
Saving Zelda (2012) - Tomte
http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/
======
red_admiral
Back in the original, not only was there no way to tell at glance which walls
were bombable but if you ran out of bombs in one of the later dungeons where
you simply had to bomb a wall to get any further, TOUGH LUCK. Up against
dodongo and out of bombs because you mis-timed your last one? DIE. And if you
were low on rupees to buy more bombs, tough again.

In phantom hourglass, if bombing a crack is necessary to advance, not only
will there be a massive crack visible, but the DS will actually switch to a
cutscene the first time you enter that room specifically highlighting the
crack. If that's not enough there will be a huge SIGN nearby telling you why
not try a bomb, and in case you had not thought to bring any, there's also a
bomb-plant providing an infinite supply in the corner of the room. If I
remember right, for the boss that you need arrows to defeat, there's some kind
of infinite resupply in the room as well.

P.S. I wonder how many times you need to mention "bomb" on HN to trigger an
XKEYSCORE alert?

~~~
VinzO
You are right, the first zelda was much more difficult. And that is what made
it so rewarding when you found something new or finally beat a boss. I
remember also trying to burn every single bush with the blue candle and having
to go out of the scene and enter again to do one more try. Took hours, days
sometime.

In opposite, the latest versions of the game are so easy. For example In
Twilight Princess, I did not even die once versus the final boss... What a
disapointment.

------
paradox242
So much of what he laments as being lost in the recent Zelda games such as
mystery, exploration, and difficulty are spot on assessments of what make
these games, and I think games in general these days, less compelling to a
certain type of player. I can only think of a few games that I feel do these
things right, with the most recent notable example being the Souls series of
games (Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1 & 2, Bloodborne).

In a Souls game the "story" is not fed to you in bursts of out-of-place
exposition but instead is found in the layout of the environment, the
description of items, and the types and placement of certain enemies. Hidden
areas and items abound, and without a guide you would be hard-pressed to find
everything available in the game in a singe play through. You are not
generally kept out of areas that are too difficult to you. In fact, some of
the more difficult parts of the game are readily accessible from quite early
on. So you die. You die a lot. Which brings us to difficulty. While I don't
think these games are as hard as they are sometimes made out to be (you can
out-level much of the difficulty if you want to spend the time doing so), the
learning curve at the beginning is steeper than I have seen in a series in a
long time. Games now have almost conditioned you to expect the developers to
give you a break in the form of a special item or by restoring your health to
full before a difficult section like a boss battle. This is not the case in
the Souls series.

I kind of checked out of Zelda games after Ocarina of Time as I found the
series less and less interesting as I grew older, though I still remember the
old games fondly. While the characteristics of these older games are harder to
find in newer titles these days, they are still rewarding and being used to
good effect outside of the Zelda universe.

~~~
CocaKoala
Actually, when I was playing Dark Souls a few months ago, somebody asked me
what it was like and after thinking for a few moments, I told them "It's like
a hardcore Zelda game". At base, I think the Souls games and the Zelda games
are made on the same template.

------
raldi
I love what he has to say about the original's unmarked bombable spots, making
each rock face a mystery, a potential secret place.

But there's a very hard game-design problem here: Completionism.

Modern gamers are obsessed with finding every last object, every achievement,
100%. If you play the original Zelda in this way, it becomes a tedious process
of acquiring 12 bombs, running back to a particular screen, and bombing 12
blocks in a row checking to see if there's a secret cave... then, you're out
of bombs and you have to commute back and do another round...

How do you preserve the mystery while avoiding the bomb-every-block tedium?

~~~
exelius
Also, how do you preserve the mystery in an age where you can google a JPEG
that has every bombable location highlighted?

Video games no longer have that thrill of discovery because the Internet has
ruined it. I loved the original Zelda, but we can never go back to that. So
while I appreciate the nostalgia, it's like saying newspapers were a better
model of journalism than the web. True or not, there's no going back.

~~~
raldi
You could randomize it, or generate it procedurally.

~~~
exelius
But then it loses something, and you end up with Diablo. Not that Diablo is a
bad game, but it's a decidedly different kind of game than Zelda.

~~~
raldi
Right, that's what makes it a classic hard design problem. The best solution,
to the extent that it even exists, is necessarily going to be imperfect, and
will be found somewhere in the middle.

~~~
exelius
There is no "best solution" or even a "solution". IMO games are art, so trying
to solve for a solution is a fool's errand. Even games like Call of Duty --
they're pop art, which is simply the artistic process as democratic exercise.
Zelda, for many of us, represents that child-like wonder that we can never
return to for the same reasons game developers could never make a similar
game.

