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Secrets in Zelda -- Shouldn't They Be More "Secretive"?

JuicieJ

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Jan 10, 2011
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On the midnight Spirit Train going anywhere
Secondly, a lot of puzzle solutions have felt forced by showing us exactly where to go and kind of what to expect. Skyward Sword was particularly egregious in this with both numerous cutscenes and Fi constantly pointing out the obvious to you, essentially destroying any sense of triumph in solving a lot of puzzles yourself. I wouldn't mind a cutscene or two to introduce us to a new concept, but then it should be up to the player to figure out what to do with that concept. When we obtained bombs three dungeons ago and the game is still showing us exactly where cracked walls are, the hand-holding is getting out of, well...hand. I'm not pointing the blame at any one game with that analogy, but I think it basically fits much of the recent series.

When exactly did Skyward Sword do things like this? Fi pointed out stuff, yeah, but when she did it was never telling us how to solve a puzzle, nor were there any cutscenes that blatantly revealed the solution to a puzzle. I can't even think of any Zelda game doing that, to be honest. Not even Twilight Princess. I think you're overexaggerating this.
 
In my opinion A Link to the Past stands as a paragon for masking secrets and set an example for all later Zelda games how to proportionate goodies throughout the obscure nooks and crannies of the overworld. A Link to the Past featured a heavy emphasis on action, a staple of the franchise since its early days, but also balanced that aspect with the equally important adventure aspect of the genre. Nearly every rock wall featured a hidden cave with a fairy mountain, chests full of rupees, or the like. In addition, digging in suspicious places typically conjured a worthy, veritable prize.

With the opening of the third dimension and its additional z-axis, Nintendo has seemed very hesitant to explore new ways to cloak treasures and encourage players to prod forward in search of secrets. Such reluctancy was reflected in the safer, by-the-rules design of recent installment. Twilight Princess featured large expansive dungeons but much of this space was left blank with no valuables to collect. Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and Skyward Sword skewed away from an open overworld in favor of transportation gimmicks. Nintendo must look to its past in order to shape a better future-a nonlinear title with an abundance of collectibles, some easy and other difficult to obtain.
 
*Ahem* Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword.

Personally, the dowsing feature was very well executed in Skyward Sword for finding certain otherwise unobtainable treasures. Nintendo believed it would be too difficult for players to locate obscure goods in the 3D plane without some form of assistance and the feature was an evolution of previous features namely the Lens of Truth and wolf senses. That said, the overall structure of the overworld was sorely lacking. I enjoyed scouring for Goddess Cubes and assisting the citizens of Skyloft in return for Gratitude Crystals but that wasn't nearly enough.

I agree with you regarding Majora's Mask. Nintendo placed dungeon exploration on the back burner in favor of side quests heavily integrated into the narrative. The game's success wasn't so much offering more collectibles than other 3D console installments than challenging players to record the nature of side quests and know on what specific days the tasks could be completed. Majora's Mask, however, is an exception to the rule and latter titles did not follow in its path.
 

JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
Joined
Jan 10, 2011
Location
On the midnight Spirit Train going anywhere
That said, the overall structure of the overworld was sorely lacking. I enjoyed scouring for Goddess Cubes and assisting the citizens of Skyloft in return for Gratitude Crystals but that wasn't nearly enough.

See, that's where you're wrong. I'm not trying to say that I know everything or that I'm better than you or whatever, but Skyward Sword's overworld -- well, the surface portions, anyway -- are literally A Link to the Past and The Minish Cap's overworld styles in 3D. Things are hidden exactly like you would find in those two games, and there's just as much to find, if not more.

I agree with you regarding Majora's Mask. Nintendo placed dungeon exploration on the back burner in favor of side quests heavily integrated into the narrative. The game's success wasn't so much offering more collectibles than other 3D console installments than challenging players to record the nature of side quests and know on what specific days the tasks could be completed. Majora's Mask, however, is an exception to the rule and latter titles did not follow in its path.

The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess didn't. Especially Twilight Princess. Skyward Sword did.
 

Tin Skulltula

Tin Skulltula
Joined
Nov 3, 2012
Location
Behind the Great Deku Tree
In the two newest games for the series, OoT-3D and SS, you had little secrets and such all over the place.

in OoT-3D, you had some lame ones (like the SS posters everywhere), some updated ones (the mario pictures became a mario world in the courtyard window), and some neat ones (like the Happy Mask Salesman's Rucksack in the backroom to his shop).in SS, you had a Tingle doll in Zelda's room, and a field of Remlits near the Goddess' Temple.

