Topic: Zelda: Cutting the linearity

Recently there's been a lot of fuss about the developers of Zelda exploring how they can change the franchise into the better. I don't get why people make such a big fuss over this. I find it to be a very logical step to continuously evolve a franchise rather than rigidly applying the same design decisions over and over. BUT ANYWAY.

As far as I know, the two things they have mentioned are: 1) Cutting the linearity, and 2) Multiplayer. I like #2 and dislike #1. I'll explain my reasoning below. What do you guys think?

I don't think cutting the linearity will do the franchise any good. In my honest opinion as a long-time Zelda fan, the linearity found in the games is a major determinant of the games' overall experience. A linear Zelda game takes you through a pre-determined adventure with pre-determined challenges at pre-determined points in the game. Take that away, and you may earn a sense of freedom, but in turn you sacrifice the difficulty balance throughout the game and the sense of progress. I believe it to be a fundamental characteristic of games to become increasingly difficult as you play it. If you can choose which dungeons to do first, the experience will either be unbalanced because you risk choosing a more difficult dungeon early on, or the experience will be bland because the developers kept all dungeons at the same difficulty level to mitigate this effect. And personally, I find the "get 8 magic relics, it doesn't matter how or when" to be less stimulating than the "first get item X, then do dungeon Y" formula, but that might just be me.

Multiplayer, on the other hand, is something I would be interested in seeing introduced to the franchise.

yeah your logic is right. it is risky and I believe that Heart Containers might eithe become golden or useless with this since the dificulty will either be all over the place or the same everywhere.....

I do not think I could disagree with you more.

I could try, but I would not be successful.

^ what I know is that when Nintendo decides to finally do something new, it usually hits the spot. and many fans find flaws that I didn't notice that breaks the game for them(but not for me )

Yep I have a feeling the next home console Zelda will be the Metroid Prime of the series! I have a really good feeling about it! It's going to be one of those deals where everything leading up to it will be skepticle by the fans, but when it is finally released it will blow every single one of our minds!

I'm confused. What's your stance on linearity?

The thing about linearity and a single-player focus on Zelda games for me is that in structure, Zelda games closely resemble a storybook. An open world multiplayer experience may work very well for a lot of games, but it just doesn't seem right for Zelda. I'm all for side quests and branching storylines, but it should always feel like I'm reading a book.

I fail to see how this contributes to the discussion. You disagree, and that's great. But if you're not going to provide arguments, you might as well not post at all.

Every new Zelda game amazes me. I agree with GuSilverFlame - too many fans seek out a difference between the new game and OoT, which seems to be the standard to which people compare the new game, and then declare the new game crap. If someone tells me their favorite Zelda game is OoT, I can hardly take them seriously because of this. If proper arguments were provided, then I'd respect that, but "it's the classic Zelda" won't do.

It says clearly that I don't think cutting the linearity would do the franchise any good, and that I don't like the idea.
Edit: Through my reasoning of why it is not a good idea, I mention that linearity is a fundamental characteristic of the game that positively influences the game's overall experience. Linearity = good.

Yes, if they are going to change anything, they have to be careful not to mess with that storybook feel. Multiplayer would probably not work out, but I would love to see Nintendo do their magic and make it awesome.

While I agree that going too far into non-linear areas is very, very difficult without sacrificing quality in other areas, most games, even games that are considered not linear, don't go that far. Even recent Bethesda games have done quite a bit to make the experience have relatively consistent increases in difficulty.

Non-linearity wouldn't be that out of place in a Zelda game. Zelda 1, Zelda 2 and Ocarina of Time all get you choices as to which level to play (at specific points in the game). Zelda 1 you could play a lot of levels out of order. Zelda 2, you can at least play level 2 or 3 in either order, or if you really wanted to, you could skip Level 1 and head south without the candle. It would be hard, but the game allows you to do it. In OoT you could do the spirit temple or the shadow temple in either order, but I think the games tries to get you to do the shadow temple first.

I, personally, would like to see more of that. Not necessarily to where you could play every level in any order, but perhaps if they gave you some choices, like you could play levels 1-3 in any order and then 4-6 in any order, or something like that. I like it when games give you some choices as to what order to do things in, like Super Metroid. The game could still set you on a path to play the levels in order, but if you were good at it you could do some things early.

As far as multiplayer goes, I wouldn't mind seeing a four-swords side game in each Zelda game, sort of like with the gba version of A Link to the Past. And with modern technology, we could even make it online so you don't have to have 3 other friends with handhelds and get them all together at the same time.

I have to say that I totally agree with you Fazermint and your reasoning is sound. I kind of feel that the history of Zelda doing new things is a mixed bag. Like (and this is just one idiots opinion so ignore me if you don't like it) I don't like Spirit Track because the train restricts you to stay on the tracks when I really wanted to walk around and explore, the boat on hourglass does also, but not nearly as much as the train. Also I hate using the stylus to play games since my hand for some reason gets all tingly like its asleep or something. I love Twilight Princess but the wolf thing kind of bugs me with having to hunt around and dig for things. But other things I do like, like how well the change from top down to 3D in Ocarana was handled (not 3DS 3D) and I absolutely love the motion controls of Skyward Sword and also the flying Beetle. And I thought sure that Link turning into a drawing in the new game would be horrible, but I got to play it at San Diego Comic Con and loved it!

So while some of the new things have been outstanding others have not been, I personally don't mind change, but when the change makes it almost not feel like a true Zelda game then that bothers me, because really when people go to buy a Zelda game they are doing it because they expect some level of the core play ideas that have always been in there like (and these are all debatable) exploration, solving puzzles, areas that can only be accessed by solving said puzzles or by using a select tool and fighting bad guys. I think that's why the new Castlevania game has already been discounted because they changed the formula too much and it became something else.

