What Dungeon Style do you Prefer for Future Zelda's?

[Zero_Origin]

Seeing that Nintendo is likely to continue with the "open air" style games going forward, and that the Divine Beasts weren't well received overall, what style of dungeon would you like to see from here on out?

The way I see it, BotW provided two different styles of open world dungeons: the Divine Beasts and Hyrule Castle, both of which have their pros and cons.

Would you like to see more of the nonlinear, navigation/exploration and enemy "gauntlet" style of Hyrule Castle?

Would you like to see a new and improved version of the "puzzle box" style of dungeon that the Divine Beasts represented?

Or, would you like a return to more traditional style "lock and key" dungeons of the past. If so, please explain how you think this style could be reconciled with or modified to fit an open air game design.

Personally, I'd like to see some sort of middle-ground combination of Hyrlule Castle and the Divine Beasts. I'd start with the open layout of Hyrule Castle as the base, but add objectives like the Divine Beasts that you have to complete before reaching the boss (but vary the objectives to avoid the repetition of the "activate 5 terminals trope"). However, Hyrule Castle was short on good puzzles, which are essential to a good dungeon in my book, so some rune/ability based puzzles like those found in the Divine Beasts and Shrines would definitely need to be added. I'd also like each dungeon to have a unique rune/ability that you acquire and can use only within it's confines. This would simulate the feeling of dungeon items without taking up permanent inventory space.

Let me know what you think!

 

[Kerest]

I think Zelda should style herself more along the lines of...

Wait, wrong thread.

Old-style dungeon and Hyrule Castle strike me as the best combination. A lot of the more popular modern RPGs do it that way, and Zelda can innovate in other areas.

 

[weirdinin]

Both dungeon types, Hyrule Castle and Divine Beasts, were well designed, although Divine Beasts were too similar aesthetically. Hopefully Zelda Switch offers more these kind of dungeons. Dont know how it would work if they tried to mix open air and puzzle box type of dungeons. Perhaps I prefer they are kept separate as was in BotW and not combined beacuse puzzle boxes dont feel as exploration. Or who knows maybe it could work.

What I dont wish for is dungeon specific items. That takes off all creativity. What I loved most in BotW was that it wasn’t so obvious what item you was supposed to use. And that there was more than one way to solve a shrine. Specific rune/item/ability for each dungeon is not likely to happen after BotW. I bet Nintendo is going to stick with open air design for a while.

 

[LegendOfMeesh]

I’m personally not a fan of the Divine Beasts or shrines at all. I would prefer for traditional dungeons to be brought back.

 

[Dio]

I want themed dungeons back like in the older Zelda's. So each place doesn't look the same and have the same music. They actually had rather a few good puzzles in BoTW's shrines it's just the shrines themselves were unrewarding to complete seeing as they usually only gave another breakable weapon for finishing one and did not contribute to furthering you in the story.

 

[weirdinin]

Whilst I also liked Hyrule Castle, I'd hesitate to call it a dungeon. It felt like a more heavily guarded section of the overworld with no real puzzles to solve or even any particular purpose other than to stall the build up to the Ganon fight.

Hyrule Castle certainly isn’t a dungeon. And I’m not sure should Divine Beasts be called dungeons either. I think they are called dungeons only because dungeons have been so long a vital part of Zelda franchise.

I finished BotW first and then joined to the forum. People here were talking about dungeons in BotW. I was wondering what dungeons??? Did I skipped some parts of the game?? Was there somekind of important labyrinth in the game? Before BotW I had played only MM and OoT 20 years ago so term “dungeon” wasn’t so clear to me. For them, who have not played Zelda before BotW, I guess BotW’s puzzles don’t strike as dungeons. BotW is open world game so dungeons don’t fit in it.

Now that I have more zelda titles played, I can understand why many Zeldafans are after traditional dungeons. But to me, as a newbie zeldafan, current open “dungeon” design is a lot more fun than traditional designs.

