Zelda BoW “Wow!” turning point

I will break down the Zelda problem and solution in such simple terms, you will hail, “Malstrom! Malstrom! Malstrom!”

One upon a time, video games were mostly text adventures (if you can define text screens as ‘video games’).

The problem with adventure games is that progress, be it from a puzzle or enemy, came from providing A SOLUTION. The most important word is A. One. Singular. There was one solution to the puzzle. This also meant there were a thousand WRONG solutions to that same puzzle.

This is how a ‘game’ becomes linear. One solution to every obstacle.

But what if games had multiple solutions to an obstacle?

When the original Ultima landed, it was a rejection of Text Based Adventures. First, the original Ultima used, nay, invented TILED GRAPHICS. Most importantly, you could play the game your way. Well, within the technology parameters of 1980. Many games were inspired by this. One of them was the original Legend of Zelda.

Aonuma loves linear adventure gaming. Under Aonuma, Zelda became like ‘text based adventure games’  more and more with each new incarnation, the old Zelda world and tropes left in for nostalgia but also perfumed the smell of the rot. The perfume lasted only so long. Everyone could smell the rot by Skyward Sword.

What Breath of the Wild did was reject the ‘text based adventure game’ style which brings Breath of the Wild more into the classic Zeldas. When the player has choices, the experience feels like a world. To the developer, the game though feels like a garden or arena.

But if the game was made as a linear adventure, it is swapped! The player, lacking choice, sees the game experience like a garden or arena. The developer, having all the choices, sees the game experience as a world. “Here is backstory.” “Here is dialogue you cannot skip.” “Oh my! What an amazing world this is!” Gamer: “There is no world here. It is so linear. It sucks!”

Both the developer and gamer cannot have choice. Only one is allowed to have choice. If it is the developer, then the developer has fun and the gamer… doesn’t. If it is the gamer, then the developer is stressed to work out every situation of what the player may or may not do.

The reason why 99% of video games are bad is because the developers think the game world emerges from their choices instead of the player’s.