The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's dungeon design | Boss Keys

Hi. My name's Mark and this is Boss Keys. After Link's Awakening in 1993, Zelda fans had to wait a long time for their next fix, when Ocarina of Time finally hit Nintendo 64 in 1998. But, I think it's safe to say that it was worth the wait. Ocarina of Time is critically acclaimed, to say the least, and makes an appearance on just about every list of the "best games of all time". It's epic, it's enormous, and it influenced dozens of games.

It was also a huge change for the Zelda franchise, turning this top-down series into a fully fledged 3D experience. And that greatly affects the layout of the game's nine dungeons. Previous Zelda games explored verticality with their multi-floor dungeons, but Ocarina of Time makes full use of this new fangled Z-axis. Rooms can be tall, without being sliced up into floors, like the central room of the Water Temple or the trunk of the Deku Tree. Having complete control of the camera leads to enemies, bosses, and puzzle elements that you have to actually aim at. And these rooms in the Forest Temple spin around to let you walk on the walls - something that would be almost impossible to explain in two dimensions.

For the most part, though, the fundamentals of Zelda's dungeons haven't changed all that much. There are still items, keys, locked doors, mini bosses, maps, and monsters. The compass still shows treasure chests on the map, but that helpful tone from Link's Awakening is gone. And the hint stones have been ditched in favour of Navi. But while the building blocks are familiar, the actual dungeon layouts are quite a bit different from the last games. And not necessarily in a good way.

Previously on Boss Keys, we looked at how A Link to the Past used small keys and locked doors to let the player explore a dungeon in a non-linear fashion. So how does Ocarina of Time handle this? Well, the first three dungeons - The Great Deku Tree, Dodongo's Cavern, and Jabu Jabu's Belly - don't actually have keys. They're introduced in The Forest Temple, which is the first dungeon you explore as adult Link. In this dungeon, you have a pretty massive explorable space at the very start, and you can collect the first three keys - which are hidden here, here, and here - in any order you like.

But, even if you have all three keys in your pocket, you can only open one door. This one. And then, you can only open one door after that. And one after that. And so on. In fact, at no point in Ocarina of Time's main dungeons can choose where to spend a small key, like you could in Link's Awakening. In every single Ocarina dungeon, each locked door is behind another one, essentially forcing you to proceed in one possible route, and cutting up each dungeon into small chunks.

This can lead to some super linear dungeons. Like the Shadow Temple, where every key can only be used on one specific door, and the dungeon opens up piece by piece until you reach the boss. A very similar thing happens in the Spirit Temple, too. Things are slightly better in the Fire Temple, but not by much. In this area, this locked door is almost immediately followed by this locked door, and the two keys needed are in this area. So, I guess you have a choice in which one you get first, but that's not a super exciting decision. That pattern of the dungeon opening up chunk by chunk, by finding two keys for two locks, is repeated for the whole temple.

Ultimately, there are only two dungeons that have any real sense of non-linearity when it comes to keys. The Forest Temple and the Water Temple. Which we'll come to. So how about items? In the last episode we looked at how Link's Awakening used a new item to recontextualise all the obstacles in the dungeon. So once you've got the level 2 Power Bracelet, you can go back and lift up all those elephant statues you passed earlier.

Ocarina of Time fares a little better in this regard. In the Deku Tree and Shadow Temple, you get the slingshot and hover boots so early that there's no chance for backtracking. And in Dodongo's Cavern and the Spirit Temple, the bombs and mirror shield are basically only used in rooms beyond where you get them. But in Jabu Jabu's Belly, the Forest Temple, the Water Temple, and the Fire Temple, you do get to go back and use the boomerang, bow, longshot, and hammer to bypass obstacles you encountered earlier. Which is good: it rewards those who were observant about the dungeon while they were looking for the item, and it stops the temples feeling like a long chain of rooms to visit, one after the other.

It's worth pointing out that some dungeons have other rooms and areas that you can only get to after backtracking with the key item, but they feature optional items like rupees or these golden skulltulas. Also, the items are almost always used during the boss fights. There has been some discussion about whether or not that's a good thing, in the comments on these videos. I personally like it because it treats the boss as a final test to cap off that dungeon. But we'll see how I feel after analysing 9-or-so more games using this formula.