 

[DarkestLink]

The Zelda Dungeon types. And the question isn't how to fit it to an Open World genre, the Open World genre doesn't matter. The better question is how do you fit the Open World genre to suit dungeons, the heart and soul of Zelda? And while it may be possible, I don't think it's worth pursuing. The Open World genre is one that emphases on lore, story, and freedom. None of these are important to Zelda and, even in BOTW, never truly utilized.

We've had Zeldas without an overworld. The original was supposed to be a Dungeon Maker. Ocarina of Time was supposed to take place in one massive dungeon. For the majority of games (mostly 2D), the overworld plays very similar to a dungeon. Dungeons are so ingrained into Zelda's identity that, despite Divine Beasts playing absolutely nothing like dungeons, people are quick to refer to them as such. That's because the idea of Zelda without dungeons is simply unthinkable.

Hyrule Castle isn't a dungeon, even by BOTW standards. Calling it a dungeon is an insult to what it truly accomplishes. It's simply part of the overworld, and it's the one area in the game that does it right. The rest of the world should be like Hyrule Castle: dangerous, exciting, interesting, and fun. It's the one area where exploration is interesting and rewarding. If they want to keep going with the Open World route, this is the benchmark that needs to be set.

 

[Kerest]

The Zelda Dungeon types. And the question isn't how to fit it to an Open World genre, the Open World genre doesn't matter. The better question is how do you fit the Open World genre to suit dungeons, the heart and soul of Zelda? And while it may be possible, I don't think it's worth pursuing. The Open World genre is one that emphases on lore, story, and freedom. None of these are important to Zelda and, even in BOTW, never truly utilized.

Skyrim managed to do open world and dungeons just fine. Zelda can easily do better.

 

[Zero_Origin]

The Zelda Dungeon types. And the question isn't how to fit it to an Open World genre, the Open World genre doesn't matter. The better question is how do you fit the Open World genre to suit dungeons, the heart and soul of Zelda? And while it may be possible, I don't think it's worth pursuing. The Open World genre is one that emphases on lore, story, and freedom. None of these are important to Zelda and, even in BOTW, never truly utilized.

While I agree that the dungeon style of AlttP and OoT has been the heart of the series ever since, BotW clearly drew more inspiration from the original LoZ and shifted the emphasis back to overworld exploration. That was Aonuma's intent from the start. And while part of me would like them to return to the OoT formula, every indication we have so far from the dev team is that open air is the new format for the foreseeable future. This is why I phrased the question in terms of adapting the old dungeon style to the open world format. I'm simply adjusting to the reality that open world/non-linear is the way it is going to be going forward, whether some of us Zelda traditionalists like it or not. The whole reason for the creation of this thread and poll, is to address conundrum of how to capture the magic and feel of the old dungeon styles in this new non-linear era of Zelda.

Hyrule Castle isn't a dungeon, even by BOTW standards. Calling it a dungeon is an insult to what it truly accomplishes. It's simply part of the overworld, and it's the one area in the game that does it right. The rest of the world should be like Hyrule Castle: dangerous, exciting, interesting, and fun. It's the one area where exploration is interesting and rewarding. If they want to keep going with the Open World route, this is the benchmark that needs to be set.

I see where you're coming from, but I still consider Hyrule Castle to be a dungeon (of a different kind) since it seems to be a transition of the original LoZ style dungeons from 2-D into 3-D. The LoZ dungeons did not have the kinds of puzzle's we've been used to since OoT, and were essentially internal gauntlets you had to navigate that had lots of tough enemies and a boss at the end. Hyrule Castle fits this description, with the addition of having some external areas, which makes it blend with the overwold a bit more seamlessly.

 

[DarkestLink]

Skyrim managed to do open world and dungeons just fine. Zelda can easily do better.

It had an overworld and an underworld. But I wouldn't compare Skyrim's caves to Zelda's dungeons.

 

[Kerest]

It had an overworld and an underworld. But I wouldn't compare Skyrim's caves to Zelda's dungeons.

