Zelda Begins — Day 3: Concept
November 25th, 2006 by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau
Link’s parents were the leaders of a small village near the frontier of Hyrule. When Link was little, the king of Hyrule sought to unify the land by invading the neighboring country. During this long war, that country’s army invaded the village. To make sure no rebels would rise, Ganondorf — that country’s king — made an example by killing the village’s leaders, Link’s parents.
Friends of the family sent Link to a faraway village to protect him. Years went past. During all these years, Link trained relentlessly so that one day he could have his revenge and kill Ganondorf with his own hands. Eventually, the war ended and the kingdom was unified.
Today, Ganondorf is still alive. He’s now the leader of the rebels against the king and he’s plotting to kidnap Zelda, Hyrule’s princess. When Link hears rumors of this, he sees this as a golden opportunity to — at last — confront his parents’ murderer and get his revenge…
And so the story of this reinvention of the Legend of Zelda begins.
There are a few things I like about this twist on the original story. First, the game isn’t about saving the world, it’s about Link’s personal quest for revenge. Most games, it seems, are about saving the whole world and I’m tired of it — it’s much more interesting when the story revolves around the hero’s inner motivation.
The second thing I like is that everybody is morally ambiguous. Link isn’t the perfect hero, he’s a guy who wants to avenge the murder of his parents. Ganondorf isn’t generically evil, he’s a former king who tried to protect his realm. And Hyrule’s king isn’t simply wise and generous, he’s a greedy man who wanted to control the whole world. I think characters are more believable and interesting when they aren’t just perfect stereotypes.
The third thing I like is that it gives some background story on characters. You know a bit more about who Link is and what drives him, but also about his past. Fleshing this story into a full game, I’d make sure to expand on all those aspects and make the world more believable and real. I’d also detail Link’s relationship with Zelda more, to give her an actual personality and some strength of character.
Game Structure
Usually, Zelda games are a sequence of dungeons — this game won’t feature any. Why? Because dungeons don’t make any sense. Why would anybody create a sequence of puzzles as the entrance to their lair? Instead, this game will be much more open-ended and made of believable locations.
You’ll get missions from various NPCs all over the world. Each mission you complete raises your notoriety. For new NPCs to become available, you need to get your notoriety high enough. Each NPC will have his own storyline, like when you get missions in Grand Theft Auto (but with less Phil Collins). You won’t have to complete all the missions to progress, so if you get stuck on a mission you can just concentrate on others to get your notoriety.
Combat and Controls
Zelda games feature a lot of combat and this one will feature even more. In fact, the game I have in mind would probably be rated M (if you were 10 years old when you played Ocarina of Time, you’re 18 now after all…). So the game needs an interesting combat system.
I’ve been thinking for a while about how to create a more compelling combat system than the current ones. The main problems with current combat systems is that they’re really challenging to use: there are lots of buttons and button combinations to use, and you need excellent reflexes to win. That’s great for hardcore gamers, but new players have a frustrating experience — can you imagine somebody who’s first video game he plays is Ninja Gaiden on Xbox? The other problem is that the combats don’t make use of the environment, or very little.
The solution I thought of was to really focus on the environment, to make it the center of the game. It seems Peter Molyneux was thinking the same way, but he went further and created a demo of the concept. You can find the video here. Go take a look, it’s pretty cool and it’ll make things clearer. (For the record, yes I did have a similar idea — albeit it never went beyond a concept on a piece of paper. No, I’m not just trying to steal from Molyneux’s thunder 
)
Under this combat paradigm, controls are pretty easy on the Wii. You have a cursor, and the wiimote works much like a mouse. Click on the ground somewhere and Link walks there, click an enemy and he attacks him, click on a chair and he uses it to defend against the enemy, click with the other button and he uses it to attack. During a fight, Link defends himself automatically: he blocks and counter-attacks without you having to dictate his every move. This default fighting isn’t very powerful however. To gain the upper-hand you must use the environment to move the situation to your advantage.
This control scheme has the advantage of being very powerful and very simple at the same time. It also rewards being creative and smart, rather than just mastering the most powerful combo of the game. Even outside of combat it leaves plenty of room for depth and interesting puzzles — it’s the control scheme that’s the basis for many point & click adventure games after all.
