town. You can't go in many houses and you can't buy from most stalls. It's not a particularly big town either so I don't think that would have been too big of an ask.

We have Witcher 3 where in Novigrad you get the same sort of thing with not every building being able to be entered yet there are hundreds that you can and it just feels a bit more real because of it.

I can agree to that; as while Castle Town is atmospheric, the town life save a few locations pivotal to the story is sort of humdrum since there is not too much interaction. I think Windfall, despite it being smaller, was very accessible in entering various locales. Since I haven't played Witcher 3, I can't quite vouch for how large Novigrad is, but based on what you have said, it sounds like a good example of an atmospheric yet accessible town.

Comparing Zelda to Elder Scrolls, I feel like we do much better. Elder Scrolls towns, while there are more, tend to be very bland and simple. Most characters aren't very memorable, and the towns feel similar.

I definitely agree that the Zelda series excels at crafting memorable characters, yet I also think The Elder Scrolls do bring a certain degree of life to their towns and cities, more in the sense of accessibility. It seems that a balance and/or grand combination of both strengths could be the best medicine for potential improvements to the town formula.

 

[Dio]

I can agree to that; as while Castle Town is atmospheric, the town life save a few locations pivotal to the story is sort of humdrum since there is not too much interaction. I think Windfall, despite it being smaller, was very accessible in entering various locales. Since I haven't played Witcher 3, I can't quite vouch for how large Novigrad is, but based on what you have said, it sounds like a good example of an atmospheric yet accessible town.



I definitely agree that the Zelda series excels at crafting memorable characters, yet I also think The Elder Scrolls do bring a certain degree of life to their towns and cities, more in the sense of accessibility. It seems that a balance and/or grand combination of both strengths could be the best medicine for potential improvements to the town formula.

You could go in all buildings in Windfall and even skyloft and each had a purpose be it a persons house or a shop. In TP people just disappear at night and don't really live anywhere, it is only implied they live somewhere in the town. I'd say SS actually did it better in that sense despite having a mostly dislikeable or forgetful cast. In that game you might have seen a shopkeeper at his stall during the day but at night you can visit his house and break his mothers pots if you want to.

It would be nice to see more of that in the future. I'd imagine that BoTW will have all buildings in a village accessible but the only village we have seen a decent shot of so far is more the size of ordon. I'd like to see something on a grander scale. I guess we will have to wait and see if any settlement appears of significant size in BoTW.

 

[Pen]

I'm actually surprised to see that no-one has mentioned Clock Town yet. In my opinion, the three really good hub towns in Zelda are Clock Town, Windfall Island and Skyloft. Unlike Castle Town in both TP and in OoT, these three don't have any extras, or filler NPCs, or whatever you wanna call them. Each character has a name as well as their own personal agenda (more or less). Don't get me wrong, I love TP's Castle Town, but compared to Skyloft, Windfall and Clock Town, I think it falls short.

As for comparisons with hub towns in other games, I don't feel like I have all that much to compare it to that would make for a worthy comparison. The only franchises that come to mind are Pokémon and Assassin's Creed, both of which are quite different from Zelda. Hub towns in Pokémon, such as Castelia City or Lumiose City, are made to look much larger than they actually are. Not only can that be confusing since it can be hard to know where to start in a city that looks that big, but it's also a huge letdown when you realize that you can actually only visit a select few places within the seemingly big city. In this sense Zelda is much better when they're at their best since (in my three favourite Zelda hub towns) I never felt like I wasn't able to explore everything that I wanted to. Then there's Assassin's Creed. These cities are all super big and generally do an exceptional job at conveying a big city feeling with lots of tall buildings and many NPCs walking around. It looks very realistic. When it comes down to it though, it's all ultimately just eye candy, seeing as you cannot talk to the NPCs nor walk into barely any of the buildings. It works for Assassin's Creed since it's about climbing buildings and parkouring around outside, but for a Zelda game it would work very poorly.

So yeah, I'm overall very happy with the hub towns we've got in Zelda, and seeing how promising BotW looks, I hope to see another well made hub towns in that game. Zelda games rarely disappointed me, and although the towns are typically rather small, they still never cease to impress me.

 

[Dio]

I'm actually surprised to see that no-one has mentioned Clock Town yet. In my opinion, the three really good hub towns in Zelda are Clock Town, Windfall Island and Skyloft. Unlike Castle Town in both TP and in OoT, these three don't have any extras, or filler NPCs, or whatever you wanna call them. Each character has a name as well as their own personal agenda (more or less). Don't get me wrong, I love TP's Castle Town, but compared to Skyloft, Windfall and Clock Town, I think it falls short.

As for comparisons with hub towns in other games, I don't feel like I have all that much to compare it to that would make for a worthy comparison. The only franchises that come to mind are Pokémon and Assassin's Creed, both of which are quite different from Zelda. Hub towns in Pokémon, such as Castelia City or Lumiose City, are made to look much larger than they actually are. Not only can that be confusing since it can be hard to know where to start in a city that looks that big, but it's also a huge letdown when you realize that you can actually only visit a select few places within the seemingly big city. In this sense Zelda is much better when they're at their best since (in my three favourite Zelda hub towns) I never felt like I wasn't able to explore everything that I wanted to. Then there's Assassin's Creed. These cities are all super big and generally do an exceptional job at conveying a big city feeling with lots of tall buildings and many NPCs walking around. It looks very realistic. When it comes down to it though, it's all ultimately just eye candy, seeing as you cannot talk to the NPCs nor walk into barely any of the buildings. It works for Assassin's Creed since it's about climbing buildings and parkouring around outside, but for a Zelda game it would work very poorly.