The fact that you can tackle the dungeons in any order doesn't mean that they all will be equally easy or hard.

Have you played the first zelda?

There's non linear and then there's non linear. It can be chose which order you do A/B/C/D/E/F/G, or Do A, chose which order you finish B/C/D, then which order you do E/F, and then face the big boss in G.

I doubt Nintendo will steer the ship into rocks, all they're trying to do is put some fresh ideas on a well travelled story.

@Dudesean - Yes, that would be a better form of non-linearity. In that case it reaps the benefits of linearity (structured experience, difficulty balance, etc.) and nonlinearity (freedom of choice) at the same time.
@paburrows - I agree. The equipment rental of the upcoming 3DS title will change the "First get item X, then solve puzzle Y, then do dungeon Z" formula that I associate with Zelda games.
@Morphtorok - That's what I'm saying. If you can tackle the dungeons in any order, you will have one of these two problems:
A: The experience becomes unbalanced because you might do the harder dungeons early on. (first Zelda game)
B: The experience is bland because they keep all dungeons around the same difficulty level to mitigate problem A.
@MrGawain - I have faith in Nintendo and believe that it will turn out all right. I'm just wondering if non-linearity is the best choice. But like you point out, some form of semi-linearity would work out fine.

Non lineraty is a funny thing because usually it bottlenecks how well the story can be told (well it depends). I don't want a non linear Zelda for example just a bigger open world one like a Skyrim or a Xenoblade. Hell the closet series to Zelda in this regard is fable but the main story beats just like with the above mentioned games are fairly linear but have a ton to do. I wouldn't mind being able to do most of the dungeons in a segmented fashion the way @dudesean described. I would also take away such a focus on the go to dungeon to get item A to use agsint the boss and so on. There would be items in dugeons, items you can buy, and item you could find in the cover world. Also if you don't have a certain item or have the item upgraded the battle becomes much harder. Say there's a dungeon where you need the spinner but you can't find one or afford one than instead of using it to quickly move up the tower and solving puzzles the dungon becomes more action oriented as you fight your way up the dungeon.

I would take multiplayer into a mix of Monster Hunter/Mass Effect 3, and Grand Theft Auto Online. You pick your race and can run around in an instanced version of one of the town overworld specing your character but than when it come to battle it becomes like the Zelda Nintendoland game.

Here's how I picture it: With the ability to tackle dungeons in any order, Nintendo will no doubt strive to keep the difficulty more or less consistent with each one. The Overworld in A Link to the Past/Between Worlds is riddled with enemies too, so I imagine that the path to each dungeon will act as a 'tutorial', giving the player chance to practice with their current item, leading them to what will hopefully be a challenging and imaginative dungeon, whichever one you decide to tackle.

One way that non linearity might work though is to have everything available at the beginning, but then to have one of those annoying guides that some Zelda games (Minish Cap, Ocarana of Time, Twilight Princess etc.) has which will tell you things like this dungeon is level 5 in difficulty or this area is level 10 in difficulty and then lets you do whatever you want and for the advanced players the guide can be turned off and on at any time. I could see that as a happy balance.

Although I do prefer linearity since it makes more sense storywise, although its might be interesting if it was like a Choose Your Own Adventure (1980's children's book where you could make choices on which way to go in the story and thus could have a different story every time you read through the book) That would be interesting where depending on which order of dungeon you tackled would change the story and the final ending. Now that might be an interesting way of going about a non linear Zelda game although it would wreak havoc on the already convoluted Zelda timeline that's in the Zelda book.

Honestly, I don't think they're going to cut out the linearity entirely, like what they're doing with A link between worlds. For that game, they probably want to keep EVERYTHING easy for the sake of accessibility, because the current generation hasn't played a 2D Zelda game for being too young to have been alive when the last good one came out. For a 3D Zelda game though, there's definitely something to be said about difficulty curves.

I think what's going to happen is you don't have to do everything in order, but you'll have to finish the first three dungeons before you can go onto the next three and finish those before you can go on. Or maybe it won't have dungeons and just be mission based like most other open world games and you could choose where you want to go based on the quest giver. They could certainly do with more content, maybe smaller dungeons, but lots of them, like Skyrim. Or maybe you'll have most of the dungeons available from the get-go, but the dungeons change depending on which one you did first, making the later ones more difficult regardless of which ones those were. That would add a ton of replay value because you'd want to play every version of every dungeon. Or perhaps the world will be one giant dungeon like a Metroid game and just task you to explore and find items in whichever order you want, but only be able to explore certain areas with certain ones, and needing them all to get into the final level. Or perhaps it'll be randomly generated, leading to infinite replayability with no game being like any other. Or perhaps it'll have user generated dungeons. Or maybe it'll be like a Mario game, where it doesn't matter what collectible Medalions or whatever you have, but how many. You would need most of them to progress, but not all, meaning you could skip the water temple, or whichever one or two dungeons you don't like. In most cases, less linearity means more content that the player can choose not to see.

They could also make certain weapons more expensive than others, making mere suggestions on the order

How would that be a problem? If you visit one of the harder dungeons you might face problems beating it like you being too weak or you requiring more than one item to complete it (but still being able to progress through it). That all adds to the experience, you as the gamer and your character grow and get smarter and stronger.

As others have said, weapons could be priced accordingly to suggest an order.... Being able to break that order and try your luck in any dungeon at any time (given that you found them first) will be quite refreshing... And reminds me a lot of the first game...