The End of Zelda Begins
So, that concludes that little exercise of reinvention of a classic. I’m sure if that game were actually made that fans of the series would get upset, but I think it would be pretty fun. If it were very well done, it would win the skeptics over and get a lot buzz around the game — it’s not every day a popular franchise gets a make-over.
It’s not likely we’ll see any major change to the Zelda franchise, much less changes of that magnitude, so I guess we’ll never know how it’d play out…
In any case, don’t think that I don’t like the Zelda games based on this. I actually like those games a lot and think they’re extremely well designed. I think it was a fun challenge to come up with a completely different way to look at a popular franchise.
Warning: long post ahead
The fighting system sounds somewhat like a game of Capcom’s Power Stone controlled with a mouse (in Power Stone, combat revolves mainly around the environment, and the action buttons can be used to pick up objects, swing them, bounce from walls, swing from poles, etc.)
It’s certainly an interesting concept, though I’m not sure how much it alleviates the problem of needing good dexterity to win. Especially with the traditional third-person camera used in the Zelda series: if the camera can move at any time, wouldn’t it be actually harder to “click” on the right object, especially with the Wiimote being somewhat less precise than a mouse? Remember that what the Wiimote gains in immersiveness and polyvalence over the mouse, it loses in precision…
Players wanting to click on an enemy might click a bit on the side, and Link will just walk over there instead of attacking the enemy, or try to “use” whichever environment feature is there ; that’s going to lead to frustration.
Of course, if we’re going with the approach that “During a fight, Link defends himself automatically: he blocks and counter-attacks without you having to dictate his every move”, then there’s also the danger of going to the other extreme and turning the game into an RTS with only one unit: just click on each of the enemies in sequence to defeat them, with an occasional click on a nearby environment feature to help a bit.
Maybe, to help combat this problem, the game could be designed to have less fights with weaker enemies, which aren’t going to be very interesting under this combat paradigm (if enemies die in one or two hits, there isn’t much incentive to use the fancier environment options), but rather to focus more on the “boss” or “miniboss” battles: I think it’s in these kinds of extended battles that the environment-based combat system can really shine. Stronger enemies can seldom be beaten by just charging blindly into them, so this is where all the possibilities that this environmental control scheme offers can really come into play.
One enduring aspect of the Zelda series that you haven’t mentioned is the extensive use of items: the bow, bombs, hook, hammer, musical instrument and so on. How would this integrate into the more open-ended missions concept or the point-and-click control scheme you’ve adopted?
And on another note, you’re probably right that this type of “mature” Zelda game (replacing the “fairy tale” kind of story by morally ambiguous characters and plot, replacing the simple dungeons by a more complex system of missions and reputation…) would never get produced, since it has little in common with the other Zelda games, other than the names of the protagonists. It would probably work as an original game, though, and I certainly like the much more interesting way to cook up the characters that you’ve come up with (I never liked the “silent hero” approach in games, but that’s just me).
Thanks for the detailed comment — I loved Powerstone
So, taking your main points one by one…
About the controls: if I were to make this game, I’d definitely use a bounding box system, so that if you point close but not quite on an object it would still register correctly. As for the camera, I haven’t spent much time thinking about it — I like the point of view in the Molyneux demo, but that kind of fixed camera has its own set of problems.
About the combat: I was definitely thinking of either having multiple enemies at a time or tougher enemies. Basically, Link holds his own in one-on-one without input, but it takes a while. With 2 enemies, he’ll get attacked in the back while attacking the first enemy, so you have to use the environment and move to win. For big enemies, the way you describe it is absolutely right.