~~~
raldi
I don't think we're disagreeing. There's no perfect solution; it's like
designing a car or directing a film.

Though I suppose I disagree with your assertion that one can never recreate or
improve upon anything that evoked childlike wonder. Portal 2 did that for
Portal; Mega Man 2 and 3 did that for their prequels, Empire did it for Star
Wars, and as someone with powerful childhood memories of the mid-1980s Main
Street Electrical Parade, I've been hearing good things about Disney's new
Paint the Night.

------
lmm
This is beautifully written, but I'm unconvinced. Gamers of a certain age -
not just computer gamers, I see this in roleplaying as well - seem wedded to
the illusion of freedom or realism or risk, will sacrifice story or balance
for their sake.

It never works. A game is ultimately never going to be able to outsmart its
player; a determined player can always peek behind the curtain. Suspension of
disbelief has to be willing - so why not embrace that?

And if the author wants to complain about games feeling like work, precise
controller-use, meaningless deaths, or blind alleys are surely much bigger
examples of that. The idea that you "actually become better" by getting better
at videogame swordfights is laughable. That the original Legend of Zelda was
harder doesn't make it any more heroic. Only less fun.

~~~
philtar
Pretty sure he means "actually becom[ing] better" at the game...

------
bitwize
Egoraptor talks about many of the same things in his video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0)

Part of the problem, I think, is that the Japanese market has a lot of gamers
who like to have their hand held, and relatively few who want an open-world
adventure. The same may even be true of the Western markets, but open-world
games such as Fallout do NOT sell well in Japan, and attempts by Japanese
developers to put those elements into Japanese games provoke criticism from
the fan base that the game is "too Western". So you get this thing of a game
where what to do next is always real obvious. Go where the thing tells you,
fight these enemies by waiting for an opening and then attacking, bomb the
obviously bombable wall, etc. Press a food pellet, get a reward. An open-world
game confronts them with the unpleasant possibility of the _unexpected_. Now
you have to survive, and what you have to _do_ to survive isn't obvious. So
you're going to die, and die, and die an awful lot in the game, and there's
nothing like the artificial feeling of "making progress" brought about by the
scripted game's obvious action-reward mechanism. But each death, each failure
brings with it new knowledge about how the game works and so when you finally
_do_ "make progress" it's because _you_ gained understanding through effort
and _that 's_ much more rewarding.

------
ceronman
I think this sense of discovery is one of the reasons I love Minecraft so
much. Wandering in a deep cave, trying to follow the sounds to find a
stronghold or spawner is amazing. Mining a wall and suddenly finding some
diamonds is so rewarding!

Discovery creates an amazing gaming experience, but it takes some patience to
get it. It might be frustrating at the beginning. Back in the early 90's you
just had a few games, you had to get most of them. Now, people are exposed to
millions of games for several platforms. If a game doesn't catch the attention
of a player in the first few minutes, it's ditched for another one.

It's the market what's sinking Zelda, sadly...

~~~
red_admiral
I wonder if the time is ripe for a procedurally generated Zelda game? Several
minecraft-inspired projects on Kickstarter mention LoZ as inspiration.

When I played notch's minicraft, it had a distinctly Zelda-ish feel to it,
including being hard enough that you have to really pay attention what you're
doing sometimes. And he wrote that in what, 24 hours or something?

~~~
cokernel
> I wonder if the time is ripe for a procedurally generated Zelda game?

The Binding of Isaac is a good attempt in that direction.

~~~
Gracana
But, you really have to be a fan of the shit-and-blood aesthetic to enjoy it.

------
riffraff
while I agree with part of what the author says, I feel a very important thing
is not being considered: cartoons, books, toys, videogames, food, comics, soft
drinks were all better when I was younger.

