 |
| Central region in MR's world map |
The main thing I've been trying to focus on for the past several weeks is trying to put the entire overworld together. I feel like for a game like this, the world design is the most important factor besides the gameplay of course as it kind of serves as sort of a foundation for everything else in the game, like how you progress and where certain enemies, items, puzzles, and etc are found. So I think making the overworld first(After building or getting a solid gameplay engine first actually) is a good way to make designing the rest of the game a lot easier, I'm about 25-30% done with it so far and I'm trying to get the rest done before the end of January.
The way the world is structured, I don't want to spoil too much, but you can get an idea from looking at the screenshots I took. It's mostly a bunch of islands, some tiny with not much on them some taking up large portions of the map with the largest one being in the center. You can swim between a lot of them but it's probably better and safer to use a boat for longer distances.
 |
| From VGmaps |
Now if you look at the game's most obvious comparison, the Zelda series. You'll notice all the 2D games (save for the DS ones which I don't want to talk about) tend to have a similar structures, typically being set in some form of Hyrule. You generally have mountains and rivers at the top of the map, forests/town/castles arranged some way in the center and ocean/lakes/deserts close to or at the bottom. Even other games that would take inspiration from Zelda like Seiken Densetsu 1(FF Adventure) and Alundra would follow this kind of design as well. Minish Cap is a little bit different and the areas feel more sectioned off like the 3D games.
But despite most of them having similar design, I still love the way they are put together and always preferred them to way the 3D games are often designed, even with OoT/MM being my favorite games in the series.
So what it is it about them that makes the maps in these games good? A lot of Youtube videos and other blogs might have gone over it already, but it's because they are designed almost like a giant puzzle, or a dungeon above the ground.
The 3D Zelda games starting with OoT would take a more hub based approach and have a giant empty field in the center of the map, and all the more interesting locations off in the edges and corners, and instead of solving puzzles in these locations to reach the dungeons, you typically would instead being doing a lot of back and forth quests with NPCs so you could get an item or song that would allow you to progress. There was still some puzzle solving, but it was mostly for heart pieces and other secrets. Both Wind Waker and Skyward Sword tried to an extent to go back to way the 2D games were structured(WW succeeding at that a lot better than SS did IMO) but it wasn't until Breath of the Wild that Nintendo would really make a push to revisit the roots of the Zelda series.
I like many others, was extremely hyped when I first saw BotW and started learning more about it, and in many ways when the game was finally released it did managed to feel like a return to form for the series which many people were saying was starting to stagnate and drift away from what made the series special in the first place. But, call me a contrarian if you like, I was one of the people who was somewhat disappointed with the game and I still think OoT, MM, and even WW are better than it. The reasons again have probably been discussed ad nauseum in many other places, so I won't get too much into that, I just want to talk about the way the world is designed since that's what this post is about.
 |
| From ZeldaDungeon |
If you look at BotW map zoomed out you can see it looks a lot like the earlier games in the series but way, way bigger. It specifically looks like a call back to A Link to Past and the original LoZ with the ocean off in the bottom corner. However, when you are actually exploring BotW's map it doesn't really feel anything like the older games in the series, to put it bluntly, it feels like a number of other modern open world games, specifically like Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption...but with a Zelda theme.
That's not to say the game is bad, far from it, it's actually probably the best take on an open world setting to this day. But I think that's mainly because of the influence it does retain from the earlier games in the series. The best parts of BotW in my opinion are the first few hours on the plateau before the world fully opens up, and another location that you stumble upon later that actually heavily inspired me to make Moon Rhapsody. The parts where you don't have many items and abilities to work with and you have to figure out what to do without any guidance or clues are where I felt the game shined and it's systems worked the best.
But even during those moments, BotW never really feels like you're playing an old school Zelda game in 3D, at least I didn't think so, and that's because again, the older games were designed with the world being like a giant puzzle or maze that you solve over the course of the game. Almost like a metroidvania type of game. Had BotW been like the first few hours over the entire course of the game, I probably would have enjoyed it better, but would that approach have made the game better than all the other games in the series? A lot of people nowadays might say giving more freedom and more ways to play around with the world from the get go makes games automatically better, that's probably why open world games have taken off so much since GTA. But if you ask me I think a game just throwing you in a open environment with some weapons and enemies and telling you to have fun is kind of lazy and boring, so as you would expect I don't play a lot of open world games these days(I barely play anything ever actually).
But I can't just write of that more open world design is inferior to linear design, because if a game doesn't give you at least some freedom to experiment or do what you want, you don't even have a game to begin with. The key is of course is finding a balance that works for the way the game flows. If a game is too open and doesn't present enough challenges that are essential to progress regularly it will get too boring, but that will also happen if the game just strings you along and goes through the motions with said challenges. The "challenges" need to either be always interesting or more spread out so they don't get too repetitive, ideally it would be a mix of both but as one would imagine it can very hard to achieve a proper balance that would satisfy most people.
So going back to Moon Rhapsody, what is the approach I'm trying to do? Since I'm one person making this game I couldn't really make something as large scale as BotW even if I wanted to, but I also want the game to feel more open and allow the player to create their own fun in some ways that older games couldn't. So Moon Rhapsody's world will be like a puzzle that can be solved in many different ways. You might find an item that can help you get by an obstacle easily or you might end up having to take a different way, sort of like Deus Ex I suppose. But the end goal for me is to make a game that gives the player lots of freedom, but limits them in some way throughout the whole course of the game so that it remains challenging and interesting all the way through instead of the player getting overleveled or overequipped at some point and having the difficulty fall off. That's also why it's more of a survival horror game instead of ARPG even if it might look like the latter, because I want players to always feel in danger, and like they might not have enough resources or the right tools to make it through the next area. There will always be a way though if you look hard enough.
