Some quick thoughts on Zelda Breath of the Wild
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I tweeted the above thoughts on
Breath of The Wild
after watching waaaaay too many hours
of the Nintendo E3 Live Stream.
Someone on Facebook asked me to
elaborate, so here are my thoughts
with a bit more unpacking.
So Looking Glass Studios were the
originators of the first person
simulation genre with games like the
original System Shock, Thief I &
II, Ultima Underworld, etc.. A lot of
the games that continued in that vein
were made by ex-Looking Glass folks,
the first Deus Ex, Bioshock,
Dishonoured, etc. These games tend to
try to simulate a lot of interesting
interactions and prize player agency
in creating their own solutions to
problems. Enemies also tend to have
more complex AI, with some simple
emotional states and awareness of the
world. However they can suffer from
sticking too closely to reality,
simulating things that just aren’t
interesting and doing a lot of things
but doing none of them particularly
well (EG stealth in the original Deus
Ex was an option but was terrible in
practice).
Nintendo design tends toward elegant
simplicity, they’ll build a game
around a small number of mechanics and
execute them really well, exploring a
lot of the possible uses for them and
making sure everything works well.
Nothing is in there that doesn’t need
to be. If there is a lot of content it
usually doesn’t interact in as many
ways as it would in a Looking Glass
style game. Nintendo tend to focus on
gameplay first rather than worrying
about realism or coherent worlds.
Puzzles often have a single solution
and will sometimes block the player
from using their own creative
solutions (invisible walls in late
stage Majora’s Mask dungeons I’m
looking at you!).
Both of these philosophies have
strengths and weaknesses but what’s
great about the mix in the new Zelda
(based on what I’ve seen) is that
they’re working together to make
something with the strengths of both
while removing the weaknesses. There’s
some super robust simulation stuff
going on but none of it feels needless
or out of place. It’s not overly
concerned with making these
simulations realistic, so they can
exaggerate them to create better, more
interesting gameplay (EG spicy food
protects you from the cold, carrying a
metal sword increases your chance of
being hit by lightning in a storm) and
it has the level of gameplay polish
and “game feel” you expect from
Nintendo.
A good example of a moment in the
stream that felt pure Looking Glass
style emergent gameplay was Link
cutting some saplings to make sticks
in a gale force wind. The wind carried
the sticks into and through a
campfire, setting them alight. The
sticks then blew into a field of dry
grass that caught fire and quickly
spread, alerting a nearby encampment
of enemies.
Zelda has flirted with emergent stuff
for a long time but it’s never been
this coherent and all encompassing,
tending towards small one off touches
that don’t interconnect above a
certain level.
Fun side note. Looking Glass’s best,
or at least most elegant games were
probably Thief I & II, for which
the designers have mentioned being
highly influenced by Nintendo’s
approach to design.
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In other news we’re Kickstarting a
new game “Russian Subway Dogs” soon!