The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker's dungeon design | Boss Keys

Hi! This is Boss Keys, I'm Mark Brown. I'm the creator of a design series called Game Maker's Toolkit and an episode I've wanted to do for a long time is one on the fantastic level design of Zelda's dungeons - but I've decided I need to play every dungeon from every Zelda game to figure out how Nintendo builds these things. You can follow me on this ridiculous journey of understanding, in this video series. Though I recommend you watch all the episodes, as I'll be bringing up things I discovered while playing earlier games.

Okay, so there's a lot I could say about The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The controversial graphics - I love them, personally. The sailing - eh, take it or leave it. The music - amazing. But I kind of want to get straight into the dungeons on this one. Though, first I should point out that I'm not playing the Gamecube original for this video, but the Wii U remake. There are some changes like how the Tingle Tuner has been replaced by a Miiverse thing, and how there's now a selfie camera, but I don't think any of the changes will really have affected my opinion on the dungeons.

Putting the Wind Waker onto the d-pad rather than an item slot can save some time when playing the command melody, and being able to move while aiming items will make bits a little easier, but the actual dungeon layouts are - as far as I can tell - identical. Okay, let's get to it. Let me sum up my experience of the dungeons in The Wind Waker, using one moment in Forbidden Woods - the game's second proper dungeon. So I came into this room and there's a big flower hanging from the ceiling by coloured ropes. Beneath it, there's a weak floor. And, I thought, aha! I've played a few Zelda dungeons in my time!

I obviously need a new item so I can cut those ropes and send the flower sailing through the floor. Right, I'll make a note of that and remember where that is so I can come back when I get the appropriate item. So I played through a bit more and found the dungeon's item: the boomerang. Perfect. Just what I needed. But first, there's a door right outside the room with the boomerang and I can now get through it with my fancy new toy. So let's take a look. Oh, and then I can get through here and pop through here and - oh you have got to be kidding me!

After getting the item, the dungeon gave me a path that lead straight back to the place where I need to use it. Forget taking notes or remembering stuff - the game's going to do it for me. Thanks, game! And that's not exclusive to this dungeon. In Dragon Roost Cavern, you get the grappling hook, then take a brand new path to the place where you need to use it. In the Tower of the Gods, the Hero's Bow is needed in the room directly outside where you get it. And in the Earth Temple, you're treated to an obvious shortcut that you can use to get from the room with the Mirror Shield, back to the place where you need to use it.

In a way, the graphs for these dungeons are almost more complex than the dungeons themselves. I'm developing a graph system to represent Zelda dungeons, by the way. Check out the Oracle episode for more on that. So, technically, the Forbidden Woods has a couple backtracking points, but does this one really count if the game gives you a new path that leads to that area? This is one way that Wind Waker offers dungeons that feel like Zelda dungeons - like, you're returning to a location with your new item! That feels like Zelda! - even if the experience is actually very shallow and, yes, linear.

I think Wind Waker has helped me finally realise what I mean when I say some dungeons are linear. It's not necessarily about being able to do things in a unique order. Though, that is nice. It's cool how some Zelda games let you find multiple keys or pick from multiple doors. And Wind Waker simply doesn't do that. See this thing at the bottom of the screen where it shows you how many keys you have? It might as well not exist because you can only ever find one key and then you have to use it.

But a dungeon can still feel complex and maze-like, even if the sequence of events is the same for every player. What it's about is asking whether the way forward is always directly in front of the player, or whether they are winding back and forth through the dungeon, continuously exploring the same space and unlocking more of its secrets. So let's compare two dungeons, and two dungeon graphs. But, actually, before I do I need to explain something about these graphs just to be crystal clear. And I'll use a 2D game to make life easier.

This part of the graph represents every room you can get to, before unlocking this door. So it means all of these rooms. Then this section means all of these rooms. This section for these two rooms. And then this one for these rooms. So we can see how when you get the power bracelet and when you get the boss key, you have to go back to previously explored areas to use them. Sorry if that was obvious but it's important everyone gets that.

And so, with that info we can see how in the Earth Temple, there's almost never a good reason to return to an area once you have unlocked a door. Earlier parts of the dungeon might as well disappear as you progress. The only reason to explore a previous area is when you get the Mirror Shield but, like I said earlier, there's also a shortcut that takes you back to that room. Now the Wind Temple, the final major dungeon of the game and - hot take alert - the only good dungeon in The Wind Waker - is clearly quite different. Much of the dungeon takes place in the same space but you can only access certain items and rooms if: you have the hookshot, if you have opened up the upper or lower parts of the floor, if you've turned the fan on, and if you have rescued Makar from the prison.

The sequence of events is almost set in stone but because the next thing you do isn't always in front of you, it's a bit tricky. I actually felt like I was playing a Zelda dungeon! Not just a series of rooms that come one after the other, like something that could be in, I dunno, Ratchet and Clank. And you might be thinking - only good Wind Waker dungeon? What about the Tower of the Gods? And yeah, it's quite nice. You get the bit at the bottom where you travel about on your boat. And leading the statues is cool. And the boss is good.

