2012-01-18, 06:00 AM
I have problems with bashing overworld design in Zelda games. I loved the Great Sea, and that was most people's biggest (halfway legitimate, pineapple people who hate cel shading) complaint for Wind Waker. How should we find the world? Who can possibly have an objective measure? The point is that we're exploring it.
I agree about linearity, if there's anything that does upset me about world design, is that it feels like separate levels or stages, rather than one unified world. I felt the same way about Termina. Even if there is an ordered path to most Zelda games, the overworld often conceals that - but not this time. In this case the physical size was bigger than ever, it just felt compacted by the nature of travel.
The dungeons/puzzles were easier than Twilight Princess but harder than Wind Waker. They really, really went out there to design new puzzle mechanics and I have to give them props for that. There were no block puzzle crutches. I was rubbed the wrong way by the "the whole world is a dungeon" approach to design, I would have preferred it if they tightened up the challenges into the actual dungeons. Then again, they would have to make villages and people on the surface so you'd have something to do instead, which would have clashed with the plot they wrote. It's a function of the setting, if not my ideal.
Skyward Sword is not perfect. That's the measure I have to use. But it's the closest they've come since Ocarina of Time.
I agree about linearity, if there's anything that does upset me about world design, is that it feels like separate levels or stages, rather than one unified world. I felt the same way about Termina. Even if there is an ordered path to most Zelda games, the overworld often conceals that - but not this time. In this case the physical size was bigger than ever, it just felt compacted by the nature of travel.
The dungeons/puzzles were easier than Twilight Princess but harder than Wind Waker. They really, really went out there to design new puzzle mechanics and I have to give them props for that. There were no block puzzle crutches. I was rubbed the wrong way by the "the whole world is a dungeon" approach to design, I would have preferred it if they tightened up the challenges into the actual dungeons. Then again, they would have to make villages and people on the surface so you'd have something to do instead, which would have clashed with the plot they wrote. It's a function of the setting, if not my ideal.
Skyward Sword is not perfect. That's the measure I have to use. But it's the closest they've come since Ocarina of Time.