I feel "A Link To The Past" is the best ever Zelda. My brother, who's younger
than me, swears Ocarina of Time is the best Zelda. I am sure there are kids in
their teens now that feel Skyward Sword is the best Zelda.

~~~
bobajeff
I never liked Zelda. That is until I discovered the NES Zelda's. I grew up
with the Super Nintendo. So when I came up RPGs and adventure games were
unappealing, neverending, tedious chores that had nothing to do with the fun
that was Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, Super Metroid, StarFox etc.

------
nadams
I think Zelda Classic should be mentioned [1]. It's a port of the first Zelda
to the PC with a powerful map editor. Considering that this has been out for
more than 15 years - I imagine Nintendo knows or has heard about it and seems
to be ok with it.

Nintendo seems to be ok with fan made ports as long as they aren't selling it
- as seems to be the case with Mari0 [2].

There was some work being done on porting Super Metroid to the PC but I think
that has been lost in time. Many years ago I contacted the author and instead
of giving me the source he gave me compiled binaries :(. I can post a link if
people are interested.

[1] [http://www.zeldaclassic.com/](http://www.zeldaclassic.com/)

[2] [http://stabyourself.net/mari0/](http://stabyourself.net/mari0/)

~~~
koonsolo
For those interested (i.e. shameless plug of my own project ;)), I'm working
on a game editor that will allow you to create Action Adventures. Definitely
not complete yet, but you can already create some nice levels, and add NPC
conversations :). [http://rpgplayground.com](http://rpgplayground.com)

------
nlawalker
What a great article.

Zelda will never again be what this guy is looking for; there is simply too
much pressure now for AAA games to be cinematic, cater to all audiences and
easily expose all of their (extremely expensive) content to the player on
demand - people want to get what they paid for.

The kind of experience he's looking for is now a niche corner of gaming:
roguelikes offer random world generation, truly punishing death, and the need
to really explore and figure things out (because it's a little different every
time).

The biggest problem that a game has to deal with nowadays is how to treat
failure. How do you offer risk/reward, and punish the player in a way that
they keep coming back?

As a game player, I've discovered that the best thing you can do nowadays is
_try every game you can get your hands on_ , especially the enormous world of
indie games out there. I've had to work through the natural instinct to stick
to the prettiest, biggest-budget games and start trawling the indiest of the
indie on Steam. You can find a better experience with a small game that made
design decisions that resonate with you rather than a AAA, zillion-dollar-
budget blockbuster that needs to cater to everyone, so seek out games that are
_opinionated_. I can't tell you how many times I've been so pleasantly
surprised by a $10-$15 deal and sunk hours and hours into it... maybe it's
about as many times as I've gotten bored with another AAA chore simulator.

------
secstate
Woah. Battletoads was also hard, but I'm not dying for someone to recapture
the magic of the last level. It would appear that the difficulty is the only
vaguely objective comment in the essay, and one could argue that most gamers
don't want/never wanted to be challenged the way Link II was challenging.
Hell, I _hated_ Link II because at the age I was when it came out it wasn't
demanding, it was downright impossible.

Meanwhile, Link to the Past was just about the perfect game to me. I remember
watching my aunt play the original and it seemed fun, but Link to the Past was
brilliant in my eyes.

A nice work of criticism and some interesting points, but the "mystery" and
"ambiance" of what makes a game great is way too subjective for this to be
very useful.

Now I'm gonna go dust of Shadow of the Colossus ...

------
ebbv
I too played the original Zelda as a kid. I memorized every tile of the world,
and every tile of every dungeon and would draw maps for classmates on graph
paper. Telling them where each secret was, etc.

The original Zelda worked just like the later ones. You needed the raft to get
across the water. You needed the bomb to get into the hidden door. You needed
the candle to burn away a bush. You needed the boomerang to get the key.

The core of Zelda has not really changed, it is what it's always been. Skyward
Sword was a terrific game, and the others have all been great too.

I have no patience for people who complain that a game is not what they want
it to be. Zelda isn't what you want? OK then make your own game that is what
you want. Don't insist that Minamoto make your vision over his own. That's
narcissistic beyond all reason.

------
norseboar
I think the author's complaint has merit, but I don't think tying this
complaint to wanting Zelda to be "saved" makes sense.

The issue is genre. To take an extreme example, I might like the brutal open-
world genre a la Dark Souls and complain that the Forza games are all garbage
because they aren't that. Most would recognize this complaint as silly,
because if I want a brutal open world with no hits I should find a game that
purports to contain that, not go bashing racing games because I don't like
that genre as much.

What the author's doing to Zelda obviously isn't as extreme, and it is a bit
more grounded (Zelda games did used to be more like what the author wanted).
But it's the same type of argument: back when there were no open world games,
the author played one called Zelda and really liked it. Since then (starting
with the third), almost /every single title in the series/ has been an
extremely dungeon-focused, puzzle-focused game. The overworld has always been
a big part, and there have always been some secrets, but the defining aspect
of the genre has become these dungeons and puzzles.