So yeah, I'm overall very happy with the hub towns we've got in Zelda, and seeing how promising BotW looks, I hope to see another well made hub towns in that game. Zelda games rarely disappointed me, and although the towns are typically rather small, they still never cease to impress me.

Clock town is a good one actually because over the three day cycle you see people doing different activities. The same thing could be implemented in BoTW if they really wanted to. Rather than just day and night activities it could be you see particular villagers using different buildings over cycles of multiple days. That is probably too complex for them to bother with, but it would be nice to see I'll admit.

 

[Castle]

I don't think the Zelda series really uses towns as "hub" areas in terms of level design. The only Zelda games that do are Majora's Mask (Clocktown is the quintessential hub level) and Shizzard Skard which is about as oppressive a hub structure as you can get.

Other towns are just centers of attention at times, really. You don't really use Castle Town in TP as a starting off point for adventures. You aren't really constantly coming and going from Castle Town. A few sidequest and main story quests pass through there but you don't constantly double back to Castle Town like the hub structure demands. Castle Town in Ocarina of Time gets wrecked and doesn't have much of anything going on after that but it kinda functions as a hub since the Temple of Time is used as a spawn point at that stage of the game.

The Lost Woods in OoT is more of a hub structurally since it acts as a shortcut to many outlying regions. But it's use as a hub is optional and doesn't see much use later in the game since the spawn point moves from Link's house nearby to the ToT.

Even Kakariko Village never really behaves like a hub either. To me the hub level design structure is in stark opposition to the nature of a Zelda game which is unstructured exploration. Only Majora's Mask managed to get away with the hub structure but that game had a very unique design that kinda necessitated it.

 

[CrimsonCavalier]

I agree wholeheartedly with @Castle and he said it and I didn't have to. Zelda games usually don't have a hub. Clock Town was the only real hub in the series.

On a related note, I think Zelda doesn't really have towns that feel alive. I'll definitely agree that the towns are more memorable than in bigger games, where the NPCs are almost clones of each other. In Windfall, for example, there may only be a handful of people, but each of them looks different, and most of them have some sort of part to play. Compare that to Skyrim, where you have more people, and they even have schedules (fancy!) but most of them do nothing. Oh sure, they go to the pub at the end of the day and order a pint, then go to bed, then go to work the next morning, but so what? They look the same as all the other NPCs and the majority of them have to role to play other than "citizen."

Then there's the 3rd option, which is what TP Castle Town does, which is just fill the town with a bunch of NPCs that you can't actually interact with. They're just there to give the illusion of a bustling town. Xenoblade X did this as well, with New LA. But it doesn't feel real, because just at looking at the people, you have to wonder, "Where do they all sleep? Where are the shops? Where do they work?" The size of the town does not fit the amount of people. New LA was the most fake-feeling video game city I've ever played in.

What's the right way to make a town? I dunno. There's something about Zelda towns that is charming and memorable, but definitely not realistic, and definitely don't give the feeling of "big bustling town," but at the same time, the NPCs don't feel fake or as if they're just there for filler.

 

[FrozenDragon]

I think the main towns in Zelda games have all been either good or great in their own way... But they have yet to fully perfect it.

MM's Clock Town is the closest to the ideal, feels very alive and is my favorite of them all, likewise, all characters are very memorable, but at the same time, it was rather small and relatively empty (given the technical constraints, not really their fault)

TP's Castle Town is bustling full of people, random, yes, but also regular NPCs you can talk to. However, it lacks areas to enter to.

SS's Skyloft gives an air of familiarity, like a small community where everyone knows each other, characters can be seen walking around, doing different activities as the plot progresses (OT, but this is rather underappreciated, checking on the NPCs during plot intermissions)

Both of the above are hurt by a real day-night cycle though.

The perfect town area would be similar to MM's but on a higher scale, with bigger areas and more real NPCs (the ones you can talk to) that perform different activities between morning, day, noon and evening, possibly more, who are also affected by plot progression. Having houses to enter and attractions, is would be a nice detail, too.

 

[Djinn]

Honestly I do not think towns in general are executed well in the series, much less hub towns. Way too often they only have 1-2 actual usable locations and everything else is just a backdrop that you cannot even interact with. And their utility drops like a rock almost immediately after the story moves on with the exception of a couple optional fetch quests. Most do not really have areas to visit, just empty alleys, and many more than you cannot enter, and most builds that you also cannot enter. Sometimes just adding in a totally superfluous building or house that you can walk into and say a few words to the NPCs inside helps in making a small village seem a whole lot larger.

Zelda towns are usually all business, no-nonsense quest and story NPCs only. They are just devoid of fun things to explore, extra NPCs and houses that show off some of the locals of the setting. They are usually very small, including the big cities like TP castletown is only actually about 3 screens.

None of them so far do a good job of connecting the various locations on the map, or connecting to the storyline of each place you go to over the course of the game. Even in SS it is hard to think of Skyloft as a hub. I mostly consider it the place where I constantly have to return to the bazaar to trade things I found. The other places there have little interest for me.