Breath of the Wild More Labyrinth-Like Dungeons

[Lozjam]

Think back to the original LoZ and Adventure the Link's dungeons. The focus was not on puzzles, more was it navigating a trap-infested maze that served as a war of attrition to the player. There were traps, keys, hidden doors, and the whole game's dungeons served as a labyrinth. It was a maze to figure out the player.
Aonuma talked about changing puzzle solving as we know it in Zelda games.

So you know we’ve talked a little bit today about the puzzle-solving element in Zelda, and how that’s kinda taken a different shape in Hyrule Warriors. But I think people have come to just assume that puzzle-solving will exist in a Zelda game, and I kinda wanna change that, maybe turn it on its ear.

As a player progresses through any game, they’re making choices. They’re making hopefully logical choices to progress them in the game. And when I hear ‘puzzle solving’ I think of like moving blocks so that a door opens or something like that. But I feel like making those logical choices and taking information that you received previously and making decisions based on that can also be a sort of puzzle-solving. So I wanna kinda rethink or maybe reconstruct the idea of puzzle-solving within the Zelda universe.

So perhaps the puzzles in dungeons should revolve around traps, and staying smart and light on your feet as you explore, instead of solving one big elaborate, boring puzzle. Perhaps these traps could have small visual cues to let you know if a room has a trap, and part of the puzzle is figuring out the traps.
I think this could bring a breath of fresh air into dungeons, and one that can reminiscence the games of which this fabulous series comes from.

 

[Spirit]

Resident Evil meets Tomb Raider meets Zelda.. yes please!

 

[AncientPoe]

Ehhh… not really a fan of this idea. I enjoy the complex puzzle solving. Though I think it would be good to have perhaps one dungeon in the game that mixes it up like this, but I wouldn't want them all to be.

 

[Salem]

Yes, less one-time items to solve puzzles in a dungeon and more exploring action based dungeon.

 

[Dio]

Sounds good. Dark souls had a really good area called Sens Fortress which is the kind of dungeon I might like to see in Zelda.
There are hidden floor buttons that if you step on them arrows will shoot you out of the wall. There are swinging pendulums which you must avoid whilst crossing narrow beams above a pit of monsters.

 

[Deleted member 81859]

I am a huge fan of the theif!Link idea, so I would love to see a heavily guarded dungeon full of booby traps. They could present it as a direct challenge to the player, so we would have to use all of our wit and quick reflexes to get through the dungeon. The puzzle could be figuring out how not to die!

 

[Swordbomb]

Sounds good. Dark souls had a really good area called Sens Fortress which is the kind of dungeon I might like to see in Zelda.
There are hidden floor buttons that if you step on them arrows will shoot you out of the wall. There are swinging pendulums which you must avoid whilst crossing narrow beams above a pit of monsters.

That pendulum stuff kinda reminds me of the final room in TP's Temple of Time before the boss...
It had pits to jump over, a couple Beamos, some pendulums, and other stuff. Overall, if they made a dungeon with traps like those and more, I'm pretty sure it could work...

 

[Mercedes]

Resident Evil meets Tomb Raider meets Zelda.. yes please!

I'd be down! Seems like a good way to help move the game forward, rather than at the stand-still I've feel it's been on.

 

[Rabbattack]

They did say they were going back to the series roots, that being the orignal LoZ on NES. They should include puzzles that make use of more than one specific item you find in that dungeon. In one dungeon you could be using a combination of Arrows, Bombs, and the Boomerang.

Playing through the first game for the first time made me realize how great the labyrinth like designs were and what the newer games were missing out. In the orignal Zelda the Darknuts required you to hit them from a side other than than front which is something that annoyed me when I was younger, but I now understand how it gave it a good level of difficulty and timing. If this game is going to be good they should put more effort into the puzzles and enemy design. If all enemies were simple and too easy it just wouldn't be a labyrinth. The dungeons in the first game didn't require you to obtain any items in order to complete it other than bombs, which was cool. Being forced to obtain an item in order to progress rather than finding it yourself with no obligation to, and that item actually helping you get past certain areas rather than being required to get past certain areas is something that shouldn't be done.

 

[Djinn]

I would definitely love more of an exploration based dungeon that incites you to want to bomb walls, scale things, and look for hidden doors again. I have had enough of the enter a room, shoot at things or push buttons to find the puzzle, solve the puzzle, leave room, repeat in the next room. And I do not mean make the entire dungeon a puzzle like the OoT Water Temple or WW Forest Temple, but a lengthy maze that you can get through the hard way or find a better way around with bombs and hidden doors like the LoZ style levels. And maybe have you miss things if you keep cheating your way through and cutting corners. Make some incentive to go through the whole place either for completionists or maybe the in game fetch quests like gold skulltulas/bugs.

 

[AncientPoe]

I suppose it comes down to designing encounters. First, you think of the type of encounter, be it an enemy one or a puzzle or a trap, and from there you think about the types of behaviors you want to incentivize. That sort of planning framework would be crucial to designing a game like what you guys are describing. I mean really, anything can be a puzzle, so to speak. Something to be logically approached and solved. Many times you do that almost reflexively. Think back to a time when you entered a room in a game, and were given time and a vantage point to see both the room and the enemies before jumping down into the fray. have you ever done that, seen an enemy and thought "oh i should switch to my Whatsit Item because it makes dealing with these guys easy," or gone one step further and simply sniped every enemy visible and accessible to you before entering the room and dealing with the more passive dangers therein?

after typing that i spent almost 10 solid minutes just daydreaming up things...