Zelda 1 is STILL My Favourite.

so the Legend of Zelda has been around for 38 years now and over that time it's gotten loads of awards and honors Ocarina of Time is still metacritic's highest rated game of all time breath of the wild is number six tears of the kingdom is the fastest selling game in Nintendo's history even out selling warand 3 if you can believe it and if you search for Zelda in Wikipedia's list of Game of the Year Awards it returns 54 results adult s Zelda has also given me a bunch of personal favorites I Found A Link to the Past alongside Jedi Academy in a Bargain Bin in Edinburgh on the same day that I discovered Str waffles that was a damn good day Majora's Mask arrested my attention when I first saw a preview in a magazine and it still gives me that uneasy feeling 24 years later what an absolute tour day force of a game and Twilight Princess has midna's bear ARS wiggling in front of the camera for half the game this was a deeply irresponsible thing to show a 13-year-old boy I'm fond of a lot of these games but the one that I find myself returning to the most is this one a lot of us old kagin have a lot of reverence for this one that I think is difficult to appreciate and the rest of this video is basically just me telling you why I think that is for me it's that 38 years and uh 54 results later Zelda 1 is still kind of [Music] unmatched to talk about Zelda 1 we need to talk about the famicom disc system by 1985 the famicom was utterly dominating Japan's console markets to the point that Nintendo were struggling to keep up with demand their solution was an add-on for the famicom that used diss instead of the usual carts discs had loads of advantages they were cheaper they had more space and they were rewritable so you didn't have to fiddle about with passwords so the famicom disc system launched in February 1986 with the killer app the Hyrule fantasy Zelda no den setu better known in the west as wild Woody no I'm kidding it was Zelda wasn't it so Zelda was a showpiece for the new hardware originally the rewritable memory inspired a creative tool that allowed players to make and share their own dungeons but even as Zelda took on a more familiar form the dis was still important it let the game present a persistent world that wasn't always a guarantee at the time that's right it could save oh my God you're convinced now aren't you but no really that was kind of a big deal just by being an advert for Nintendo's new product Zelda was a big step forward for console games an international release of the dis system was never in the cards for a number of reasons Google it but it was so important that Zelda save that it pushed the hardware forward again when it was released in the NES a year later a battery was actually built into the cart so you could save your game even with without a dis now that would already be enough to indelibly Mark Zelda's Place in the history books but let's take a weeek at where the rest of the industry was at as well Zelda was part of an emerging trend of action RPGs I don't know what this is about they're called action RPGs in the mid 80s traditional roleplaying games like Ultima and the black onx could only really work on computers how would such long and complex games work in a console with two buttons and no saving keep in mind that this was before the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy as processing power increased electronic games were also realizing that they didn't have to follow the rules of pen and paper RPGs rather than take turns with drama delivered via random numbers and accompanying descriptions players could just interact with the game directly you you see the potential for a new kind of hybrid game one that captures the appeal of the RPG in real time now like Nintendo started doing that Disney thing recently where they try and pretend that all of their ideas flow from this magical Wellspring of Nintendo brand inspiration no this was not a Nintendo Innovation this was an industrywide idea Zelda was preceded by games like dragon slayer and even hidl bless its smelly little socks but Zelda was directly inspired by an arcade game the Tower of druaga this was made by masanobu Endo the same fell that designed zus he wanted to create an action RPG hybrid dissatisfied with the results Endo shifted Focus as he went on more action less RPG mamoto certainly seemed to like it maybe some of these sound familiar a shield that automatically blocks attacks a sword swing that lowers The Shield a candle pitch black rooms that need a special item to light up a secret item necessary to defeat the final boss what you think I got that for no [ __ ] off and robed wizards who appear just long enough to Hur a spell at you none of this is to mention the cryptic secrets that make Zelda look positively welcome I'm telling you all of this because otherwise the shock of what I'm about to say might render you incontinent Zelda is exceptional among these early efforts for its Innovations for its great controls and for its accessibility this is the part that so often goes overlooked in retrospect a full fat account of this game cannot be conducted just by looking at it as if it were released today there is some truly amazing game design here that is worth looking that you just have to acknowledge that 1986 was a different time Zelda's all about exploration Moto's childhood Adventures exploring the countryside were encoded not into text but gameplay start a new file and you're not met with a low dumper in ancient prophecy but a choice you stand at a Crossroads you see a path to the north a path to the east a path to the west and a cave what would you like to do kill Jester of course there's only really one answer I mean you have to enter the cave and get the sword right but you can choose not to knowingly or otherwise the wrong choice is still a choice no it isn't don't think too hard about it all I mean is framing the sword like this has an impact in the way you play in earlier drafts link started with the sword and this one difference created a lot of resistance when players started wanding it felt directionless like they were doing something wrong by making them find the sword at the start Zelda primes its players for the experience to come all of a sudden exploring doesn't feel quite so aimless if that was in the very first cave what