But it's still pretty linear. You conquer the first floor, then the next floor, then the third, and then the boss - with no compelling reason to ever return to a previous area. And this is one dungeon where being able to do things out of order would help - there are three statues that you must lead into this central room but being forced to do them one after the other made me feel like I was trapped in an endless tutorial.

Before I move on from structure, I want to mention that like most Zelda games, Wind Waker's dungeons also feature optional items such as treasure charts and spoils - and these are often in places you must backtrack to to get. I suppose that because you don't know if the item is optional or critical until you go and get it, the dungeons can use these red herring items to increase the perceived complexity of a dungeon.

But, because Wind Waker's backtracking areas are - as I said, often so clearly signposted to the player - you really have to be paying attention and go out of your way to backtrack to these optional areas and therefore, they don't really impact the average player. Okay, enough about structure for one episode. Now, I want to talk about the small puzzles you find inside individual rooms which is something I haven't really touched on in Boss Keys so far.

In the games leading up to Wind Waker, the puzzles were a bit... random. You know, push a block onto a switch. Make all these enemies into the same card suit. Turn all these floor tiles red. They're kind of disconnected from the rest of the game - they're just random puzzles to solve. And then there's this one from Ocarina of Time, where you shoot an arrow through fire to melt a block of ice. It's not explained in the game that you can do this. And, yes, of course it should be obvious to anyone on planet Earth that this is what to do... but it's like a point and click adventure puzzle where you bring real world knowledge to solve a one-off riddle.

Wind Waker introduces puzzle motifs that run throughout the dungeon and are properly introduced before being made more challenging or interesting. So, back in Forbidden Woods, you can't exit the first room until you figure out that these doors can only be opened if you throw a nut at them. Then you find another door and this time, the solution is to use bombs instead of a nut. Then it's back to nuts but you have to carry it on a platform. Then the nut is surrounded by thorns, so you have to waft it away with a leaf. And so on.

Every dungeon does this. Dragon Roost has puzzles about carrying lit sticks. Tower of the Gods is all about moving these stone statues. Earth Temple is about bouncing light around. And Wind Temple is about a few different things, including these springy platforms. The latter two dungeon also involve working with a companion - Medli and Makar and while these interactions could have been a bit more interesting. There's never, for example, a need for the two characters to be in two different rooms to solve a puzzle, it's something fresh for the Zelda formula.

Anyway, I think this way of doing puzzles like a motif is a good change for the series. It's a more responsible way of doing puzzles that means the player is primed to know what to do - like, aha, I need to find a nut to open this door - they just have to figure out how to do it. Good stuff, Wind Waker. Another thing I haven't touched on before is the way dungeons let you get back to where you were, in the event that you die, get taken in by a floormaster, or - in the case of Majora's Mask - run out of time.

Generally, you just have to walk back to where you left off. If you got the key item, that will let you get back faster because you only have to go back to the backtracking areas. And there are often ways to make shortcuts for yourself, like dropping this ladder in Majora's Mask or pushing this block in Ocarina of Time. The Game Boy games use a warp tile, which spawns in the mini-boss room and is often quite deep into the dungeon so you can quickly get back to where you were. Wind Waker brings this to the 3D games but with an extra warp point just outside of the boss room, making it effortless to return to the boss and reducing some of the tension. Which would be there if the bosses were you know, the tiniest bit difficult in the first place. Sick burn.

Sorry, but Wind Waker just isn't that challenging. And on that note, the dungeon map is almost always introduced very early in the dungeon which certainly makes life a lot easier. Okay, before I go, I just want to mention that there are some smaller dungeons I haven't mentioned. Forsaken Fortress is more about combat than puzzles and structure so it's not super interesting to me, but I do like it. You go there at the start and must sneak past the Moblins in a barrel. Then you return and beat the crap out of them with the Master Sword. Feels good.

And also, as is customary for a 3D Zelda game, there's a final dungeon that references all the previous dungeons but it's more like a boss rush than anything and I'm not playing that entire friggin' Triforce quest just to give you five seconds of footage so, sue me. Okay, look. There's more to a Zelda game than its dungeons. And while I've come out of this thinking that Wind Waker has some of the weakest dungeons in the franchise - the most obvious,, easy, and straightforward temples we've seen so far - I still love the game.

I love the sense of adventure. The beautiful visual style. Link's grandma. And while it's generally a bad idea to care too much about Zelda's story - because it's quite clearly just made up as it goes along - I can't help but get the shivers when you go to frozen Hyrule castle and it's got stained glass windows of the sages from Ocarina of Time, and the music from Link to the Past. Oof. It gets me good. And while Wind Waker's dungeons are pretty lame, they have at least helped me understand what not to do, when making a dungeon. So good work there, Nintendo.

Next time. We're giving the reigns back to Capcom, one last time, for the Game Boy Advance game, Minish Cap. I hope you'll join me! And if you want to make shows like this possible, please consider supporting me on Patreon.