This isn't to say the complaints are invalid; there's nothing wrong with
wanting a game that is more hidden, less hand-holding, more focused on the
action and less on the gimmicks that let you solve a puzzle. But that's not
asking for a better version of Zelda, that's asking for a different genre
altogether. Focus on asking for new titles in that genre, and leave other
genres in peace.

------
nerd_stuff
Twilight Princess takes 50+ hours to beat the first time and that's with being
shepherded through by game mechanics. Even then a couple of things take
forever to find.

I like what the author says but when you have to find something and you don't
know what you're looking for you have to resort to a brute-force search. The
original Zelda's overworld had 16x11=176 blocks per screen and was 16x8=128
screens. At a minute per screen that's two hours to do a rough exploration of
the entire overworld. Twilight Princess is roughly four times the map size*
and 8 hours looks like a long time to explore.

Compounding the problem is in the original Zelda a rock was pushable/not-
pushable, a tree was burnable/not-burnable, a wall was bombable/not-bombable.
That binary "I have checked this/I have not checked this" has largely
disappeared. Not to mention 2-D vs 3-D.

Basically there is no fast Zelda Search Algorithm so either the game A) has a
small map size, B) limits where the user needs to search, or C) takes forever.

*-[http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/the-size-of-hyrule-area-co...](http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/the-size-of-hyrule-area-comparison.188648711/)

------
rrss1122
I thought Skyward Sword was great. I thought it was one of the better Zeldas.
I think all the 3D Zeldas are way better than the 2D ones. This is the kind of
game I like.

I'm not that invested in it though. This guy writes freakin fiction based on
Zelda (and Mario and Metroid!). This guy doesn't want to "save" Zelda. This
guy is upset that Nintendo has gone in a different direction with Zelda, and
not the one he thinks is "right" (ie the one he wants).

I couldn't agree more with other comments here:

"I have no patience for people who complain that a game is not what they want
it to be. Zelda isn't what you want? OK then make your own game that is what
you want. Don't insist that Minamoto make your vision over his own. That's
narcissistic beyond all reason."

And if you don't like it?

"Chill out and play skyrim."

------
crummy
I'm curious to know the authors opinion on the recent 3DS Zelda title - was it
A Link Between Worlds? It did away with the linear dungeon style and allowed
players to explore the world to their own preference.

~~~
vlunkr
I was wondering this as well. He didn't mention it. It wasn't a complete
revolution for the franchise, but it gives me hope that we'll get something
that isn't just a recycled Ocarina of Time someday.

~~~
sandyarmstrong
It came out after the article was written.

------
philliphaydon
This is how I feel about most games. And more specifically MMOs...

Ultima Online was amazingly fun and brutal. If you died your body was free to
loot by anyone.

But ever since World of Warcraft. All we have are carebear mmos with soul
bound items and no reason to explore or do anything besides grind.

I don't know how people find most of today's games fun. They are so boring.

I miss the games I played as a kid on my SNES and Sega Mega Drive. Hours sunk
into games with no save points or having to be careful when low on items or
health. :(

~~~
DarkTree
> I miss the games I played as a kid on my SNES and Sega Mega Drive.

I think this may be a defining factor for a lot of people in this thread. As a
kid, time management is extremely different. You presumably had much more time
and less options of things to pick from, so for the most part, video games may
have taken up a large percentage of what you enjoyed, and even what you cared
about.

As a kid, I would sit for hours playing the nes Zelda and repeatedly dying,
picking up the controller, and having another go. But now, now if I even have
time to play video games, I just want to sit down and play some mind-numbing,
flashy video game to blow off some steam. After a day of work, I don't want to
continually be challenged and exert mental effort.

I just wish that both clever and mind-numbing games were still being built,
but lately consumer trends have skewed towards the mind-numbing.. which I do
believe is unfortunate for people with more time and interest in playing
quality video games, namely the next generation of kids.

