Traveling Through Time

with the Legend of Zelda

3/24/2019

From the Legend of Zelda, introduced in the early 1990’s, to the Ocarina of Time, played with my boys in the early 2000’s, to Breath of the Wild, my newest quest, I continue to be drawn back to this puzzle solving, search and find, adventure game.  So what’s the draw?  This is what I asked myself while considering gaming options for class.  We’ve been reading about video games and with more game learning on the horizon, maybe it was time to step back in time and see what Link was up to.

 

The Legend of Zelda was introduced in November of 1987 here in the U.S., it was the first console video game I had ever played and with a controller that was easy to use I jumped in feet first.  My husband and I were young, I was just out of college with time on my hands, and we’d play for hours.  There were no game maps, internet web pages, or cheat sheets.  I drew out a map of each area we explored and of each dungeon we went into.  There were little “icons” for different things so we’d remember where to find them when we needed them.  It was a two dimensional search and find, questing game that seemed to go on forever, and I happily immersed myself in the adventure to conquer the bosses and help the hero, Link, find princess Zelda to save her from the terrible Gannon.

 

By the time the boys were born in the early 90’s I had hung up the controller and hadn’t given Link a thought until they stumbled into the Zelda realm around 1998 when The Ocarina of Time was released for the GameCube platform.  I jumped back into Link’s world, this time as a mentor and guide.  By then things had changed a bit, Link still lived in a 2D world but the graphics had improved 100 fold, he was a real character now, and the idea of a joystick had infiltrated the gaming world and destroyed my desire to pick up a controller.  Try as I might I just couldn’t get the swing of that wiggly little knob.  So I was happy to take up the maps and note keeper role as we navigated the quests to save the princess.  When we put Link away I was confident I wouldn’t see Link or Zelda surface in my life again.

When picking my next game the question was whether I really wanted to get back into joystick land?  In The Art of Game Design Jesse Schell writes “When people play games, they have an experience.  It is this experience that the designer cares about.  Without the experience, the game is worthless” (Schell 2015).  I evaluated my adventures; I had done the escape room, then tried out gaming on my phone, and then ventured off with my phone into the land of Pokémon Go. It seemed like stepping up to the challenge, embracing a video game and the challenge of a joystick while testing out an ‘open world role playing video game’ would certainly be an experience.  So with my Nintendo Switch in hand and Breath of the Wild ready to go I fired it up I dove in.  The music and soft voice of the narrator took be back in time a couple of decades, and with pen in hand I listened to get a grasp on this new world.

Click to play

I surfaced from the cavern Link had been sleeping in and off we started to explore a new game and a new world.  I say new world because this one wasn’t the Link of 1987, or the two dimensional world from 2003, this game is in 3D which presented another challenge for me.

 

Swiveling around in any direction, looking up, down, and sideways can make you rather dizzy.  You can’t see what is coming up behind you so you better figure out that joystick, well there’s TWO of them now, quickly.  Thankfully the music still warns you of impending doom, so you can try to turn around and find whatever is sneaking up on you before it tracks you down.  I found myself looking at my Nintendo Switch, puzzling away as much at the controller as the game itself. The challenge of going from eight buttons to sixteen buttons and two joysticks has been a bit nightmarish but I made my notes and battled my way through learning the secrets contained within the Great Plateau where Link is when he wakes from his 100 year sleep to find his beloved land of Hyrule in disarray again, and Princess Zelda in need of his help.

About two days into the game I was truly wondering what I had set myself up for, and about two weeks in I started to have fun.  I’m still battling with the joysticks, although I think most of that is in my head, so it’s taken a while to really start to connect.  I think back to some of our recent readings for class as I realize I miss the chit chat with the kids, the collaboration of having someone in the room to help remember where things are, figure out what to do, or where to go next, or notice the shiny thing on the hill (shiny things are good you see, they’re usually food, weapons, or something useful). Another challenge for me was that the game is no longer set up in a world I can draw out on graph paper, so how do I make my map to tell me where I’ve been and what was there…?  I have to admit the idea of instructions that are readily available on the Internet is very tempting.  I did succumb to finding a cheat site once after I had wandered around for two days and really wasn’t getting anywhere.  I had to admit, Link and I were lost.  After a while I decided that I’d better go find some direction or I’d have nothing to write about for this play journal, so I ventured off to find some help.

 

I found a website that didn’t give everything away but it did give some ideas for places to go and what to look for to equip oneself with, items needed to wrestle with the creatures that frequent the area, and things needed to access the first quest.  It was nice to have someone on my side again, someone to “consult” with to find some direction.

Now that I have about three weeks under my belt and I’m getting better at remembering which button draws the sword, which button to push to use it, and which one puts it away, and I’m starting to feel the pull to return to the game to see where I can go next.  I think curiosity and my inherent need to conquer this thing is the main draw and all I can say is once I master these buttons and these joysticks, look out world here I come.

It is the little successes that keep drawing you back to engage, complete a quest, and finish the game.  Designers know this and are very conscious of what they need to build into a game to engage and motivate players to return.  In Resonant Games they discuss the idea of a magic circle where players are free to play provided they stay within the games rules. They also highlight that overall game design is crucial and point out that a game offering multiple paths and freedom of choice is more likely to engage.  Things like clues as to where to go next can be given by revealing a game character in the distance or the reflection off an object can be used to draw the player that direction.  Link has an entire world he looks out on as he emerges from his sleepy cave, which direction he goes is entirely up to him.  If he chooses there are few people who will talk to him to give him clues, but the path he chooses is his own.

Click to see torch information cheat sheet

 

To prevent him from getting into areas he is not skilled enough to succeed in, or does not yet have the tools he needs to be successful, the game designers put barriers to entry in place.  For example the Great Plateau is an island that there is no getting off of without a parachute, the player is forced to practice entry level skills to learn about the world they are in before they can proceed to a higher, potentially more frustrating level. To get off the Great Plateau Link must find the man with the parachute who guides him to beat the first boss and bring back what he finds to trade for his parachute.  In Breath of the Wild they use narrated video recordings that in effect “pause” the game when there is additional information the player will need, however whether you take the advice of the guide at hand is entirely up to you.

The designers of Shovel Knight, a retro game released in 2014 designed to mimic the best of the video games of the 1990’s, highlight the importance of introducing new skills earlier in the game to enable the player to practice with the skill or tool before they’ll need to use it.  I’m thinking there’s something in the concept of creating a barrier to progress, and/or introducing practice of a skill to be used later that lends itself to learning games as well.

 

So in my quest to more fully understand the engagement component of video games I find that I agree with our readings.  Today’s video games offer a highly immersive and engaging environment that is fostered through the opportunity for self-choice, exploration, the satisfaction of small successes, and when playing with someone else a good deal of opportunity for collaboration.  I can also say that if you have the determination to conquer a joystick, or two, most games like this one are all about curiosity, choice, logic, and what you can find. Really, it’s a bit like life.

Resources 

Craddock, D. L. (2018). Shovel Knight. Los Angeles: Boss Fight Books.

Klopfer, E., Haas, J., Osterweil, S., Rosenheck, L., & Macklin, C. (2018). Resonant games: Design principles for learning games that connect hearts, minds, and the everyday. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Schell, J. (2015). The art of game design: A book of lenses. Boca Raton: CRC Press.