else is out there in Moto's words ah new your prostate pumping even past the sword Hyrule has tons to find so a player is making choices as soon as they start playing you can get to most of the map right now there are plenty of useful items in the shops and you can even stumble across the dungeons out a sequence while the game makes that clear it doesn't bar you from exploring what you can to do other wise would be to undermine the player's interest so why is Choice good that might sound like a stupid question yeah three reasons I think context engagement and expression let's start with context if you subscribe to a structuralist mindset you already believe that nothing is intelligible except through its inter relations unless you're talking to me then nothing's intelligible full stop what I mean is options contrast each other their qualities are highlighted by not being the alternative simple example take the heart container and the life potion the heart container is a permanent Health upgrade and the potion replenishes all of your health but only twice one offers more value over a longer period of time the other is immediate but temporary relief now like don't take the life potion you can e easily buy more but even though I would never pick it I still think that having two options is valuable they distinguish each other by their differences two engagement give the player a single outcome and they have to accept it no matter what if you've got two choices though you start thinking about them maybe you end up thinking about them after you stop playing the game even while you're not playing the game maybe thinking about them so much help the items and rules stick in your head the game becomes more engaging and finally choice is expressive any two playthroughs of Zelda are going to look different depending on the choices made that means that each playthrough is personal how you interpret these options and act on them says a little something about you I chose to get the blue candle first so I could get an extra heart maybe that makes no sense to you maybe you choose to get the magical shield first we're each making the adventure our own it's really important to the role-playing part of the RPG the role playing game it's a genre predicated on self-expression Zelda scatters its choices across the world not only to reward exploration but also to make the RPG more immersive and easier to understand traditional RPGs have a reputation for being just a wee bit a Teensy bit impenetrable you know like difficult to get into I back that up with examples but I I can't get into any of them QED I suppose but the arrays of numbers aren't there for their own sake they're a vessel for the game to breathe life into the fantasy from the outside that 20 is just a lucky role from the inside it represents your Barbarian cleaving a demon in Twain or you're barred cleaving a demon in Twain Zelda is doing the same thing its mechanics create a fantasy but the console's power makes it less abstract rather than describe what's happening Zelda could display however crudely our hero his actions the enemies and the obstacles in real time you don't have to wait your turn roll the dice and read the results to attack your enemy instead you walk up to them and swing your sword yourself sure you have to interpret a button press as a sword swing but that sort of translation is so natural to us at this point that it seems stupid to even bring it up if you're watching this and you are you did it multiple times very recently probably without even noticing that immedi is the same reason that choices are made by exploring it's a tidy bit of streamlining link get stronger just by reaching a new area it's a lot simpler to move link across to a new item than it is to periodically arrange numbers and skills now obviously that makes the game simpler you've got far fewer choices than in any given RPG but in a lot of ways I think that makes them stronger clear and simple choices are more meaningful to more players that array of numbers makes me indecisive as the consequences of my AC are less clear in Zelda you can get all the equipment that the game has to offer well like so long as you don't take the life potion anyway but I already told you not to it takes a lot of stress out of the decision making the items have impact when stat upgrades are involved they are absolute damage is haved strength is doubled while it simplifies choices though adding action to the RPG makes execution more complex the the player controls link directly so if you find yourself in a sticky situation it's your dexterity not chance that will get you out of it it's more consistent and easier to understand you missed your swing and you got smacked in the face you get it you're mad but you get it none of this is to say the RPGs are [ __ ] actually I feel like I've maybe thrown them under the bus a little here when all I really meant to say was that Zelda has fewer layers to peel back an inherent strength of computer games is their ability to make complicated systems intelligible the computer shoulders all the calculations and busy work and displays the results on screen now I think that this is a huge factor in Gaming's mainstream popularity if the choices are clearer and the interface is easier to understand then that frees up a lot of brain power for getting yourself immersed in the adventure you know Zelda had to overcome a lot of problems to get this to work though input was a big limitation a computer RPG had an entire keyboard's worth of buttons to push the enes has two big ones think about it in terms of verbs and you should see what I mean what can link do press the d-pad to move press a to attack that leaves just one more button so Zelda makes that button versatile it can become a huge number of verbs by selecting C in different items in the menu throw shoot plant play new items means new verbs you unlock new interactions by increasing your vocabulary often these items have multiple uses in other words they embody many verbs at once I really want to call these homonyms but I've pushed my luck far enough as it is bombs can damage and destroy the boomerang can stun and retrieve the flute can weaken and reveal and teleport and annoy apparently even the dpad has multiple uses move Advance explore it's so elegant that I instinctively Express these different