The 3D graphics really give Ocarina of Time a chance to make each dungeon feel unique and interesting. From the giant, yawning lava pits of the Fire Temple, to the imposing statue in the middle of the Spirit Temple, to the boat that rides down the river in the Shadow Temple, and to the gooey insides of Jabu Jabu's belly. No two dungeons feel alike. Another thing that Ocarina of Time really brought to the dungeons is this idea of a central room. Dodongo's Cavern, the Forest Temple, the Water Temple, and Ganon's Keep - and, to a lesser extent, the Fire Temple and Jabu Jabu's Belly, have big, memorable rooms that splinter out into lots of different rooms and pathways.

By having the player return to this room a bunch of different times - even if you're just crisscrossing over it from a high up catwalk - it helps the dungeon feel interconnected, and helps the player understand the space and figure out where they have and haven't explored. Okay, some stray thoughts before the Water Temple. Jabu Jabu's Belly sees you carrying Princess Ruto around, and she works in a similar way to the ball in Link's Awakening because you have to understand the space to figure out how to move her around. It's also nice to see a friendly face in a dungeon - and that extends to these cheeky Gorons you rescue in the Fire Temple.

Ocarina of Time sees you jumping back and forth seven years, but this only affects the dungeons once, when you solve half of the Spirit Temple as young Link and half as adult Link. Zelda games neglecting to use that game's key mechanic in its dungeons will be a recurring theme, I seem to remember. There are lots of good enemy encounters, from these tense Iron Knuckle battles to these scrappy Lizalfos fights above the lava. I really like the ramp up of enemies in Dodongo's Cavern from these baby critters, to these big ones, to the Dodongo boss itself.

And, finally, you can see how Nintendo can modulate the difficulty of a dungeon by putting the map and compass closer to or further from the entrance. The sooner you get this stuff, the easier the dungeon will be to solve. Okay. Let's talk about the Water Temple. To get the obvious out of the way: the Water Temple, which is huge and maze-like, is made extra laborious to explore thanks to the fact that you must faff about in the menu every time you want to sink to the bottom of the water, or float to the top.

And yes, that's a pain, it discourages exploration, and it was mercifully changed in the 3DS remake. But don't let all this distract you from the fact that the Water Temple is actually one of Ocarina's best dungeons because it's complex, it's demanding, and it's basically one, huge puzzle. There are a few dungeons in the game where doing something in one room enacts a change in another - like removing the tentacles in Jabu Jabu's belly by killing these things, or dropping the pillar down in the Fire Temple to make a path in another room.

But this time, the entire temple can be changed into three different forms. The dungeon has three floors, and a flooded basement, and you can raise or lower the water level at three distinct spots so the water rests at any of the three floors. This isn't a one-time, one-way switch you pull to change the dungeon, like in the Fire Temple or Eagle's Tower in Link's Awakening. This is, essentially, a three-way switch where you have to make a conscious choice which way you pull it.

Okay, so take this bombable wall, for example. It's on floor 2F and you will it see while swimming up from 1F to 3F. To actually get to the wall and blow it up you must drop the water level to the first floor, so you can raise it to the second floor, and then go back to the room on the first floor, and swim up to the wall. This system basically removes brute-force puzzle solving, and promotes some serious decision making and rewards a good understanding of the layout.

It's complex but in some ways, the Water Temple is nice to you. You can stumble upon the map and compass straight away, for example. And, also, the temple is sectioned off while you make progress. At the start you can only access these areas. Then, after you drop the water level, you're trapped here until you find a key. Then you can increase the water level to 2F and that restricts you to exploring these bits. And then, after getting another key, you finally have access to all three water switch panels, letting you explore all of this. Until you get the longshot, which basically unlocks the entire dungeon.

The complicated bit, though, is the keys. They're hidden all around the dungeon, in many different areas and rooms - many of which are inaccessible at different water levels. And there's that super cheeky one hidden below a platform in this room. So you can see how this dungeon got a reputation for being a right pain in the Gorons. And why Nintendo chose to make it a bit easier by highlighting the path to the water switches, in the 3DS remake.

But considering the general linearity and straightforward layout of the other dungeons, the Water Temple is, in my eyes, a welcome return to form. A reminder of what a Zelda dungeon can, and should be like. Sure, the temples in Ocarina of Time are legendary and they're memorable. And they show what 3D can do for dungeons that are visually impressive and thematically interesting. But, coming straight off of Link's Awakening, I can't help but be a bit disappointed in the linearity of most of the dungeons in the game.

Still, I look forward to seeing where Nintendo takes these things in future 3D games. And that's exactly what we're doing next time. Majora's Mask only has four dungeons so that should be a nice, relaxing-- oh. oh no.