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Return of Shrines?

YIGAhim

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Breath of The Wild gave Zelda a new concept: Shrines.

Shrines are mini-dungeons scattered across Hyrule that have puzzles or fights inside for one or more rewards. There were 120 of them in Breath of The Wild, and they were all very similar.

This was the first Zelda game that did this, and I'm betting it won't be the last.

What are your thoughts on the idea of the return of shrines?
 
Joined
Jun 7, 2017
We don't need to debate our positions on whether or not Shrines should be considered "mini-dungeons" or not. But because you brought it up, I'll just voice that I do not consider them mini-dungeons.

On topic ... what do I want to see done with them in the future? Well, I want a lot fewer of them, and want them to be larger and more difficult. I want them to actually be "mini-dungeons". I also don't want them to be the way that you get the required "stuff" for upgrading your hearts/stamina. Not sure why, but I don't. I want those things to be the rewards for what I'd consider "real exploring". To explain, shrines were too easy to find for the most part. Even if you didn't do all 120, you probably found 100 of them without much effort. 100 shrines / 4 orbs per upgrade = 25 upgrades. Take 10 of those upgrades for stamina, and that still nets you 15 more hearts. That's a lot for a game like this. Don't forget about the 4 you get from the Divine Beasts.

Anyway ... I want to see maybe 30 of them in total. I want them to be so much more than they were in BotW. They should be hard to find, and all should require more than just seeing them and making your way to them. There should be "stuff" you have to do in order to access them. None should be visible at all without triggering whatever it is that revels them (much like some of the shrine quests in BotW).

I want them all different ... inside and out ... puzzles, etc. Everything. Themed for the areas they are in (like a real dungeon or mini-dungeon would be) ... I want some where you can climb in them ... some where you cannot. I want under-water stuff in the next game, which means I want to see that in shrines as well. Hell, for that matter, an underwater shrine itself would be great.

I miss traditional, big, time-consuming dungeons ... those have to come back. But a mix of maybe 6-8 real dungeons, and 30 shrines (aka: real mini-dungeons) would be amazing. Add mini-bosses to the shrines as well as having some different mini-bosses in the overworld.

... I need more time to think of what other things I'd like to see in shrines for the next game ... so I reserve my right to post again and add more stuff later lol.
 

Ninja

Well well well
Joined
Jul 5, 2017
I appreciate shrines as a way to improve either hearts or stamina.

If the shrines are here to stay, perhaps they should make fewer of them, make them longer and more challenging with mini bosses, and the rewards being heart containers and stamina vessels, enough of them to give you two full rows of hearts and three stamina wheels.

After that, I would definitely like to see actual dungeons with permanent weapons, and high level armor. Give us some hidden dungeons that would take over an hour to complete. Give us some superbosses! I'm thinking Penance from FFX, or Sephiroth from Kingdom Hearts.
 

YIGAhim

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I would argue that shrines are mini dungeons, but they are so small and easy, I get your point.


I would also like to see larger shrines, but those would kinda be dungeons, and I'd like real dungeons. The shrines the way they were wasn't enough, but if they get too big, they'll cross the line into dungeon territory
 

Link Floyd

ᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵘⁿ
Joined
Sep 23, 2014
I would love to see them again. :) Maybe for the next game though they could have fewer shrines and more actual dungeons.
 

PalaeoJoe

The Diplomatic Dinosaur
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Jul 1, 2012
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Early Cretaceous North America
I think we can all agree that shrines in the next game should be less common, more diverse and larger. They should become mini dungeons in the next game or atleast many of them should. As I pointed out in the thread about if shrines are mini-dungeons, some of them were and most were not.

I think that in the next game a much greater percentage of shrines should be the size of mini-dungeons but I think there should be variety like there was in BotW. The shrines which are not mini-dungeons should offer something unique that would not necessarily be in a classic dungeon or mini-dungeon such as, enemy gantlet, obstacle course, an illusion (maybe something like the lost woods) or some other large tricky puzzle that is mixed with enemy encounters as you navigate the puzzle.
 

