A video about Zelda 1

I had to subscribe to your Patreon after watching this video, and marathoning your others. Simply put, you're making some of the most thoughtful and professional videos on gaming available on the internet today. Keep up the great work!

So after watching this, I just went through and watched all of your Boss Key videos. First off, amazing job with the academic approach you are taking to researching the design of the dungeons. Your effort to find the key concepts of what comprise a Zelda dungeon and then building a language both verbal and visual is extremely appreciated. I also want to commend how you're not afraid to change this language as your understanding develops and you're sure to make sure the language and graphs can apply to all of the games to answer and compare the concepts you are aiming to measure. As a game design student, I hope you would not feel opposed to me adapting and spreading your approach among my peers. I think what you're doing is extremely valuable to deconstructing not so much how to make a "good" dungeon, but how to make a dungeon that fits your objective for the player. With that said, I believe it was during the Minish Cap video that I realized that Breath of the Wild, based on Game Informer's impressions of the first dungeon might have the most "Find Your Path"-y dungeons of all of the Zelda games. For each dungeon, Aonuma has said that maps and compasses are not needed because as soon as you enter the dungeon you see the goal. The real challenge is asking yourself "How do I get there?" In addition all of the dungeons are smaller and based upon familiarizing oneself with the complexities of an interconnected core area. From what I understand, these two aspects --allowing the player to work through a space in their own way and allowing the player to see the space as a cohesive structure as opposed to a series of rooms-- are two of the aspects of Zelda dungeons that you seem to enjoy tackling the most. In addition, the entire game will be structured this way with a "Well I can see the dungeon there but how do I get to it?" So I'm definitely excited to hear your breakdown of not only how the dungeons pan out, but how the journey to the dungeons goes as well. Keep up the great work, and you are the first person I have supported through Patreon! (If this comment disappears, too, then oh well! At least you got to read it! lol)

Steven Anthony Brown

It's not the DS - I quite like what they did with that. It's just that the games themselves are a bit of a slog - lots of quite slow and tedious bits (not to mention the repeated temple in PH). And while the dungeons are very interesting and I look forward to talking about them, they're not hugely enjoyable to play. I should note that my experience is tainted by a desire to rush through the overworld stuff to get from dungeon to dungeon as quickly as possible. That's quite an interesting stat to follow btw - you can rush between Link to the Past's dungeons in mere minutes, but Twilight Princess has hours of mandatory content between them!

Game Maker's Toolkit

What's giving you hesitation to replay the DS Zelda games? Is it the controls, the DS interface itself, or are the games/dungeons just not enjoyable in comparison to other Zelda titles?

Great video! Though I'm a little scared about Breath of the Wild, now. I usually feel really overwhelmed if I can go anywhere and do anything.

Philippe Vallotti

The same has been true of the Pokemon franchise. The older games gave the player the free to roam and explore and discover their path through the world, even if it was mostly linear, there was very little hand holding. The later games added more and more guide NPCs and would literally interrupt what you were doing to tell you where to go next, or sometimes even just take you there. And by the time you're done with all that and are finally let loose on the world, there's barely anything left to explore and discover on your own. This is why I look forward to Breath of the Wild and why I am very happy to see this particular point of player freedom being driven home.

PrimeSonic

He talks about this and Braid in this video. :) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zK8ItePe3Y" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zK8ItePe3Y</a>

wires dawson

Awesome, great video as always! One question, do you have any plan to make a video on the Witness ?

Its awesome, thanks for the work you're doing.

One of your best yet, I reckon. I like you mentioning the ARG-like approach to getting players to collaborate outside the game. Nintendo Power fueled this quite strongly, with monthly columns highlighting obscure cave locations. There's maybe an entire GMTK in exploring the ways games have used external media to enrich the experience back in the game. Minecraft wouldn't have worked early-on without its fan wiki, and Beyond Good &amp; Evil required players to take in-game passwords to the game's website in order to unlock other elements in-game.

Great Video! It reminds me much of zelda 1, and gives me yet another reason to look into Dark Souls.

Awesome video! I've tried to play the original Zelda a few times, but I've always been intimidated by it's relative size. I'll give it another try soon, this time focusing on finding those first three dungeons!

Megabyte01

it's a really tough one to estimate. it's not a very long game at all but you may slow down if you explore a lot, or get a bit stuck, or just hit a wall with some of the tougher dungeons. it took me about 6 or 7 hours, but i used a few save states when i was getting frustrated with the difficult dungeons

Game Maker's Toolkit

Great video, how long would you estimate it takes to beat Zelda 1 without a guide?

mcwizardry

Great video Mark! It's interesting to see so many comments on gaming forums on how Breath of the Wild is a whole new foray for Zelda, yet it's simply Zelda going back to its roots as you stated. I'm looking forward to your future content, and especially your thoughts on Breath of the Wild.

I think linear vs nonlinear is just different rather than inherently bad vs good. Plus linearity isn't the only aspect of a game to consider, there's the aesthetic design and atmosphere, narrative, moment to moment gameplay / gamefeel, music and sound design, pacing and presentation... I think of some of the more linear Zelda games rely on linearity but excel in some of these other areas. Ocarina is radically linear overall compared to Zelda 1, but it's a completely different kind of experience with a dramatic mythical story and distinctive and fleshed out visual design. ^_^ But I also agree with Mark's overall point that well-designed non-linear dungeons are the best at creating that delightful giant-interconnected-puzzle-box feeling that Zelda dungeons are known for.

alice

Maybe it's just me being bad at video games, but I never minded the more linear experiences of recent Zelda games. Still, I would love to try "Breath of the Wild." Might need to wait until December for my birthday and Christmas though to get a Switch. Plopping $300 down as a college student on a budget might not be the best idea. And yeah, I know it's on Wii U too, but...I'm willing to wait to get something a little nicer.

Shade

"Indifference to the player existence", if done well, is a wonderful game feature. I'm now playing Sniper Elite 4 and, although the series is excellent if you like sniping, in this installment you feel more like as a sniper because the game areas are bigger, they are "just there" and it is up to you to decide how you accomplish your objetives. Somehow it is a "Hitman with a sniper rifle" game. Regarding Zelda, it is amazing how many design tools they created with this game. And your video makes a nice job showing them, as always. By the way, I would love to see a video about Fez :)

Manuel Alcoba

pausing the video halfway through because I am so stunned that you started boss keys and devoted so much energy to the series without having played Zelda I. I'm big into the zelda series and I'm actually replaying Zelda I for kicks but I honestly feel like that game is kind of bogged down by retro clunkiness. There's a lot of throwing yourself at walls until the solution occurs (not literal walls, though I don't understand how some secret rooms could possibly be discovered without using dozens of bombs). So I'm really excited to see that formula in a more contemporary idiom! It's really hard to strike the balance of accessibility and transparent mechanics vs mystery and adventure. I have a feeling they'll err on the side of ease of play, but I'd love to see the world be truly free

Julian Sterling

Oh boy, I don't think I needed this extra hype injection for Breath of the Wild right now. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

Nosgoroth