DEREK EX MACHINA, created by author and editor Derek L.H., is a blog dedicated to exploring the effect that video games and film have on people.
All tagged The Legend of Zelda
Making a game work in an open world context isn’t something that can be done by just taking a game and having it take place in a larger, non-linear environment. It takes strong direction to make open worlds work, and even then, there are many instances where an open world is simply incongruous with realizing a game’s greatest potential.
Illustrating what a game’s entire design looks like in a relatively short amount of time goes a long way at convincing the player of a game’s mechanical depth and diversity. Micro-challenges help accomplish this. Through creating brief snippets of game design that compartmentalize and test different mechanics, players can get introduced and brought up to speed with various facets of a game without ever being bombarded with multiple mechanics at once.
Every creator, regardless of what they make, shares a common goal: make something special; make something deeply meaningful to at least a single person. As a collection of creators, Monolith Soft remarkably succeeded at their goal of creating something that brought a smile to players’ faces because of the imaginative world they’ve created and the fun adventures and gameplay experiences that naturally come about in that world.
Breath of the Wild offers an unprecedented amount of adventure to the player - so much so that, even after four years, there are still many more adventures that the game invites players to embark upon. Breath of the Wild is ruthless in its devotion to keep players coming back to learn more and make more discoveries about it. That, above all, is what makes the game so unique and so magical, no matter how much time passes.
Link’s Awakening is but one example of how smaller-scale design can nevertheless make a world feel as believable and immersive as it is tightly constructed and uninterested in wasting the player’s time. Through its tight design and consideration for making an experience that provides a consistent feeling of progression and gradually expanding sense of freedom and exploration, Link’s Awakening ended up provides an adventure that I recall very fondly - an assessment that is in large thanks to the title’s size.