desires without even realizing that there's a distinction at all Zelda really manages to get the most out of this little pad I keep holding it up to the camera like you don't know what an NES pad looks like I love the contrast between the Overworld an underworld the controls don't change the mechanics don't change but the feel changes a lot it's the difference between wandering through a field and being lost in a maze the Overworld gives you room to breathe the labyrinths are tight and claustrophobic and test your space racial awareness the dungeons aren't the puzzle boxes they would become later they're more like gauntlets you can usually ignore or avoid enemies on the surface but down here you have to cut your way through to make progress enemies are aggressive and dangerous with narrow doorways making Retreat difficult it feels like this is where ganon's power is most concentrated either because it's the underworld or maybe because he's guarding the Triforce more jealously the story doesn't actually support that are these Zelda's monsters alternating these two modes give Zelda a nice addictive Rhythm by the time I'm finished with a dungeon I'm ready to breathe a little by the time I'm done wandering Hyrule I'm ready for something more intentional the two feed into each other more literally too I couldn't get to the raft in level three but thankfully this Wise Old Man left me a timely and surprisingly coherent reminder to go get the white sword tangent by the way can I just say I love level 3's design defeat the first room of dark nuts and you get bombs as a reward if you bomb the only wall that you can you reveal a shortcut straight to the boss who is also weak to bombs it made the idea of coming back here less stressful because I didn't need to do it all at once anyway so the answer to a problem that I had underground was found on the surface and the game seem to be pushing me in that direction a lot of items in the Overworld are genuinely useful keys will even carry between Dungeons and can be bought in shops this means the whole game is in contention at all times you can't even forget about the rest of the game as soon as you go down those stairs everything is a possibility now all of this applies in Reverse too the answer to a problem upstairs can sometimes be found downstairs but you know I don't need to go through it all again you're a smart cookie it's an extension of the game's focus on exploration if you can rest assured that the solution to a problem will be in one specific area you don't need to cast as wide a neck when everything is a possibility though the only way to narrow that down is through exploration and experimentation the contrast between Overworld and underworld is emphasized by the graphics and music hyrule's pallet of greens Tans and Browns casts this as a world in Decline it looks parched many of the forests are Browning there's a great desert and the entrance to the first dungeon is in the hollow of a dead tree now people have retrospectively imagined this as The Deco tree which is cool and I encourage it but it's important that it works generically too you don't have to have played other games in the series to feel the mood you know the other games in the series that didn't exist yet the pallet establishes a different mood when link steps down into the dungeons the screen is dominated by a single overwhelming color cyan blue green copper you know what a bloody color is the atmosphere is a lot superier there's only two main songs in the game itself the Overworld and the dungeon themes but both complement one another so well that they never get exhausting they emphasize the differences between the two gameplay Styles the Overworld is natural with triumphant adventurous [Music] Fair the denser world is heavier it's unnatural and it's dripping with [Music] mystery of course it's a Home console game from 1986 the graphics were only ever going to be decipherable at best but by establishing a strong atmosphere and then leaving it at that the game lets imagination take the r there's a jessiqa to this version of Hyrule the fantasy is butress by the concept art in the instruction booklet it captures the tone of the game perfectly those orange sunsets the Twilight of this Kingdom none of which is to say that the visuals are flawless just that the shortcomings are understandable apparently the water hiding level s was meant to drain not just change color this was impossible with the extr limitations you can imagine a more sophisticated game making use of the drained water indoors to create a better sense of continuity what am I talking about you don't have to imagine it it's in A Link to the Past that Zelda 1 can't manage this isn't really its fault but it still means that parts of the game are less distinct and less memorable give me some time away and I will forget where a lot of this stuff is but then again I do that in real life too still all things considered it punches above its weight they were right to focus on mood over Fidelity now it may seem Daft to dedicate an entire section to the story Ganon kidnaps Zelda that about sums it up right no no no no no no no no no don't be foolish Sigman Freud identified four aspects to the personality the ID the eagle the super eagle and the pig bastard now it's my belief that Ganon represents the yeah okay Ganon kidnaps Zelda that about sums it up that said the story was more important than you might imagine Zelda was an acronis for the time in that it didn't have a scoring system the goal was just to complete the game so the appeal is on some level the narrative's resolution and for there to be a resolution there has to be a narrative in the first place so there has to be some kind of Arc in this game right there has to be some kind of conflict that challenges the characters and excites the audience thereby in short there has to be an adventure Zelda is either as classic or as genetic an adventure as you can get depending on how charitable you're feeling it's a Coming of Age story with a boy growing into a hero The Twist here is that Zelda is of course a game the player drives the narrative forward through play I thought it would be interesting then to take a look at the archetypal Heroes journey and see how that's expressed through play now if you don't know what that is it's from a 1949 book called the hero with