These are all fine and dandy, and thanks for the little nods nintendo, but i gotta agree with Ventus on this one. in the first game you reeeeeeeeeally had to have some dumb luck or unlimited items to know burning THAT lone tree would reveal a stairway. or bombing THAT wall would reveal a secret room. a better example would be the super hard to reach Chris Houlihan room in aLttP. this kind of secret actually encouraged people to communicate with each other in public about the game. nowadays that would be through the internet, but still i enjoy that cryptic style of secrecy, and i wish it were more like that today.
 

SavageWizzrobe

Eating Link since 1987
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Jul 27, 2010
Location
The Wind Temple
I'd say that there needs to be a balance between obvious versus obscure secrets in Zelda. Too obvious and there's no internal reward for finding a "secret", too obscure and it will take forever to find a secret. Fortunately, Zelda has been pretty good at not making it's secrets too obvious (for the most part; I realize not all secrets have the same difficulty to find). But I wouldn't want Zelda to go back to cryptic secrets like in the original, where you have to resort to bombing walls at random, for instance. I'd say the secrets in ALttP, OoT, MM, and TP are generally well balanced. There is usually some hint that there is a secret, such as a cracked wall, a circle of stones, and so on, but what you should do is not immediately obvious (except for the cracked wall, maybe). SS has more obvious secrets, as I uncovered most of them on my first playthrough thanks to dowsing, but some of the secrets kept me thinking for a while. Overall, I would like Zelda to stay with the ALttP/OoT level of secrecy, which I feel is the most balanced.
 
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When exactly did Skyward Sword do things like this? Fi pointed out stuff, yeah, but when she did it was never telling us how to solve a puzzle, nor were there any cutscenes that blatantly revealed the solution to a puzzle. I can't even think of any Zelda game doing that, to be honest. Not even Twilight Princess. I think you're overexaggerating this.

It wasn't everywhere throughout Skyward Sword, but it came up enough for me to notice and wish for less hand-holding. An example would be when you obtain the bow in the Sandship; both a thorough cutscene showing you the target on the mast of the ship and Fi telling you to look for strange targets indicate where you're supposed to go and what you're supposed to do next. In the Shipyard, you come across a deep pit of sand. Your natural inclination is to blow it away, but Fi still has to "suggest" you use the Gust Bellows. Perhaps an even better example would be in the Pirate Stronghold, where you come across a Timeshift Orb with an obvious purpose; it's a transportable Timeshift Stone. Nevertheless, Fi feels obligated to bring up to you exactly what it is and what you should do with it.

Therefore, rather than being able to think, "Sand in the pit? I'll blow it all away and see what happens!" Fi has a tendency to come up and point out the recommended way to go, making the idea feel like hers and not yours. Again, this isn't an omnipresent problem and some of the big puzzles (like uncovering the entrances to the Lanayru Mining Facility and the Isle of Songs) are left mostly up to the player, but the little stuff tends to add up.
 

JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
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It wasn't everywhere throughout Skyward Sword, but it came up enough for me to notice and wish for less hand-holding. An example would be when you obtain the bow in the Sandship; both a thorough cutscene showing you the target on the mast of the ship and Fi telling you to look for strange targets indicate where you're supposed to go and what you're supposed to do next. In the Shipyard, you come across a deep pit of sand. Your natural inclination is to blow it away, but Fi still has to "suggest" you use the Gust Bellows. Perhaps an even better example would be in the Pirate Stronghold, where you come across a Timeshift Orb with an obvious purpose; it's a transportable Timeshift Stone. Nevertheless, Fi feels obligated to bring up to you exactly what it is and what you should do with it.

Therefore, rather than being able to think, "Sand in the pit? I'll blow it all away and see what happens!" Fi has a tendency to come up and point out the recommended way to go, making the idea feel like hers and not yours. Again, this isn't an omnipresent problem and some of the big puzzles (like uncovering the entrances to the Lanayru Mining Facility and the Isle of Songs) are left mostly up to the player, but the little stuff tends to add up.