DarkestLink

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Joined
Oct 28, 2012
I really hope not. They disrupted the flow far too much and worked against BOTW's large world. The world itself is seamless, without loading screens, but the sheer number of shrines means you'll be starring at a long loading screen often.

Integrate the puzzles naturally into the world or create larger mini dungeons with more content.
 

PalaeoJoe

The Diplomatic Dinosaur
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Early Cretaceous North America
I really hope not. They disrupted the flow far too much and worked against BOTW's large world. The world itself is seamless, without loading screens, but the sheer number of shrines means you'll be starring at a long loading screen often.

Integrate the puzzles naturally into the world or create larger mini dungeons with more content.
You make a fair point about the shrines breaking up the flow of the world. The loading screens didn't bother me often, but it is objectively better to not have them.
You are conflating the shrines and the loading screens. The loading screens are not part of the shrines themselves but a byproduct of them. Your right, If possible it would be better to design the successors to BotW's shrines so that they are integrated into the world and don't interrupt the flow of the game.
 
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Location
Michigan
I'll start off by saying this: For the most part, I don't like shrines.

Now, I'll clarify that further. There are shrines that I genuinely liked. These would be the ones that contain several puzzles at once, or one puzzle with multiple steps. Blue Flame springs to mind, but I know there were a few others whose names I don't recall that were about as good. But I found myself getting very irritated with the very simple, easy, single puzzle shrines because they rarely took more than 2 seconds worth of thought to solve. If I'm gonna sit through several minutes of loading to get in and out, there might as well be something of substance to wait for. Otherwise you're just adding time to my game that I don't need. They also didn't feel fulfilling being so short or easy, even though a few of them were actually somewhat clever. They get your mind working a bit but then they're just over. Often times I would find myself wishing they had a few more rooms that built on from the mechanic they'd established.

When I get down to it, I don't think I want shrines to reappear like this. Many of them felt like filler, and even though some of them came at the end of a shrine quest, I always got irritated when they were just the "walk in and collect your price" types. You might argue that "well completing the shrine quest was the puzzle". Maybe. But my reward for completing it should have been an excuse for some more really cool gameplay. Not a bull**** "gimme".

I understand what the point of the shrines was: they didn't want to strongly interrupt the flow of the "explore this whole giant world" gameplay that they put so much time into crafting. But I think the game suffered because of it. I mean, this may seem a tad silly but I've always thought of Zelda games from a lens of three gameplay elements that sorta mirror the parts of the Triforce: Fighting Monsters (Power), Solving Puzzles (Wisdom), and Exploring Dungeons (Courage). And for the most part, the best titles in the series have been the ones where these three pieces were more or less in harmony with each other. So it's my hope that for the next game, they ditch this mentality of chopping up proper dungeons into lots of tiny rooms and sprinkling them across the overworld. What I hope they do is return to having legit dungeons, and then also having some completely optional dungeons thrown in there. One idea I had a while ago was to base the dungeons around an idea almost like a compass rose. Not in literal terms, like direction, but more like how we have North, South, East, and West, but also directions inbetween those like Northeast or Southwest. You can have your standard elemental dungeons, then 4 more for what I'll call 'primal force' dungeons. Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Life, Death, Order, Chaos. Have the elemental ones be the required ones, then top it off with your Ganon's Castle or whathaveyou, then just have the other four all be based around their aspects. The Life dungeon can be somewhere teeming with life, and you do stuff like grow magical stalks to reach new areas or use magic to make stuff grow and change to work your way through. Death could be your excuse to go all out with the Poes and ReDeads and marinate in that delicious 'Bottom of the Well' type jazz. The Order dungeon can be something like the usual "ancient Shiekah trial" thing where it's obviously artificial and stocked with lots of puzzles that reward logical thinking (like your laser light and sliding block puzzles, or monsters that require observation to defeat instead of brute force), and lastly your Chaos dungeon can be something that is mostly about straight swordplay. Possibly some sort of massive Bokoblin camp in a rundown coliseum or something. If you really want to, you can make the optional ones be a little less complex than the main ones, but they should still be proper dungeons.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent but I just used it to illustrate that there are better options. What I'd like to see from something like what I mentioned above is a way to organically weave the existence of these places into the feel of the world, put them in places that make sense, don't lead the player by the nose to get to them, drop your hints or do whatever to make even finding these places feel like a great reward, filled with mystique and the sense of adventure. I mean, does anyone remember what it felt like the first time they played an old Zelda game? I mean, the original LoZ wasn't even my first one, it was like my 5th or something. I still remember the thrill I got when I stumbled upon the first dungeon. The way this old tree just sat there with a yawing, cavernous mouth... something felt strange and wonderful to find it like that. I mean, just think how anticlimactic some of the shrines are. You make an arduous ascent up some mountain, when suddenly you hear the music fade in. Before you is a glowing Shrine, the wind blows softly, a bird takes wing... something about this place feels magical. You open the door, descend to the chamber below.... only to pick up a box, set it on a button, and leave. I mean, come on, the **** was that all about?
 