a thousand faces written by Joseph Campbell the central idea is the hero's journey or the monomyth a story structure that can supposedly be found in myth the world over it occurs to me that I've just done a bit about how ridiculous a literary analysis of Zelda 1 would be and then here I am doing the exact same thing but for real what can I say you can take the wanker out the English Lit course the hero's journey deals with a transformation of Consciousness in this case from boy to Hero Campbell splits that transformation into too many parts that I'm not going to go over so here's the ones that I felt applied to Zelda The Call to Adventure that's the first screen the refusal of the call maybe when you turn the game off in frustration before coming back to it later Supernatural Aid it's dangerous to go alone take this the crossing of the first threshold encountering new dangers and enemies the belly of the whale many of the entrances to the dungeons take the form of gaping mouths being swallowed into the Earth separates you from the rest of the world the journey is internal rather than external you grow as you face the challenges of the labyrinth Road of Trials there are nine dungeons total so you repeat these steps a number of times apotheosis the unfamiliar becomes familiar and finally the ultimate Boon the Silver Arrows obtained right before the fight with Ganon I like that these arrows upgrade the bow one of the earliest items that the player is going to get and so therefore one of the earliest moments of growth often after these Transformations the hero finds themselves an outcast their expanded mind and experience has alienated them from the life that they used to know it's maybe taking it a bit literally but I think that this too applies to Zelda as the player plays they gain a deeper understanding of the game's map and mechanics fundamentally altering their relationship with the game you can never experience Hyrule for the first time twice there is the second quest of course but even then you bring a lot of your knowledge with you subsequent Adventures are changed by experience now it's important to me that you know that I'm not convinced by the monomyth first of all it's taken from Finnegan's wake I should probably wash my hands after delivering this but mainly it is phallocentric it's ethnocentric and it clearly Cherry picks its examples to frame those as a psychological need you know it is it's absolutely imperative that the hero in this story has a big booby I'm not endorsing the hero with a thousand faces I'm just acknowledging that it is an existing framework for narratives it's useful to me only in so far as it identifies popular not Universal but popular ideas in Western inspired fantasy but I feel that even a game as primitive as Zelda 1 has many similar ideas the audience is excited by a character overcoming trials and growing as a result a change in perception Alters the hero's relationship with the world around them the story never needed to be profound all it needed to be successful and accomplish its goals was a compell sense of adventure there's a complicated discussion surrounding Zelda 1's cryptic nature a lot of misgivings are created by modern expectations game design has evolved in the interval to become more transparent modern sensibilities shun instruction books and ridiculous secrets in favor of teaching the player as they play the Zelda series even kind of led the charge on this but again to understand Zelda 1 you can't judge it with 40 odd years of hindsight you need to look at it as if it were 1986 Zelda crested the movement from arcades to home consoles and that meant that the game had to change too arcades were of course public places so a community of people would gather to play games the Tower of druaga that's a genuinely difficult word for me the Tower of druaga is the ideal example I mentioned earlier how cryptic the game was uncovering its Secrets many of which were needed to finish involved mad stunts like blocking three spells from a wizard while walking touching the left and the right walls for no reason or passing through the closed door for no reason before killing The Last Enemy that sounds mental and it is so solving these puzzles became a community effort players would leave notebooks next to the cabinet sharing tips and discoveries the game wasn't just cryptic to souk up their money although that was definitely a part of it it was cryptic to create a conversation around it in many ways that was the game when gaming moved from the arcade into the homes the conversation was no longer between player plural but between a player and the game it took some time for the industry to embrace that change Evolution doesn't happen suddenly after all but in small steps a lot of games kept their arcade influences Zelda included like druaga it encouraged players to exchange information mamoto has a story about seeing RPG players call one another to brag about their stats so some level of communication could still be assumed like draga before it Zelda posed a problem for a community to solve still Zelda implicitly recognizes some of the differences between designing for the arcade and the home remember no high score the game is actually more welcoming than it gets credit for Zelda's first Innovation if you can call it that was just the quality of its instruction booklet compare with the super Mario Brothers booklet and you can see how much more care was given to Zelda the manual was important to a home console release limited memory makes information sparse in game and if you didn't get how a game worked there was no guarantee that somebody would be around to teach you Zelda's manual went above and beyond with multiple full color illustrations a guide for reaching the first dungeon and even a map of the surrounding area the bot CLP also helped to flashh out some of the details of the story and establish an atmosphere in the same way an arcade cabinet would Sprites are representational and the art gives a clearer idea what they're supposed to be representing but the game itself isn't heartless it nudges you in the right direction albeit more subtly than we're probably used to these days ingame Clues and text were a luxury they're absolutely cryptic to be fair and a few are completely incoherent but this seems to have been the point from what I can