About items: They’re definitely something I’d want to keep in. Frankly, I forgot to mention them in the post
. An obvious way to use them is like in a point & click adventure game: you select one in your inventory then use it with something or someone in the world. You could “attach” an item to each direction of the wiimote, making the switch to common items quicker. I’d also like to change some of the items, there’s way too much stuff that’s always the same in those items.
ideas 4 a new pokemon game 4 wii in the beginning u should be able to choose if ur a coordinator or a trainer the main character u play as should be ash or his rival u should even get the cartoon voices 4 the pokemon and characters.the starter pokemon u get to choose from are piplup chimchar turtwig or pikachu if u choose pikachu u have to catch the starter pokemon in the wild.oh and when youre searching for a pokemon u want on the pokedex it should tell u the area its in and u should hear dexters voice when he talks and he should describe it.4 the game let their be old pokemon and the new ones.and if u want u can choose your starter pokemon to not have a pokeball to keep it in like pikachu.when ur walking u should be able to let any or all of ur party of six pokemon out of their pokeball.but if u leave them unattended for a while teamrocket tries to steal them with their blimp you must then find a way to pop their blimp and battle them and win to get back ur pokemon.but be careful they find craftier ways to capture ur pokemon like making robots making traps 4 u to fall in and each time u leave ur pokemon unattended they get harder to fight.also speak to civilians to find where they made their getaway.and it switches ur current mission when u go after them.u also get exp points everytime u battle them.oh and when theirs a major event like a gymbattle u can find team rocket trying to mess it up.ur pokemon also have the basics like hp, atk, def, sp def, sp atk,and the same weakness like water def fire def grass def water and so fourth.and when ur catching pokemon u got to use the numchucks to throw the pokeball at the pokemon ur capturing.oh and weaken the pokemon first because they can dodge when ur throwing the pokeball. weakening them slows them down and u can catch them easier.when u battle u can press a button that will switch u from playing as the trainer and switch u as the pokemon.when u battle as a pokemon u can launch your attacks anywhere and when ur about to get attacked u can dodge or counterattack, basicly u can move the pokemon around and attack when u want u have full control as a pokemon and as a trainer.and u can launch ur attacks in the ground and u can change the terrain.and u can use the environment to ur advantage like if ur battling in the forest u can hide in the trees.u also have the usual goals like beat the eight gyms and go to the pokemon league.oh and u can throw out flying pokemon to fly, while ur flying on the pokemon u can press a button to get off and land.oh and while ur flying u can get attacked by flying pokemon so be careful.u can also launch attacks while flying.and u can catch flying pokemon and pokemon that r on trees while flying.u can also battle pokemon while ur flying.but be careful theyre r limits to flying theirs a meter bar while flying if it runs out u fall and it takes damage on ur flying pokemon and u have to walk while it fills up.oh and for lightweight pokemon like starly u have to attach a rope to its legs to fly but with charizard u dont need a rope and u fly faster cuz hes bigger.oh and while ur flying over the sea u can drop and land in the water u can also swim with out a pokemon to surf but its dangerous because wild sea pokemon can attack u.u can also use a water pokemon to swim with just for protection cuz u cant let anyother types out.cuz they cant swim.and for lightweight water pokemon u have to use a rope 4 them to carry u.but 4 heavyweights like lapras u dont need a rope.and u also have a limit to them carrying u in the sea u have a meter when it runs out u have to swim on ur own.till the meter fills up.u can also catch water pokemon while in the sea swimming or riding on your pokemon.u also have ur bag filled with pokeballs,ropes,potions,antidotes and all the goodstuff.oh and u can also shake a tree to make forest pokemon come out then u can try to capture them.but u dont need to because theirs alot roaming freely but the rare ones hide in the trees.oh and the pokemon u want to capture are in certain areas so u have to look carefully.u can also capture legendary pokemon.u can either walk or use running shoes to run faster u must press a button to run.u also have hp when ur playing as a trainer and ur walking when ur meter runs out u faint thats why u let your pokemon out when ur walking so when u get attacked by wild pokemon they take the damage and they fight 4 u.other than team rocket u have to face other theives and threats.with each new town u reach u find new pokemon to catch.u can also provoke a pokemon to attack u by attacking it 4 no reason that way u can capture it.
oh and when u finally beat the sinoh league,the kanto league opens and u have to capture kanto pokemon,and get the eight badges,then u go to johto and get the eight badges and beat the pokemon league and capture johtos pokemon,then u go to hoen and beat the hoen league,and get the eight badges and capture hoens pokemon.but it aint over cuz then you have to face the orange island challenge and the battle frontier challenge then its over.if u like my ideas hit me up at 3058121400
so do u think its a good idea