Splatoon 2 Staffer Jordan Amaro Gives Some Insight On His Approach To Game Design

Good read. I'm always interested in hearing about game/level design choices. Especially among Nintendo games. They tend to place a pretty big priority on creating unique experiences (especially for Mario games).

That's really interesting, I mean it really is, but I came here chuckling to myself only because I find his surname funny lol
"Amaro" means "bitter" in Italian ahahahahah

I still have a lot of Wii U titles in my backlog and captain toad is one of them. Nintendo games can take upwards of a year to 100 percent complete. I've been playing tropical freeze off and on for a year and a half and am only at 93 percent. The time trials are ridiculous in that game. Yoshis wooly world and new super Mario u also took a year for me to 100 percent. Admittedly, I didn't play these games every day or even over 3 hours a playthrough but they do seem longer to 100 percent complete than most of my platinum trophies.

Great! Not so often do we see a NLife article highlighting the unsung heroes of the gaming history. This article makes it two this year!

Interesting that out of all the games and levels ever made, he picks those. Portal 2 is definitely clever, but I strongly disagree with the Great Plateau being well designed. Aside from enemies being way too strong for the starting area and your limited equipment, I thought the player introduction to cold weather was also poorly handled. For myself and at least one other that I witnessed playing the game, just getting off the mountain once you're done with the shrine is an aggravating challenge unless you had the foresight to harvest and cook so many dishes with peppers, which that aspect of BoTW gameplay felt like it should be far more optional than mandatory to me. I at least am not a Zelda fan because I like to hunt down herbs and stockpile cooked meals.

Josh Baker - What will game design and level design look like in the future?
Amaro - A lot more bad games will get made.
Lel

@greengecko007 Can't you just warp away from the cold mountain to the tower or any other shrine if you're short on supplies? And I don't see how the enemies are too strong when they're all the weakest variety you can find, unless you're playing Master Mode which is for challenge seekers anyway.

@meleebrawler Fast traveling isn't part of level design though, it's just a convenience mechanic. I'd argue that if the only way for me to safely make it through an area is to fast travel, there is something wrong with the level design.

Also, for a starting area of the game, there are more than just the lowest tier enemies, even in the very beginning. There were plenty of Blue Bokoblins which can do upwards of 2 hearts of damage with weak armor, which would be 2/3 of your total health, in one blow.

@greengecko007 my son is six years old and he has beat the game, I'd argue the Great Plateau was absolutely perfect, he died a lot but learned every single time.

@greengecko007 There's many way to make it through the ice areas with great ease tbh, and the general design of it accommodates for that.

The enemies are also pretty easy and you're not punished at all for losing. I don't see it poorly designed, in actuality it's probably one of the better areas in the game imo.

@MartyFlanMJFan Dying a lot in an intro level is kind of absurd to me though, unless you are specifically playing a game that is soul crushingly hard, which BoTW clearly isn't. For comparison, I certainly didn't have to persevere through many deaths playing the beginning of other Zelda games, even the NES classics.

@-Green- If by "many" you mean two, sure. The main way is to cook food with peppers so that you don't take cold damage (despite spicy food helping people cool off in real life, ironically). The other is to obtain the warm doublet through either trial and error cooking, or looking up a guide. I disagree with the enemies being easy, at least at first. Once you have experience with Bokoblins and the ins-and-outs of the combat system, sure. But anyone playing the game for the first time and playing what is essentially the intro does not have that experience, and having to put up with repeated deaths because enemies can defeat you in one or two hits is kind of ridiculous. I completely agree though that the game doesn't really punish you at all for losing; you can just die, and try again as many times at it takes to figure things out and get practice. But since that's the case why make the beginning challenging in the first place, rather than a difficulty curve that shows you the ropes first and then challenges you progressively more and more, which most games strive to achieve?

@greengecko007 Well there's the warm doublet, peppers, carrying fire, traveling by camp fires and simply gunning it. It usually just involves me being creative. For example if you have the fire rod, you could basically use it. The warm doublet recipe is also hinted to you in game as well.

As for the death thing, I'm okay with it since it teaches you the more important parts of combat in BotW and doesn't punish you much at all. I thought of it as a fun way to improve at the game. I consider it similar to how Dark Souls work.