gather clumsy translation is a vanishingly small part of the problem still you can pick up what the game's putting down Clues are very often nearby the secret they are talking about some secrets are hinted at through level design people like to complain about level eight but come on that bush is really suspicious there's no other bush like this in the entire game well okay except these ones but guess what there's a secret down there too it is just begging to be burned down to cross the screen spend enough time in the Dungeons and you begin to recognize some of the patterns I started to Inuit secrets with surprising consistency mind how I got through level three just because I knew that doors can only be in the middle of each wall but then there is also like okay this one winds me up a wee bit you know those really really Infamous examples of cryptic secrets in this game you know like burn this random Bush walk into this random wall you know those aren't mandatory right the game basically tells you that it's the most famous NPC in this game it's a secret to everybody it's such a fun line isn't it the room is literally a secret but he is also paying you off so that he doesn't have to fight you I was so happy happy to learn that was intentional this game has like two jokes and they're both bangers but yeah if you're thinking to yourself how the hell are you supposed to know about this the answer is you aren't it's a secret you can still gather the money it'll just take a bit longer these rooms are all over the place anyway so you will probably find one or two of them breaking your Covenant with the moblin and telling your friends means that more of these secrets will be found and shared now that's not to say that the secrets are easy to find actually because a lot of them really aren't but if that sounded like a criticism to you let me quickly dive headlong in the other direction just to annoy you that's brilliant it's exciting to make discoveries isn't it and I think that the game pushing you into those discoveries makes them less exciting if you are sat there going what the [ __ ] why is that there then surely that is more fun than using ah yes that was well telegraphed it's an event when you discover a secret like this it feels like an achievement because it is and it is exciting to share that with friends there is a treasure map quality to Zelda 1 that I rarely get nowadays and keep in mind that memory limitations were a big concern the secrets being this oblique increases the value of practically everything in the game game if a player burns down a bush and discovers a hidden passage now every other bush in the game is no longer just a bush but a secret waiting to be discovered every wall is no longer a wall but maybe a cave you also get more value from replays while the sense of Discovery is diminished your choices are more informed even if link resets to square one the player doesn't you can get started earlier if you remember where some of these secrets are all of this together helps to extend the life of the game keep in mind that this game wasn't designed for you to burst through in an afternoon to check it off a backlog it was designed for your brain to not on for for weeks or or even months now you might say that this is padding to compensate for limited memory and that is objectively true but it's also true that there's a real mistake to Secrets I got something in my eye I I I nearly ruined that take Zelda is not immaculately conveyed but I need you to understand that's the point this is a game about exploration not puzzle solving you can't have a good secret that is conveyed well it's a stupid sounding thing to say but Secrets should be secret which leads us to the unfortunate fact that none of these are secret anymore mamoto once told a story about Zelda's Western release concerned about how esoteric it was Nintendo of America bundled the game with a guide giving the player more tips and tricks and even showing them most of the map it was probably the right decision America is a much bigger country with a much lower population density that means it's going to be much more difficult to find somebody to talk to about this than it would be in Japan but just handing the player the answers before they had even had the chance to ask a question was near really an ideal solution either so the guide came sealed instructing players to break the seal only if they were in Dire Straits everyone of course just broke the seal immediately you can see why mamoto was disappointed the game just handing the player answers without resistance or collaboration that problem is Amplified a million times today it is difficult to describe just how much time has eroded Zelda's magic all of its Innovations are taken for granted it is played more often than not with a walkthrough open on another screen even if you don't the fact that the internet exists at all changes your relationship with the game difficulty becomes voluntary when you know that the solution to your quander is just a few key strokes away so a lot of the game becomes useless there is no point in deciphering Clues when a walk through bypasses the need for clues in the first place at one stage there was a grand conversation around the Legend of Zelda now we're left with only the transcript I'm really proud of that line I I really wanted to put that in the video now you might say correctly that guides were always available even back in the day but I feel like there's some differences between those and the omnipresence of the internet for one guides had to be sought out and purchased you had to be curious and willing to spend money but even then all it would take is one friend to have the guide for everyone to benefit unless of course there were a miserable G pouring over a guide with a pal has a sense of community to it that Google just doesn't I'm not being judgmental it is literally just that the industry and the world frankly are completely different to 40 years ago Zelda is truly a game out of time as great as I think it is I completely understand that it's hard to appreciate positive coverage of this first Zelda usually opens by talking about exploration and freedom of choice I I wrote that sentence without even realizing that that's what I had done too but the game is not formless the way that the map is arranged gives the game