Open Worlds and Arbitrary Puzzles: How Much Exploration is Too Much?

This week, I'd like to thwart nostalgia goggles by examining an age-old problem in game design: How to handle freeform gameplay, something that we greatly value in theory. Many developers seem to have reached a strange equilibrium nowadays, developing sandbox games with mostly linear progression. This wasn't so in the 1980s, where both approaches were largely separate. A game was either totally one, or totally the other.



So I'm going to discuss one game which fits more in the sandbox camp. I don't know how many people think of the original Legend of Zelda for the NES as a sandbox game, but if you look at the color of the ground in the overworld, I suppose that's confirmation enough. For no better reason than "I'm playing this right now," let's look at certain elements of its design strengths and weaknesses, and see how the original Zelda shows us a problem that video games as a medium have mostly left behind. For others that spring from the same cloth. Is the grass greener?




BLOGFIT



So I'm admittedly on a Zelda kick at the moment, and I'm playing the original Zelda. I just beat the first quest and I'm currently working on the second. It's generally a highly enjoyable game, and easy to see why it's such a classic. The last time I played this was around ten years ago, via the amazing Zelda Classic freeware re-creation. Before that, I was a 4 year-old who thought the Boomerang was a moon.



As I was browsing a message board for some tips, I came across a topic where someone expressed an opinion stating that the placement of important objects, places, and hints (especially in the second quest) was seemingly done at random, and essentially forced players to bomb every wall and burn every tree on each screen in order to find something crucial, in the absence of external help. He thought this was bad game design. Someone responded, claiming that's how video games should be, that exploration is a great element. now lost in contemporary games.



This person was not the only one posting in celebration of this kind of gameplay. "It took me over six months to finish both quests," said another poster, "And that was with playing it every day obsessively."



This poster went on to emphasize the challenges faced, the most jarring of which: "I must have visited Level 9 over 30 times wondering why Ganon wouldn't die. I couldn't figure out how to beat him, and then after many more days of exploration, I found the Silver Arrow." It took the poster days of constant playing before bombing a particular wall in the game's largest dungeon, then pushing a block in an obscure puzzle, to get an item that you absolutely cannot finish the game without. Let alone even knowing that you specifically need it for the final boss.



"THERE ARE SECRETS WHERE FAIRIES DON'T LIVE"



This exemplifies a major problem with games like The Legend of Zelda: So much of their length comes from trying to figure out where the game's designers arbitrarily put important places and objects, because the game doesn't tell you any hints. Alternatively, it does, but the hints are as cryptic as whatever it's supposed to hint at. In this era of gaming, developers also put hints in the manual, and those were often equally vague. Because of all this, it takes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to progress.



Now, if you already have some idea of where the important things are, then each quest takes maybe several hours to complete at most. To put that in perspective, some of today's games that get called out for having short campaign modes, are at least as long as one of The Legend of Zelda's quests (and tell a fuller narrative, or at least try harder to). "Takashi-kun, where should I put this hidden cave?"

"I dunno, Miyamoto-chan. Close your eyes, move the cursor a bit, then open them and Bob's your uncle!"

"So sugoi!"



These altogether create an artificial source of game length and challenge. They originate from a design mentality which fails to focus on key elements, and understand where difficulty and challenge come from. The Legend of Zelda features tough combat and a proto-sandbox world. Its lack of a directed narrative facilitates exploring this world at your whim, and discovering important locations and landmarks without the game moving you directly to them. As you explore, you steadily piece together a plan for progressing through the game and fulfilling your objectives. We also see this particular kind of open gameplay in the original Fallout games, for instance, and others that escape me at the moment.



However, returning to what the pro-exploration forum user posted, I don't believe that "exploration" should evolve during the course of the game to mean "Attempt to destroy every inch of Hyrule to find a few elusive dungeon entrances and items." This especially applies to the second quest, where you also add "Play your whistle for every inanimate object in earshot" to that process. Because, ultimately, you're reduced to a scorched earth policy if you try to complete the game .Have fun doing that when you need to get bomb refills, and your Blue Candle fires only once per screen. Otherwise, congratulations, the player is now a worse villain than Ganon.



THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW HYRULE HISTORIA ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT



I'll grant that much of this arbitrary puzzle design happened 20-30 years ago, when video games were still a new medium and few developers had any idea what good game design was. We saw enigmatic design not only in the first couple of Zelda games, but in countless adventure games, including the King's Quest and Ultima series. Games like these are still great classics, which pioneered entire genres and gameplay mechanics, but to put their blunders on a pedestal because childhood rocked is just foolish.



Likewise, confusing genuine advances in how designers understand their games, and efforts to tell stories, with "dumbing down" and other sensationalistic derisions, is just as foolish. The Zelda series has long since left behind its short-lived "try everything on everything else" gameplay for less senselessly arbitrary methods of hiding secrets.Practically all games have. They've also made more concerted efforts at delivering a narrative, which usually means that gameplay gets a lot more directed. These developments are nowhere in the same league as, for instance, the modern trend of combining relatively linear environments with quest markers; which, I will charitably assume, is what the nostalgic gamers mean to rail against.



Going around in a game and trying every item on every object in the hopes of brute-forcing a solution isn't open-ended gameplay. Likewise, games giving a small bit of guidance as to where things are, or limiting access to only a few areas for the moment, aren't hand-holding. These are happy mediums that developers strive for, so they can deliver an experience that stays focused on what makes a game great, keeps it fun, and tells a story. I don't think we should be praising uninformed, arbitrary gameplay on one hand while condemning linear, on-rails gameplay one the other.



Thanks for reading. This isn't supposed to be a Zelda column, so I'll be moving on next week.
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