@-Green- To set up camp fires though you need flint, which you would need bombs to acquire, which would require you to have already done the intro of the game. Same thing with finding a fire rod somewhere else in the game, or somehow lighting a piece of flammable equipment (which doesn't typically lost long).

Edit: I just looked it up and it seems you don't have to use bombs on ore deposits to obtain flint. I went through the whole game thinking that was the only way. Still, pounding rocks with early game low durablity weapons and hoping for flint seems like a poor alternative, but it is there I guess.

@greengecko007 I'm pretty sure there are some enemy bases scattered near the area with fires on. At least that's what I recall, so I could be wrong.

The Fire Rod can typically be found on the Great Plateau, although they can be a bit rare.

@-Green- Beat me to it, haha. But yeah, those alternatives seem like you would have to go quite out of your way to pursue though, and not something I imagine many first time players experiencing, since the game doesn't readily introduce you to those possibilities in the intro part of the game.

@greengecko007 Grab one of the myriad of torches around and run up. Not too tough. And seriously the game puts like 10 spicy pepper plants at the base of the mountain. It's pretty easy to figure out what you are supposed to do. Context clues. Introduces weather AND food as a solution to various problems in one go. That's good design.

Complaints about enemy difficulty could be valid if it wasn't easy to avoid encounters.

I'd love Captain Toad Deluxe for Switch. The original game ported over to Switch plus some new levels. Better yet, Captain Toad 2. It'd be a great fit for the system, I feel. Couch co-op with each person using a joy con would be cool.

@greengecko007 I think the bad aspect of the Great Plateau is that there are too many ways to go due to the exploratory nature and not all of them are going to end well, potentially leaving people with a bad impression.

However, the best aspect of the Plateau is that it's a mini-world for you to explore and learn from until you're ready to leave. Explore every nook and cranny, fight the Bokoblins or leave them alone (running is also an option), figure out how to deal with weather and the elements. It even teaches, through exploration, other basics like doing shrines to gain more power and using that power to do new things with the environment. As long as the player, from an experienced gamer down to total novice, knows how to learn, experiment, and adapt (like a normal human should do), then the Plateau has done it's job of introducing the basics to the player. Unless, of course, they're one of those folks that need an extensive hand-holding tutorial level that feeds you weapons and power ups, like so many games out there have. BotW gives you a tree branch... (edit) ...and the ability to push/pull, throw, jump, and climb as soon as you leave the Shrine of Resurrection. After that, it's up to the player to deal with the world in their own way, which is a really good thing to see a game do these days.

@masterLEON I do think you touched on something I felt about the Great Plateau. It is a bit overwhelming at first site. Like you said, you can literally go anywhere and chances are, it will lead to disaster.

However, I feel the game struck the right balance of difficulty. It gave you the tools to explore and move on to the next area, but it didn't make it easy as well. Or more accurately, it gives you the tools and lets you experiment and use those tools in many different ways and combinations.

@masterLEON When I think about how other open world games created what basically amounts to an intro level, I tend to think they did a better job than my experience with the Great Plateau in BoTW. Like Witcher 3 for example has a very similar experience. The intro to that game is a large playable area that you can't leave to access the rest of the world map until you complete certain story objectives. But in this open world area, enemies are scaled with your starting level in mind more fairly, at least in my opinion. There is a diverse array of enemies, and they are threatening and you have to figure out how best to tackle each enemy on your own through experimentation, yet the difference is that these enemies don't kill you in one or two hits. Performing poorly at the game will surely result in quick deaths, but you don't halve to worry about an enemy you're unfamiliar with fighting getting a lucky shot on you and practically killing you, or trying something that ultimately proves ineffective on an unfamiliar enemy and being killed for it.

Interesting to read the comments about the Great Plateau. I didn't really enjoy BotW for the first few hours because of weapons constantly breaking, being one-shotted by enemies, and not being able to figure how to cook to get the spicy pepper potion. I was throwing peppers onto an open fire and confused why they were blowing away

Nice to see that he not only mentioned BotW but also Portal 2 and both Mario Galaxy games. I totally agree on all of those!
I also have completed Inside but can't remember that part he's referencing. ^^

@Damo: Thanks for that link in the article, really interesting topic! 👍