structure here are some examples you have to get the raft before you can access level four you are barred from Death Mountain before you've cleared the rest of the Dungeons and structure is suggested through difficulty you start to recognize how the game is going to go early you're going to get dungeons at regular intervals that contain Keys hidden walls pushable blocks harder and harder enemies useful items and a heart container and Triforce Shard when you beat the boss afterwards you're let loose to explore again sometimes with new areas opened up the game is by no means rigid but you see how this is a structure you can't just go anywhere you like from the word go you expect certain beats along the way if you want to create that feeling of growth the hero's journey from part four you need this structure there's anticipation leading up to a dangerous bit there's tension challenging it and there's satisfaction beating it especially if you get your head kicked in and have to come back later and this is where Choice comes into it now here's my belief structure compliments choice and Zelda is a prime beef example structure gives context to your decisions there are concrete problems that you have to deal with a river blocks your way you recognize that as a problem and the ladder as a solution when you get it you are driven further into the game by the game design but Zelda is also open enough that it invites you to decide on your own solution to a problem so you consider the problem and your option a river blocks your way but you don't have the ladder yet is there a way around well there seems to be but you keep going in circles in the Lost Woods do you know how to get through that it's strong and simple context honestly again I I feel a bit daed pointing it out like I want to get over there how do I do that or I want to clear level six with my bum cheeks intact how do I do that in my case the answer was to [ __ ] off and go and do level seven first there are loads of options exploring the Overworld to get more loot seeing if there's another route through the dungeon or just not being shite these are all meaningful and expressive choices because the game structure creates context you understand the problem you organize a solution if solution were instead parceled as part of the problem that would make players incurious you would trust the game design to do all the work for you Solutions are instead scattered across the map making every detail important and rewarding engagement with the entire game as a holistic piece it's almost like this game's about exploring or something so this works the other way around as well Choice compliments structure there's this whole d dnamic between Avatar strength and player skill link often gets objectively stronger and tougher as you collect more items so there's less burden on the player's skill you dish out more damage and you can make more mistakes any more rigid game this kind of progression can sometimes leave the player a bit of a loose end you wouldn't be improving at the game you would just be letting link grow stronger the exact kind of numbers go up TDM that marks the worst RP P G's the game just interacting with itself a closed feedback loop what keeps you an active participant in Zelda is that you have to choose how and when link grows stronger that also means that you can choose not to have him grow stronger a really skilled player can compensate for a weak link entirely I said at the start that not taking the sword was the wrong choice but some players make that choice on purpose to challenge themselves spin these options out over an entire game and it means that no two playthroughs are going to look the same so Choice compliments structure structure compliments choice or at least that's what I believe anyway so you understand my frustration when the two are so often made out to be in compatible now of course a lot of that is down to terminology I've deliberately avoided using using two specific words here linear and nonlinear these words are opposites and by using them carelessly we also frame structure and choice as opposites as well when I don't think they are as much trouble as level six gave me though I'm always impressed by Zelda's combat the controls work around the pad's limits beautifully attacking and defending are mutually exclusive controlled entirely with the directions and a press a to attack release it to automatically defend link stops moving and lowers his shield as he attacks he's vulnerable so that means that not pressing a button becomes an active decision as well it's really efficient this attack defend Dynamic seems to have been implicitly understood by these early Japanese action RPGs it's another point in common with the Tower of druaga the main differences being that you can move with the sword drawn and as you do the shield blocks everything to Gill's left maybe I'd feel differently if I played longer but I prefer Zelda's more committed approach but even the honken hdlight got it the character you're not honestly telling me that this lad's called gy takes and Deals more damage by holding a z his execution is much better even in the Sprite work Link's big sword and shield distinguish between attacking and defending his long hat and big ears distinguish the character from his weapons before there was lore before he was a hen or a helan there was a reason for this character design the stiff movements and the limits to Link's attack prioritizes positioning over dexterity you have to get in close to hit enemies with your sword so dodging enemies such that you can still retaliate sees you weaving in and out attacking carefully when you can modern games try and capture this same feeling but with smoother controls by using invincibility frames or eye frames challenging you to dodge or block with Split Second timing sick as it is the advantage of Zelda 1 is that Dodge is on the same buttons you use to move around it's immediate efficient intelligible comfortably slotting a new verb onto the d-pad alongside move advance and explore assigning more actions to fewer buttons doesn't just free up the controller but it also makes the game smoother combat can flow into exploration in back seamlessly so the enemies also present an obstacle to exploration I described the D as gauntlets because while there are a lot of secrets to