Loot Crate Magazine May 2014 | Page 9

T he grand adventure of The Legend of Zelda began in 1986, where gamers everywhere knew this game would be an absolute treasure before putting the cartridge into the NES, thanks to its gold-plated candy shell. What no one expected was the complete lack of direction the game gave you. You are dropped in without anything but the clothes on your back and subliminally told, “Go, have an adventure, and kill things!” But how in the world do you accomplish this task? What is the purpose of your adventure? Only death awaits you if you go north, south, east, or west. You can’t jump, you can’t keep dodging enemies forever, so what on earth do you do? You talk to your friends. That’s what. By doing so, you learn that you should enter the doorway just above you to get a wooden sword. By talking to more friends, you learn that you have a bit of purpose to killing all the things, and there’s no real wrong way to go about it, as it’s now your adventure. Wasn’t it by talking to your friends that you learned the secret to the Lost Woods? Or how to find Level 8? Didn’t your friends learn from you where to buy the cheapest large shield? Or did you have a friend like me, who eagerly watched you play, drew all the maps, and jotted down where the Magical Sword was for later? For many people, The Legend of Zelda was their first, non-linear, almost open world adventure experience save those who played Adventure on Atari 2600 or the dozens of text adventure games. More importantly, The Legend of Zelda was Nintendo’s first “communication” game, where gameplay LINKED you, the player, to the game (and no, that name of the hero is not a coincidence) and made you think, discuss, and share with others how to play. Miyamoto explained his reasoning in his GDC 2007 keynote speech: I thought that Zelda could create a different kind of communication, centered around the game itself...Rather than making it easier for players to understand, I decide to take their sword away from the very beginning. See, I did this because I wanted to challenge them to find that sword, because I knew that they would think about these problems. They would think before they went to sleep “how am I going to do this?” And at the same time, I wanted them to talk with other Zelda players and exchange information, ask each other questions, find out where to go next, exchange information. That’s what happened. This communication was not a competition; it was real life collaboration that helped make the game popular.* He wanted to not only LINK players to the adventure game, but also LINK them to one another. In many ways, the Zelda games still follow this formula (although they have implemented a bit more hand-holding so players never feel like they’re “going alone”). Today’s Zelda games may start off a bit linearly, but after a certain point, players are never dictated where to go. They’re encouraged to explore, fail, fail some more, try new routes, and talk to other players for tips and tricks. Case in point, with the most recent Zelda game, A Link Between Worlds, Link is dropped into Lorule and only told he must find the paintings of the sages in the dungeons. He’s not told where these dungeons are, how to get there, or which ones he should tackle first. In fact, to further LINK players to the game, Nintendo has