~~~
JoshTriplett
There are still hundred-hour adventure games and RPGs created today, just not
very many. Personally, the trend I keep finding annoying is the trend towards
making a few of the things needed for "100%" require either some other
hardware/platform/console/game, some multiplayer/online activity, or some
mindless pervasive collection with no in-game benefit (especially if it
requires some of the previous things; I'm looking at you, Wind Waker
photos/statues). I used to go for 100% in every game; I don't anymore.

~~~
DarkTree
Yeah, I could see how that would be quite frustrating and defeating. There was
no satisfaction greater than fully completing a game. Can you imagine reading
a book with some of the chapters missing and requiring external resources to
read?

------
timothybone
I loved the original zelda as a kid, it was loaded with eurekons imo.
[http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/INT/INT7/paper/viewFile/92...](http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/INT/INT7/paper/viewFile/9265/9206)

------
antidaily
So Zelda being almost impossibly hard wasn't just a ploy to sell more Nintendo
Power magazines?

------
agentultra
I'm presently in the process of replying the original Zelda myself to see
what, if anything, keeps this game at the pinnacle of game design. I've found
that it's egregiously difficult not because it was trying to achieve something
but simply because there was no bar with which to measure. It lacked context
as any game does until its time has passed. We thought it was good because at
the time it exceeded or confounded our expectations of what an action-
adventure game was. In hindsight they had a vision but little genre
inspiration to draw from and the result, for me, is a game that is hard only
by accident.

I have been so far unimpressed with the combat in the game. The monsters have
slapped-together "powers" and appear in incoherent groups. Often just a room
full of one type and little synergy with mechanics. The Darknuts that are
impervious to damage from the front, for example, are tedious and frustrating
because the only edge of their hitbox that will take damage from your weapon
is constantly moving away from the character and you can't run and hit at the
same time. Throw in their random choice about when to turn and you can spend
an hour making your way back to the same room to be slaughtered over and over
until you get lucky enough one time to win. That's not heroism: that's
persistence.

It does have many redeeming qualities of course. I agree that the completely
accessible world is certainly a wonderful design decision in the early games.
It is a concept well plumbed in pioneering rogue-likes such as Moria and ToME
(when it was still _Tales of Middle Earth_ ). The world is presented as is and
the player is plopped into an area that is suitably dangerous and exploration
outwards tends to get more difficult with distance -- the occasional high-
level location not withstanding. The use of items for progression is a well-
trod trope of the adventure genre and used effectively in The Legend of Zelda.
It's unfortunate that the series would turn the mechanic into a lock-and-key
system just as the adventure game genre did instead of taking the original
game's tack and using items to add new abilities instead of more areas.

If it had followed that tack the Zelda series might've felt more like the
rogue-like games did around that time with items, identification, and
combination being a game unto itself.

If anything the original games gave us a set of tropes and gimmicks to build
upon. Wall bombing, block pushing, gimmicky-enemies, and grids of tilemaps:
all of them are practically _cliché_ today. We make inside jokes about them
and print them on t-shirts.

I'm not sure what keeps the original The Legend of Zelda up there on its
pedestal. It's a frustrating game to play. Without the narrative thread of its
successors it makes almost no sense. And yet it holds an allure for those of
us that were there before this context existed. This game was new, fresh, and
exciting. Maybe it was the potential: the lure, the promise, the hidden cave
of gaming goodness that we've been stumbling after all of these years. It's
not so much that The Legend of Zelda was a good game for me. It objectively
wasn't a great game in some respects. But it did stake one of the early flags
on the shore of an undiscovered land and set our collective sights on
something.

While I've enjoyed the series, for the most part, to date I can see how it is
slightly disappointing how it veered from Miyamoto's vision and forged a
different path. It would be interesting to see if, like Mario did with the
Lost Levels, an offshoot or side-project of the series could try and revive
those early mechanisms and "save the series."

------
glowingsky288
Chill out and play skyrim. You're in your 30s.

~~~
Maken
Skyrim has close to nothing of what the author is asking for.

~~~
robmccoll
A living world to explore, go anywhere at any time at any level (and
potentially get slaughtered), ignore the story or discover it at your own
pace, focus on combat over puzzles, increased difficulty if you want it,
reduced focus on items, plenty of hidden mysterious dungeons, non-linearity?

~~~
sandyarmstrong
The main thing the author complains about is difficulty. I'm playing through
Skyrim for the first time now, and the fact is that no matter where you go,
enemies level up as you do. With very few exceptions, there are no places you
can go that are too dangerous for you at your current level.

The dungeon "puzzles" are almost insultingly easy, too. Even easier than
typical modern Zelda dungeon puzzles.

I'm loving the game, especially the non-linearity and the numerous choices
without clear right/wrong answers. But it really just does not provide what
the author is looking for.

