Week 14 Reading - Mike Stout - "Learning From The Masters: Level Design In The Legend Of Zelda" (2012)

In this article Mike Stout talks about the level design on the classic NES game: The Legend of Zelda. Though it may be logical to think that this old game is lacking some of the design elements we see in today's modern games, it actually turns out that it contained some interesting and influential techniques to guide the player through each level.


The creator of the game, Shigeru Miyamoto, wanted to give his players a feeling of exploration as they journeyed through the land of Hyrule, and to achieve that there are some clever tricks found present in the game.

Mike looked through each level of the game and did a detailed analysis, looking closely at:

• Level Flow. How do the spaces in the level fit together? Where is the player supposed to go, and will she know how to get there?

• Intensity Ramping. Does the intensity of the experience ramp up in a satisfying way? Do monsters get more difficult as the level goes on? Does the player get a chance to learn how the enemies work and then display her mastery later on?

• Variety. Is there sufficient variety in the gameplay? Do enemy encounters frequently repeat themselves? Are the spaces varied in interesting ways?

• Training. If the design requires new skills from the player, does it teach and test those skills appropriately?

Level Flow

The dungeon layouts in the game are carefully planned so that the flow is very cleverly executed.

The critical path is the shortest path through a level without using secrets, short cuts or cheats. It is the path that the designer wants the player to take through the level without being too clever.

Critical paths don't often require players to complete 100% of a level, just that they do the mandatory objectives.

The critical path is almost always linear in the dungeons, there are few times where the player needs to re-traverse ground they've already been. This means the player rarely gets lost.

There are optional rooms that branch off from the critical path which aren't mandatory, but they reward the player with bonuses. These rooms make the level seem less linear.

At the start of the level there are rooms that force the player to re-traverse ground, it makes the level feel less linear, but because there are only two of them the player probably won't get lost.

The dungeons also have lots of short cuts, which can only be accessed with certain bonuses (such as bombs), so it makes the player feel clever.

This level generally keeps an excellent balance between giving the player the feeling of exploration and keeping them from getting lost.

Intensity Ramping

There are two important things to look for with intensity ramping:

1. The enemy encounters should usually ramp up in difficulty over the course of the level.
2. No encounter should be repeated twice. This gives a greater variety, and also keeps the player constantly answering new questions as she goes through your level.

It seems that on the dungeon the monsters slowly increase in difficulty over time, with more monsters appearing in the later levels OR the level elements affecting the gameplay in such a way that it becomes harder for the player to defeat the enemies.

For example, the player fights five Stalfos in Room 3, but two blockers in the room make it easier to avoid them; in Room 4, there are only three Stalfos but there is only one large blocker which obstructs your movement more than theirs'.

The design behind these encounters were intentional, subtle and very well executed.

Variety

None of the encounters in the dungeon were ever repeated. The combination of blocks and monsters are always different.

One criticism is that there is too much monster variety. In modern games you would have the same monsters, but more of them or combinations of previously fought monsters, whereas in this dungeon you and introduced to new monsters at almost every room.

The game does this combination mixing later in the game, but for some reason it doesn't do it here.

Training

In modern games, training seems like a required feature. When looking back at the NES-era of gaming, however, you would have to read the manual in order to get any form of training.

The original Legend of Zelda does actually contain some training - it's just very different to modern games.

In The Legend of Zelda, training is accomplished with "black rooms" where an NPC gives you hint.

The hints were practically useless most of the time, the above one telling the player to go to the end of the dungeon, which is obvious in itself. 

The most interesting thing about these black screens, however, is that in the Japanese version of the game they are actually useful, the hint in the first dungeon tells you that you need money to shoot arrows in the Japanese version, which is much more useful training.

Miyamoto and his team were trying to guide the player, and on the important things too, but due to the translation error we English-speaking players don't see the mastery behind the "black screens". Even then, they weren't overly successful, which is why they eventually scrapped them in later games.

What Did We Learn?

• It is possible to achieve the feel of non-linear level design by taking a linear path and adding short offshoots.

• Ramping encounters up along the critical path still allows you to have a good intensity ramp even if your level designs aren't all linear.

• Miyamoto and company intended to have training in the game, but it was excluded because of localization errors.

What Mike finds awesome is that they were making this stuff up back then, they had no prior knowledge of these techniques but instead relied on the masterful mind-power to achieve such amazing results.

My Thoughts

I always loved the original Legend of Zelda game, but until now I never appreciated how much thought when into the level design of it. It's true that it never felt like an overly linear game, even in the dungeons, where nearly all games fall to a linear set-up. It just shows that clever pacing and difficulty ramping have always held a place in successful games.

To implement these techniques into my own games, I imagine it would take a lot of play-testing and iteration to find a good balance between keeping the player on target and making them feel the feeling of exploration.