discover monsters must always be contended with take the push blocks for example you understand how they work after the first one but you still need to kill the enemies thereafter to be allowed to push it the challenge here is not the same brain teaser that you've seen a dozen times before it's fighting the baddies not to mention sometimes clearing a room reveals useful items deep in a dungeon with dwindling health I don't always want to risk it you have to decide on a room byro basis if the potential reward is worth the fight so you are actively making decisions the whole way through a dungeon because of these monsters I also really like how monsters guard secrets on the Overworld the white sword is guarded by a lyl and the magical sword is guarded by the guine in the graveyard both times you're actually told that there's a secret here in an uncharacteristically direct way but it would be trivial to walk up the stairs and into the cave so a lonel often blocks The Narrow Path it would be a trifle to push all the graves in fact it would be boring so every time you make a wrong guest you get swarmed by ghosts so the game gives you the answer but the secret still feels Secret you know why nobody else has found this old man sure the mechanics are simple as hell but they are effective and they are efficient and they work for the game that this is and sometimes they even hide hidden depth there's some really interesting combat scenarios some of them are downright nasty the rooms with whz robes Bubbles and like likes is a master stroke of Cruelty the game understands exactly why each monster is dangerous and it layers them like this to create an electrifying challenge it's no wonder I had trouble down here now the challenge doesn't always come from the healthiest Place mind here are some examples enemies can't Telegraph their attacks because of the limited memory dark nuts and Wiis robes suffer the most they will turn or warp without warning which is tough to respond to whis robes don't even have a south facing Sprite and that split seconds more interpretation is all they need to fire off some bolts enemies sometimes don't get knocked back when you hit them PE hats and Tech ties rise off the ground but without vertical perspective it's difficult to tell what's going on are they going south or are they falling you fire a laser at full health which I've got to be honest I've never never understood that when it's available I just find myself playing in a less interesting way it's a bit lazier you know and lastly The Shield is a bit inconsistent it deflects projectiles but not magic at first cool gotcha I'm with you so far but the upgraded version also doesn't block some magic with the aforementioned memory issues it can sometimes lead to awkward situations where identical magical projectiles are raining down but you can only block some of them now I want to offer some defense not to deny that the game has problems but just to make sure that we understand the context High difficulty in the arcades was influenced by a few factors players had to pay for extra tries difficult games encouraged collaboration even if it was just watching another player and a tight memory budget meant that the games didn't actually last that long front to end Zelda inherits two of these problems thankfully a game over doesn't see you plugging coins into your NES give blizzard a couple of years we've already talked about the secrets as for the other problem I need you to understand just how tight the memory limits were Tech ties and octo well most monsters really fudge the perspective so that they can get away with just using one or two Sprites all the dungeons in the game fit together like a jigsaw created on a single grid to try and cram as many as possible into the game and apparently the enemies being able to change speed passed for impressive AI at the time the game does its best is my point you can see Zelda straining to overcome its limitations all of these problems do exist but really they were unavoidable and of course they can be comp ated for I found myself rising to the challenge the more I played try and hit the enemies with the tip of the sword that helps a lot before we get to Death Mountain proper one thing that I really like about this game is how choice and difficulty both Plateau towards the end options dwindle as you exhaust them there are fewer and fewer secrets to uncover as you explore and this means means that the game Rises towards its climax there are fewer distractions as the threat of Ganon looms and that makes him daunting he isn't an amazing villain but the threat is real you have spent the entire game feeling his power and sometimes in all likelihood succumbing to it not like that it's not tears of the Kingdom yet Death Mountain is like the entire game in miniature it's a tough and confusing Labyrinth but it distinguishes itself from the Rest by sheer length Death Mountain takes up an entire quarter of the game's dungeon memory it practically demands multiple trips in and out you aren't going to get through it first time maybe even with a guide coming back out feels like breaking the surface to draw a breath before diving back under it's a last bit of exploration to go out on even after you have exhausted the rest of the game there is tons to uncover down here there's still a clear structure to it mind wandering aimlessly is liable to get you lost you have to keep a mental map of the place to avoid going in circles getting lost is especially dangerous as you end up fighting more than you have to in a dungeon this long and this tough you want to be saving as much health as you can if you can duck out of a room without fighting it's probably worth it even so you will surprise yourself with how easy you find some of it you remember how I left level six early in part for fear of the red whz robes with the magical sword it's practically a relief to see them they're so easy you really feel like you've grown Secrets tie the whole thing together even the entrance to the dungeon is a secret a random bombable wall with the only clue leaving you interpreting these rocks as a pair of glasses you have to tease out each new segment of the dungeon some Secrets even give you a shortcut right to the boss so there's the opportunity for surprises and discoveries right the way through till the very end there's