The video "How Nintendo Solved Zelda's Open World Problem" by Game Maker's Toolkit discusses the challenges Nintendo faced when creating their first open-world game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The main challenge was to provide players with a sense of freedom and exploration while ensuring they make progress towards the overarching goal of saving Princess Zelda. The video delves into Nintendo's development process, their initial approach, and how they ultimately found a solution that balanced guidance and exploration.
Initially, Nintendo's idea was to use a system of "points and lines" with Sheikah Towers as points and routes and roads between them as lines. The towers would be obvious waypoints for the player, and events would be placed along the lines. However, this approach failed as playtesters felt trapped on a linear path and forced to follow the towers. Those who deviated from the line would get lost or find little of interest to explore.
To address this issue, Nintendo decided to lure players towards a larger variety of landmarks and points of interest, such as shrines, stables, and enemy encampments. They made sure each area would confer obvious benefits, such as increasing health or stamina, providing weapons, or offering healing and sidequests. Resources were also made scarce, encouraging players to explore forests and mountains for valuable items.
To make these smaller landmarks more visible, Nintendo gave them distinctive appearances, such as lit-up shrines, tall smoke from campfires, skull-shaped rocks for enemy bases, and a giant wooden horse statue for stables. This ensured that players would find something interesting to do wherever they looked.
Additionally, Nintendo implemented the "triangle rule" to design the terrain and landscape with pyramid and cone-shaped mountains and rock formations. This approach created decision-making during exploration, allowed for points of interest to be placed at peaks, and ensured players were not overwhelmed by a massive field of things to do. The terrain design also created a constant source of surprise and curiosity as new locations were revealed during exploration.
With this new system of attractive landmarks, players followed a breadcrumb trail of interesting landmarks, allowing for a more organic and player-driven experience. Depending on their current goal or mood, players would naturally pick places to go, and as a result, they would still end up where they needed to go. Nintendo's heatmap showed a significant improvement, with players freely exploring various places and eventually reaching key locations.
The video highlights how Nintendo's clever design, driven by a desire to create a specific experience, led to an open-world game that beautifully balances guidance and exploration. This approach is expected to be seen in the upcoming game, Tears of the Kingdom.