See, the way she says these things is more or less showing her character. Fi's a very statistical and thorough being. Sure, she goes overboard with things like "there is a large door here", but the things you mentioned are absolutely not the game holding your hand. It's just Fi being Fi. And that's good characterization.
 

Random Person

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Wig-Or-Log
I believe the secrets in most Zelda games are fine. However there are times where the series has slipped up. If there's not some clue as to how to find a secret, then you'll never find it. In the original two games (particularly in the AoL) some secrets were so hard to find that the chances of you knowing what to do without looking at some outside reference were very slim. At this point, the game becomes annoying, and not so much enjoyable. It's a challenge where the settings are completely unfair.

However, there's the opposite end too. While I feel the oldest games of the series were too vague on their clues, I feel the newest game (Skyward Sword) was too obvious. Where the older games didn't give us enough clues to find secrets for ourselves, SS gave us directions to said secrets. Dowsing, being the main culprit here, is pretty much Jack Sparrow's compass from Pirates of the Caribbean. When implementing dowsing, the game no longer becomes about looking for secrets, but following directions to secrets... which in a sense, makes them not secrets anymore. If I want to find which way is North, I can look at the direction of the sun, compare it to the time of day it is, and use my brain to figure out which way is North (following the clues)... or I can pull out my compass and it'll tell me. (following a guide) See the difference? The amount of processing goes down alot when there's something with you pointing the way. Now I don't think this concept of "secret telling" is bad for all games, just bad for Zelda which has a good chunk of its gameplay focused on finding secrets. It turns what used to be a challenge into a "going through the motions" experience. You don't "find," you "go."

All in all, I think the Zelda series does a decent job with its secrets, however, there are those few examples where it has done too much or too little.
 

JuicieJ

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Dowsing, being the main culprit here, is pretty much Jack Sparrow's compass from Pirates of the Caribbean. When implementing dowsing, the game no longer becomes about looking for secrets, but following directions to secrets... which in a sense, makes them not secrets anymore. If I want to find which way is North, I can look at the direction of the sun, compare it to the time of day it is, and use my brain to figure out which way is North (following the clues)... or I can pull out my compass and it'll tell me. (following a guide) See the difference? The amount of processing goes down alot when there's something with you pointing the way. Now I don't think this concept of "secret telling" is bad for all games, just bad for Zelda which has a good chunk of its gameplay focused on finding secrets. It turns what used to be a challenge into a "going through the motions" experience. You don't "find," you "go".

We've been over this before. Dowsing is an optional method of help for those that want to use it. It's not a forced method of finding things. You can't use that as an argument to say that it makes finding things to easy if it's optional. If you don't want its aid, don't use it. In fact, I think you'll find many of SS's secrets pretty challenging to find if you don't.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
We've been over this before. Dowsing is an optional method of help for those that want to use it. It's not a forced method of finding things. You can't use that as an argument to say that it makes finding things to easy if it's optional. If you don't want its aid, don't use it. In fact, I think you'll find many of SS's secrets pretty challenging to find if you don't.

But...that's part of the game...it's there. Given to you on a platter.

You could make this argument for Twilight Princess's hidden skills because those were sidequests.

You couldn't make that argument for Wind Waker's parrying because it was handed to you at the start. Just like dowsing. It's a part of the game and you have it.

Not using dowsing is like doing a three heart challenge. It doesn't make the game harder, it just means you chose to self-challenge yourself.

I honestly didn't have much of a problem with Skyward Sword's dowsing except for the gratitude crystals and the goddess cubes.
 

Ventus

Mad haters lmao
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Not using dowsing is like doing a three heart challenge. It doesn't make the game harder, it just means you chose to self-challenge yourself.

I totally agree with you on this. But it's awkward, because I also totally disagree at the same time. It's totally true, not using the tools the game offers you doesn't make the game itself harder; you're just handicapping yourself. But at the same time...handicapping yourself means the game is harder [for you], doesn't it? Actually, no I see what you're saying now.

If I give you a tool that allows you to 100% the game in one minute, but not using the tool means you 100% the game in an hour, the game is still easy to 100% as the tool is given to you -- you just choose not to use it.

So, if a tool makes the game secrets easy to find, then the game secrets ARE EASY TO FIND; whether you choose to make it harder or not is totally up to you, but the secrets are easy to find regardless. That's why I prefer the older style (LoZ) -- the secrets weren't made easy to find and you had to guess...you know, like an actual secret.
 

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