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

[Castle]

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.

This is exactly what I have been saying. We don't have to alter or re-arrange the entire Zelda modus operandi to make this work. All we have to do is remove the arbitrary gates from the overworld that have been in place since Ocarina of Time and BOOM! We have ourselves an open world with traditional Zelda dungeons. THE VERY FIRST ZELDA GAME DID THIS for crying out loud!

The only major alteration that would have to take place would be to make the puzzle solving items very robust and multipurpose and make many of them available in the overworld so players can solve the dungeons without requiring that one item necessary to advance in a dungeon. In effect, giving puzzles multiple solutions or providing multiple paths for advancement in dungeons. Games that already do this include masterworks Thief: The Dark Project and Deus Ex which are lauded for their level design. This would even turn dungeons into mini open worlds like the levels in those games. In fact, this would incentivize exploring the overworld for useful goodies (rather than 1,000,001 breakable sticks) before entering dungeons to insure that Link is equiped to tackle any challenge. BOOM. Perfect synergy between the overworld and dungeons (again, the same synergy THE FIRST GAME HAD!) and it solves the age old "Teh OVURWHARLD!! iz too barren!!11!!1" complaint that Zelda games have had since Ocarina.

It's a simple, elegant solution that flies miles above ninty's heads. They don't even have to come up with this idea. Ion Storm and Looking Glass Studios and about a bajillion other developers since then have already done so.

 

[Zero_Origin]

This is exactly what I have been saying. We don't have to alter or re-arrange the entire Zelda modus operandi to make this work. All we have to do is remove the arbitrary gates from the overworld that have been in place since Ocarina of Time and BOOM! We have ourselves an open world with traditional Zelda dungeons. THE VERY FIRST ZELDA GAME DID THIS for crying out loud!

The only major alteration that would have to take place would be to make the puzzle solving items very robust and multipurpose and make many of them available in the overworld so players can solve the dungeons without requiring that one item necessary to advance in a dungeon. In effect, giving puzzles multiple solutions or providing multiple paths for advancement in dungeons.

I think the problem/miscommunication that came up in this thread was due to two things:

-I used the term open world (or "open air" as Nintendo would call it) referring to being able to approach the world freely from any direction, AND as the ability to do the game's objectives in any order (non-linearity). However, as DarkestLink pointed out, open world and non-linear are separate considerations even though they often overlap. Not item gating the over-world solves the open world issue, but not the non-linearity issue.

-In this thread I've been assuming that the next Zelda will be about as non-linear as BotW was, basing this on previous developer comments about maintaining the level of freedom BotW offered (granted, we can't know for sure what Nintendo is actually going to do yet in this regard). So under this assumption, tLoZ doesn't fully qualify as it was only partially non-linear; it still item gated a handful of it's dungeons. ALBW also comes close, but also isn't fully non-linear because it requires the first three dungeons to be completed before the second phase of dungeons.

So yes, the issue of traditional dungeons fitting into an open world AND non-linear game boils down to the use of items acting as keys for puzzle solving, and the developers not being able to know which order you're going to visit them in. Having the dungeon items obtainable in the over-world is one solution to this problem, and is an interesting idea that definitely serves as incentive for exploration. Like you said though, each of these items would have to be very versatile, otherwise they would run into the same issue as ALBW and its simplified dungeon design of being based around a single item.

Another issue is whether or not it would feel weird to have an open world and linear dungeons. Some people might find that to be a pleasant game-play contrast, while others might find it jarring and prefer for the dungeon style to mirror the overall game structure (i.e. since MM we've had very linear Zelda games with linear dungeons, while BoTW had non-linear structure and non-linear dungeons). I haven't played the two games you mentioned, but it definitely sounds cool to have multiple solutions to puzzles and multiple paths through the dungeon. Having the sense of navigation complexity that the traditional dungeons provided, and which the divine beasts lacked, along with some elements of non-linearity sounds ideal to me.

 

[Azure Sage]

Hyrule Castle in BotW was thematically amazing and really fun to explore. Definitely the best rendition of the castle in the series. It felt like a real place with logical connections and ways to explore and fight through the enemies. Dungeons like that with more puzzles like the Divine Beasts had to get through would be awesome. Conquering the castle was very satisfying. More dungeons like that, all with unique themes and settings and atmospheres, would be fantastic to have.

 

[Zero_Origin]

Hyrule Castle in BotW was thematically amazing and really fun to explore. Definitely the best rendition of the castle in the series. It felt like a real place with logical connections and ways to explore and fight through the enemies. Dungeons like that with more puzzles like the Divine Beasts had to get through would be awesome. Conquering the castle was very satisfying. More dungeons like that, all with unique themes and settings and atmospheres, would be fantastic to have.

True dat. If the next game remains open world and non-linear, Hyrule Castle seems like a good template for future dungeons. The only problem was that it was lacking in the puzzle department.

The dilemma though, is what kind of puzzles would fit the non-linear structure of Hyrule Castle? Many of the puzzles in traditional dungeons worked because the player was limited in where they could go at a given time through lock and key gameplay and linear structuring. But those kinds of puzzles could easily be bypassed and therefore fall apart in a dungeon where there is more than one path and multiple points of entry or directions you can approach a room from.

 

[Azure Sage]

True dat. If the next game remains open world and non-linear, Hyrule Castle seems like a good template for future dungeons. The only problem was that it was lacking in the puzzle department.

The dilemma though, is what kind of puzzles would fit the non-linear structure of Hyrule Castle? Many of the puzzles in traditional dungeons worked because the player was limited in where they could go at a given time through lock and key gameplay and linear structuring. But those kinds of puzzles could easily be bypassed and therefore fall apart in a dungeon where there is more than one path and multiple points of entry or directions you can approach a room from.

I think having multiple puzzles block the way through all of those multiple entry points could solve that, depending on how they did it. For example, in BotW's castle, you are blocked by some puzzle when going through the interior, so you decide to climb the waterfall. Not so fast, there's a puzzle up there too. That kind of thing. There are only so many paths you can take because you only have so much space, so putting as many puzzles as you can in each path might work, although it could also make it feel crowded and they'd have to fit in logically. So it's tricky, but not impossible.