Except with how dense the surface portions were, there was inherently more effort required in searching for things than in most other modern Zeldas. In the GameCube games, especially Twilight Princess, all you ever really have to do is waltz right up to anything and everything because there's nothing really there to hide it. It was never anything more than empty space followed by small dot of content. Skyward Sword, while very much a linear game, brought back the requirement of having to scour landscapes to find a large amount of the extra content that hadn't been seen in a console Zelda since Majora's Mask (not to mention a Zelda game in general since The Minish Cap) due to the amount of obstacles & terrain hazards involved in the travel.
Well to me, the art of discovery comes from true searching and scouring.
Skyward Sword's surface proportions were heavily limited due to the ratio of land mass to content. They were very compact--large? yes--but compact nonetheless. Everything you had to find, whether it be those fetch quests, Goddess Cubes or your objective, it was all rather in front of you (a few feet literally). There was no deviation or separate expedition that needed to be taken out be the player as 90% of the time everything was pretty much there. I can only go from my one personal experience and in
Skyward Sword, the task of completing the game 100% was all rather straightforward and could be done in tandem with the main with little effort. While in
The Wind Waker and
Twilight Princess, such quests required
additional exploration to complete set quests. All of this forms the beauty of exploration and additional discovery beyond the main linear quest design.
JuicieJ said:
Believe it or not, SS's provinces aren't any smaller than TP's. It may not seem this way at a glance, but that's simply because SS's have a much larger amount of density. Just compare
this to
this. See how barren TP's terrain is? That's how it is the majority of the time. Now, at the same times, see how active SS's terrain is? That's how
it is the majority of the time. But, at the same time, if you look at those two images closer, you should notice that their sizes aren't any different. And, no, it's not that there's some of TP's not being shown off. There's a tad bit extra to the left of East Hyrule Field, but that's just it -- a tad bit. That's pretty much the entirety of the province in the image.
Well that wasn't really my point.
In regards to
Skyward Sword, it was the density of each of the areas which I wasn't fond of. I loved the idea of having an area full of content, but I also love diversity.
SS's biggest overworld problem is that it only had provinces (well it had the sky, but that's disconnected). I have no problem with provinces being full of content as I said that above; however the space in between should be the
journey. This couldn't be achieved due to design of the overworld itself as it had no space in between. It was literally like having Death Mountain, Lake Hylia and Faron Woods (all from
TP) being squashed together. The Sky, a separate disjointed area of navigation, served this purpose. Although the Sky had no real realistic feeling of discovery and adventure due it's lackluster design and, the biggest point, it was disconnected form the surface. The fact that it was disconnected really took away from the natural sense of progression from exploration. You simply exit the surface via a Bird Statue, travel to the next portal, and enter the next province. Of course, when looking at this briefly, you can relate it to any overworld, but the simple fact remains, the Sky and the Surface aren't connected which ultimately hurt that feeling in my opinion.
JuicieJ said:
"One flat plain" is pretty much what the GCN Zeldas' overworlds lived and died by. Again, all you ever had to do was waltz up to things with basically no hassle. Granted, TWW has a pretty respectable amount of exploration involved in the process, but TP decidedly does not. Yes, it has relatively large sections, but you're set on a solitary course the entirety of the game with very little wiggle room despite this. You can't go anywhere off the beaten path until the game says otherwise. It also has an absurd amount of hallways, especially in-between the different provinces. Every transitional section in the game is a giant bottleneck, which limits freedom and exploration by default. Combine that with the restrictive structure of the game, and... well, you have one hell of an intensely linear game.
The hallways are mainly transition points between a province/town and the main central overworld, so they don't really bother me as they don't take up the bulk of the overworld. The sheer openness of the landscape is where the feeling of discovery comes from. While it's by no means perfect, it's a start nonetheless. It's not true freedom but it gives you that sense of grandeur that Hyrule has never captured before. Most of the other games include a smaller Hyrule packed with content, well more so a squeezed overworld. This create a very claustrophobic atmosphere and the only way exploration comes into play is by encountering puzzles that halt Link's path. A journey creates that feeling of a discovery ever so sweeter. Having that open landscape connecting each province is just more natural and allows room for more content. If you're exploring an area where everything is just there its not really a journey. Of you have a large landscape, in which to traverse, then you have an actual journey. In
Twilight Princess You can follow the progression of the story, but you can also venture off from your main task to do other things, such is where that slight element of freedom comes into play. With no open space to actually explore, the room for additional exploration is heavily limited.
JuicieJ said:
TP never really has any dense areas, though -- not outside of Snowpeak, anyway (and even then, there are much denser areas in the series). There's always empty space in an attempt to make the world seem more open than it actually is. There is a sizable amount of content to be found, but it's all so far spread out due to the terrain being too large for its own good. It follows the mentality of "bigger is better", which is a fallacy, as there always needs to be an appropriate amount of content to justify the size of an area in a game.
I think the tone
Twilight Princess was going for was a more barren Hyrule, as if there was a tragic event a few decades before the game itself. I know this doesn't necessarily explain why it can't have dense areas, but that tone of desolation and isolation really made the game unique in my eyes, as if there was something beyond the game itself. In order to achieve that feeling you essentially have to create areas which aren't packed to the brim with content. (kind of off topic, but that's just my view of why the land was like that).
Though I have said this before, I would like a
Twilight Princess-like overworld (in relation to its scale and openness) with the combination of
Skyward Sword's content and puzzle filled provinces.
JuicieJ said:
Which, again, is something the GCN games never have. Really, the only 3D Zelda games that do are MM and SS. I think it could reasonably argued that SS leaned too much towards the density side of things regarding is surface portions -- and, honestly, I'd agree with that assessment -- but it still mixed it up a pretty fair amount, especially given the game's overarching linearity.
Well maybe
Skyward Sword with the Sky, but
MM was a very condensed overworld. Don't get me wrong, I do love
Majora's Mask and Termina, I'm just not sold on the idea of four provinces and the central hub being within a few seconds of one another. It definitely allows for a faster paced game with no real chore of a journey (like the Great Sea sometimes had) but Nintendo can counter that.
I like to think of some open world RPGs when thinking about this. Of course I know they're very much different, and a
Zelda game should never really be that open, but I still feel they do nail the diversity of open and compact areas. If you take a game like
Fallout 3,you have this huge barren wasteland with no real content in its mass emptiness. Then you have a variety of locations, both large and small in size to give it that diversity. If a
Zelda game can somehow match that great balance then exploration--even in empty areas--would be enjoyable.