I wasn't talking about the caves. I meant the actual dungeons. Skyrim had more than one type of place to explore :p

Which I think is the problem people have with BotW: It all felt kinda the same. Which, given the technology of the people you're dealing with, is realistic; Skyrim got away with its variety of places to explore because you were exploring both caves and the ruins of multiple civilizations (the Empire, Snow Elves, Dwemer, old Nord, Dunmer, and vampires). The Zelda developers simply followed the old standard of having the ruins of a single civilization follow similar design philosophies without accounting for why this typically is in games (a shortcut for when you have the ruins of multiple civilizations).

 

[Zero_Origin]

I really enjoyed the structure of the Divine Beasts but can understand when people say they were a copy paste job. I liked the fact that some puzzles could be solved multiple ways, and I'd say the DLC Divine Beast was my favourite.

That being said, I still preferred the castle to the traditional Zelda Dungeon, which I feel is a stale formula now. I'd rather the series stuck with the Divine Beasts style of dungeon, but incorporated the ridiculous attention to theme and styling that SS gave. Say what you want about SS, the dungeon variety was phenomenal, and I feel both games could learn a lot from each other.

I have to agree with a lot of what you've said. Even though part of me misses the traditional dungeons, I actually enjoyed the Divine Beasts (for the most part). I like puzzle box dungeons in general, so being able to interact with the dungeon directly was a lot of fun and a more than suitable replacement for dungeon items in my eyes. That said, they were still flawed in a number of ways. If they were to return they will need:

-Unique interior architecture/theme.
-More enemies/tougher enemies. And one's that fit the dungeon's theme/region.
-Unique objectives instead of rehashing "activate the 5 terminals."
-Bosses with more individual identity (not Ganon rehashes).
-At least twice as long in length, and twice as many of them.

If Nintendo ticked all these boxes I'd actually be happy to see them return.

(And yes, I agree that SS was probably the pinnacle of traditional dungeons in terms of overall quality).

 

[Farore's Chosen]

Traditional puzzly lock and key. And why wouldn't it fit into an open world? TLoZ and ALBW did it before. Its a simple matter of not item gating the overworld. Or at least most of it.

 

[Moblinking5000]

I love all three types; I'd love to see a game with HC-esque dungeons(HC in BotW was more or less a 3D version of the dungeons from LoZ-ALttP, anyway, so it was good to see it come back) at the forefront, with some DB-esque dungeons that could possibly lead up to some bigger lock and key dungeons, which have you access some parts nonlinearly and close some other parts off until later.

 

[Zero_Origin]

Traditional puzzly lock and key. And why wouldn't it fit into an open world dungeon? TLoZ and ALBW did it before. Its a simple matter of not item gating the overworld. Or at least most of it.

Yeah, item gating is what I was concerned about. Initially I thought a return to item usage would almost guarantee this problem in an open world as opposed to a linear one. ALBW solved this problem in a certain respect, but I feel like it created another problem in doing so, in that it suffered from having to build the puzzles of each dungeon around one item to the exclusion of any others. However, after thinking about the situation some more I realized it wasn't as big a deal as I expected. The next game could solve the issue by essentially dividing the puzzle solving tools (whether they are classic items, or rune like abilities) into two camps:

- all purpose ones you'll use throughout the game and acquire during the tutorial like in BotW
- followed up by dungeon specific ones that are hardly/if ever used in the over-world

At any rate, some people may not like the idea of having some items that are used only in one dungeon and then become irrelevant (TP caught a lot of slack from the gaming community for this), but it's still the lesser of two evils compared to excessive item gating.

So with that out of the way, the real problem isn't whether linear dungeons could work with an open world format - for the most part they could - it's more a matter of how likely is it to actually happen. Given Aonuma's stance in previous interviews of wanting to get rid of using items as glorified keys, I'm not holding my breath that the traditional "lock and key" style dungeons will be returning with the next installment. This style was one of the zelda conventions that was becoming too formulaic in the eyes of much of the gaming community, thus Aonuma deciding to axe it in BotW.