even two key items in the last couple of dungeons the red ring especially makes things way less stressful my red ring only makes things more stressful but that's IBS for you getting the Silver Arrows before defeating Ganon is a classic before the master sword before the light arrows again before we had cemented Zelda's lore it had to rely on broader culturally ingrained ideas silver is the bane of evil Ganon is appropriately more about understanding what to do than it is doing it if you know how he works he's pretty easy he turns invisible and teleports so you just stab blindly for a while a single Silver Arrow delivers the cig gra annoying as it is to take a wrong turn and show up here without the arrows I kind of like that the final boss is more about having uncovered a secret than it is the actual battle he seems undefeatable at first but he's a pushover once you've sused them out all of Zelda's strengths come together here at the end highlighted one last time in a compact space to send the game off it's the perfect climax to this game honestly like I really like this one it's just cool as hell I think it might be like my favorite dungeon in the entire Zelda series I mean come on it's shaped like a giant skull you don't get more classic than [Music] that Zelda 1 was a popular game a success that laid the foundation for one of the most important gaming series it is not a game that has earned retroactive Merit because of what came after because it is like I say kind of unmatched even within the Zelda series in the 5 years between the original and a link to the past the landscape of games had completely changed Innovations like saving and a sword and sorcery setting had become routine cryptic design choices that got people talk walking had fallen out of favor we had truly moved away from the arcade and into the Home Instead The SN followup ensured players were given more Direction visual Clues would show you the weak point in the wall which means fewer wasted bombs but it also means the player is essentially cut out of the feedback loop once you know what that crack means you can respond perfectly every time so free form gameplay was meticulously balanced with time investment A Link to the Past is a fantastic game of course partly because of this careful curation but is very different to that first Zelda while I've not gone through the series with a fine- toothed comb I think it's safe to say that the series trended more linear from there later zeldas stopped using the language of games to convey links growth instead using words to move the journey along the game will tell you a legend rather than invite you to become a part of it this focus on Direct storytelling created a rigid structure as plots had to follow a logical sequence this rigid structure created routine the opposite of Adventure the dungeon pacing was polished to a miror shine you enter a dungeon pick through the rooms you can find the item roughly halfway through and then do a lap of Honor with that item as the the rest of the dungeon is now open to you the Pitch Perfect conveyance meant that not only could you guess what the dungeon item would be soon after you entered you could probably also guess roughly how to beat the boss dungeons were more like puzzle boxes than gauntlets with even the bosses testing not your survival skills but how well you could use your new item I'm making it sound worse than it is and anyways that is like the platonic ideal of game design right but it's also very clean and tidy and formulaic in short Zelda lost the role-playing part of the RPG the games became so well-designed there were no more choices to make there's no sense of Mystique to later dungeons as you would only ever learn they existed when it was time to go in Solutions are part and parcel of their puzzles mimicking the worst parts of Zelda 1 by inspiring a single simplistic question what does the game want me to do here then in 2017 came breath of the [Music] [Music] wild the director hi Maru Fuji a seemed to feel the same way about the series at a GDC talk in 2017 actually before breath of the wild even released he said that those games were passive while breath of the wild was active passive games are where you play within the confines of a pre-prepared mechanism active games are where the user can actively engage with the game so breath of the wild was the opposite of the more linear games it was completely open completely free even impassible walls were removed by allowing the player to climb them but didn't we talk about that framing structure and choice as opposites yeah I've never bought the idea that breath of the wild was the return to Zelda 1's principles you already see it Zelda 1 has walls Zelda 1 has structure I'm not going to do a big breakdown a breath of the wild but without getting into the weeds here are two simple examples of how it's different first you can go anywhere including straight to the final dungeon from the tutorial you can't in the original to complement this the game gets more difficult as link gets stronger this algorithmic progress deemphasizes the sense of growth progress is only noticeable by contrast when You Face an important possible challenge or when you overcome it and see how far you've come if the world is growing with you you lose that sense of perspective and this is where I think a lot of open World Games lose me it's the difference between choice and freedom I would describe it as a difference of obstacles Choice presents players with an obstacle they have to overcome but it allows them to overcome it in different ways Freedom removes the obstacle or at least makes it discretionary do whatever you like go wherever you like and it will probably work I know I know they're different games maybe that freedom is so compelling that you don't miss the structure that's great I'm not sitting here trying to tell you that metacritic's sixth highest rated game of all time is bad I'm just trying to explain that I think there's a difference and that difference means that there's only really one game in this series that scratches the same itch as Zelda 1 does Zelda 1 it that sentence kind of got away from me there sorry

Channel: shoogles

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Id: qQUV2xde1fk

Length: 62min 40sec (3760 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024