By Ember Kvande, Grace Talbert, and Carly Thomas There are a few particularly old franchises in video games, and a classic that has stayed relevant is The Legend of Zelda. Along with being an old franchise, it has a pretty old-school, straight forward plot: the villain Ganon is in some way trying to ruin the kingdom of Hyrule, the Princess Zelda is in danger. The hero Link (the player) is tasked with defeating Ganon and saving Zelda. However, unlike the Mario franchise, which has a very similar setup (Mario saving Princess Peach from Bowser), The Legend of Zelda is willing to get much more experimental in its gameplay and storytelling. From the beginning, one of its staples is solving puzzles to defeat bosses and dungeons rather than purely brute force, and later installments include Zelda becoming a hero herself, or Link dying and splitting the timeline. One recent, relevant, and incredibly experimental idea was executed in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — playing in an open world. Breath of the Wild (BOTW for short) was first announced as a concept in 2014, specifically meant to recapture the sense of vast adventure the first ever Legend of Zelda game brought to the table (as seen in the video above). The jump into both 3D and HD had already been made, and tentative steps taken in making an open-world game. Wind Waker revolves around a world submerged, so the player sails around looking for islands of activity to interact with. However, BOTW (at the time referred to as Legend of Zelda Wii U) sought to make this world feel much more whole and connected. This also brings into question, though, how to organically intertwine the expectations of a Zelda game and still present a fulfilling, open-world concept. Open-world on its own is already difficult to create. BOTW would have to tackle the classic challenge of both preserving player agency and the sense of a wide world wile still delivering an impactful story and engaging gameplay. Being a Legend of Zelda game also came with expectations: roaming enemies, but also set dungeons, puzzles, bosses and items to progress the game, often in a sequential order. How does BOTW pull off being both a satisfying open-world game and a Zelda game all in one? Firstly, let's look at the ability to make a good open-world game. The strategy that BOTW uses is two-fold. Firstly, the entire map has a sense of purpose. It is easy for open world games to fall into the trap of five cities and a bunch of space, but this is not the case with BOTW. There are challenges and rewards all over the map, and players are rewarded for exploring. The second bit of strategy is that almost every element of the game is infused with story in some way or another. From travelers complaining about the danger that lurks everywhere, to monster camps, to ancient ruins from before the calamity, to the dangerous (and very annoying) guardians that still walk with the evil of Calamity Ganon infused in them. Each element points back to the central conflict — Link needs to free the beasts and defeat Ganon to put this broken world to rights. While it is entirely possible to ignore the main story, the game will take every opportunity to remind you of it without forcing you to address it. It encourages you to engage with the story by making the entire world part of the story, and it reminds you of a purpose grander than farming hearty durians, or running around taming purple horses. The open world isn't a nice background to a good story, the open world is a vital aspect to the telling of this particular story. There's so much more about the community and the kingdom to be learned. So Nintendo made an incredibly compelling open-world game, but it also managed to make a game that still captures the spirit of The Legend of Zelda. This comes back to the fact BOTW marries its components rather than creating them in spite of each other. Those points of interest spread all around the map to give it purpose? They all in some way relate back to a Legend of Zelda expectation — monster camps let you find items to progress the game, guardians wandering about work as roaming enemies, Koroks are hidden around the map for eagle eyed players to unlock, and both shrines and divine beasts stand in for dungeons from the older games. These last two are of particular interest. Shrines are often based around puzzle solving (a Zelda classic) and also around granting abilities and increased health or stamina to the player. Sometimes a specific shrine is required to unlock an ability, but more often they can be played non-sequentially (or ignored entirely) and the player is given freedom in how to approach them. Divine beasts are huge stone automatons being controlled by Ganon, and powering them down involves both puzzle solving and combat skills. The four beasts can be defeated in any order, and all are associated with a region on the map that can be much more story centric. BOTW nudges players to free the beasts from Ganon’s control and both help and interact with the people of these regions, but the open-world freedom to simply not is still there. Players can avoid all Zelda expectations as they want, but they benefit from interacting with the game in a way that lets them appreciate the soul of the franchise. Even though the proposal for the game was open-world, a reskin of BOTW would still feel like Zelda because both concepts were so well executed in tandem.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWe are the students of "Digital Literatures" at Millikin University. These are some of the digital narratives that entice, inspire, and challenge us. Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|