YIGAhim

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You summed it up very well, @AncientPoe
Many of the dungeons were laughably easy. I believe "The Wind Guides You" comes to mind. In that shrines, all you have to do is jump across a platform or two with your paraglider, and you win.

There is no real substance in that, and it totally interrupts the gameplay we all actually look forward to.

Dungeons have always probably been my favorite part of Zelda games. The kind where you explore, and there is only really one correct route, and a bunch of keys to collect, with a difficult (Or maybe not...) mini-boss that rewards you with a cool item. Now, shrines will never be able to actually give you an item. The closest they will ever get is clothing (like the Barbarian Armor), and that's cool, but not the same as getting that bow from the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time, for example.

Breath of The Wild certainly focused mostly on sheer quantity before quality, and it certainly shows.

I like the idea of having optional REAL dungeons. Technically the Divine Beasts were optional, but to have optional, you also kind of need required. The optional dongeons could still give the player some item of value. The clawshots in Skyward Sword come to mind here. In Lanayru, you see all these clawshot locations out in the open, clear as day. WHen you return with a new item (The Clawshot), it opens up new areas, and could possibly open up new ways to beat dungeons or cross the overworld easier (If we were talking about it being in a new game).

Long Story short: We all want more substance.
 
Joined
Sep 21, 2014
Location
Michigan
You summed it up very well, @AncientPoe
Many of the dungeons were laughably easy. I believe "The Wind Guides You" comes to mind. In that shrines, all you have to do is jump across a platform or two with your paraglider, and you win.

There is no real substance in that, and it totally interrupts the gameplay we all actually look forward to.

Dungeons have always probably been my favorite part of Zelda games. The kind where you explore, and there is only really one correct route, and a bunch of keys to collect, with a difficult (Or maybe not...) mini-boss that rewards you with a cool item. Now, shrines will never be able to actually give you an item. The closest they will ever get is clothing (like the Barbarian Armor), and that's cool, but not the same as getting that bow from the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time, for example.

Breath of The Wild certainly focused mostly on sheer quantity before quality, and it certainly shows.

I like the idea of having optional REAL dungeons. Technically the Divine Beasts were optional, but to have optional, you also kind of need required. The optional dongeons could still give the player some item of value. The clawshots in Skyward Sword come to mind here. In Lanayru, you see all these clawshot locations out in the open, clear as day. WHen you return with a new item (The Clawshot), it opens up new areas, and could possibly open up new ways to beat dungeons or cross the overworld easier (If we were talking about it being in a new game).

Long Story short: We all want more substance.
Actually, a note on that: I'm willing to give a select few shrines like The Wind Guides You a pass because they're so easy to find, and so close to the Plateau, that it's clear they're still meant to essentially be tutorial, since they work in a mechanic not demonstrated to you on the plateau (being blown around by gusts of wind). But dungeons like Shift and Lock that you find very far away, that are basically "lift this block for a while, then get a thing" irk me.

Also I neglected to mention this but I actually really like the combat shrines. If given the chance, I'd do something similar to them. But that's gonna need a thread of its own...
 

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