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The Zelda series has severely neglected towns and compulsory breaks between dungeons.

Zelda 2
Link to the Past
Ocarina
Majora
Wind Waker
Twilight princess (not as many)
Skyward Sword

All have a ton of side-quests(that happen outside?)
 
I wish Twilight Princess had less overworld stuff, the dungeons were the best part. The overworld and town stuff felt mostly like filler.
 
Firemind said:
But OoT has a ton of shit to do in and outside of towns. Shit there are even several optional sidequests (biggoron sword, bottle and masks).
Click to expand...
Yeah, OoT's kind of a weird one to single out. There's probably more towns than any non-Adventure of Link Zelda game, though there might not be a ton to do in all of them.

It is a problem for the series in general, though. Too often there's one central town, a few scattered houses around the world, and that's it. I think they could definitely benefit from having 3 or 4 big towns that serve as hubs for different segments of the journey, rather than funnelling you back to the same place.

This was a big problem in Wind Waker, there was all that sea to explore and the mystery of what it held, yet you never came across any bigger settlements than the one you started on. Skyward Sword had the same problem with Skyloft. It's like if Frodo left the Shire, then never saw any town bigger than the Shire. Any good coming-of-age adventure story has some escalation of scale, something to make the hero realize how small their little corner of the world was.
 
DecoReturns said:
Well Zelda is going in a new direction so we still need to know what happens after Breath of the Wild.

Who knows, they might not go back often to the traditional formula.
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Fairly confident towns will be sparse outposts. Can't see anything more impressive than what nintendo's done in the past happening towns-wise in BotW sadly.

Coffee Dog said:
Don't worry, BOTW looks like nothing but breaks between dungeons. Thanks open world game design!
Click to expand...

Yep!
 
Palmer27 said:
Fairly confident towns will be sparse outposts. Can't see anything more impressive than what nintendo's done in the past happening towns-wise in BotW sadly.
Click to expand...

Good thing there's a narrative excuse for that. Why would there be a huge city when they say the kingdom's been destroyed?
 
CrazyHorse said:
Due to human nature, a lot of gamers will try to complete a game as fast as they can. They will not do side-quests (unless they have the will to do it). Thus they go from dungeon to dungeon. And this can make people feeling miserable and fatigued. The games should add in much longer elements of down time.
.
Click to expand...

You based this post on an incorrect assumption. For instance, I take a lot of time playing games and will spend a lot of time exploring the world or just purposefully going slow to admire the scenery and absorb the atmosphere.

I actually find the assumption pretty absurd to be honest. Aren't games meant to be fun? Why would we be trying to complete something we enjoy "as fast as we can?" Wouldn't we want a pleasurable experience not to end instantly? Indeed, wouldn't we want to draw out that experience to the limits of what's reasonable for our attention span?

Your incorrect assumption--that all people just try to rush past games and not play them--led to a further incorrect conclusion that Ocarina of Time has "nothing to do." In fact Ocarina of Time has a lot to do, it just doesn't involve a lot of random compulsory mini-games, "nuisance" enemies that aren't really a challenge but just give the ADD player something to "do," or huge obstacles to block the scenery. What it does have is exploration potential--real exploration potential. When you're exploring in real life, you don't instantly find what you're looking for. That's the whole point of exploring, or journeying. You're on an adventure to find something. In fact there are quite a few people of the mindset that the journey is greater than the destination. Ocarina of Time offers quite a journey, with a wide, open overworld straight out of a Western movie and a diverse range of colorful and atmospheric fantasy landscapes. But it offers great destination rewards to--such as, if you're interested, just talking to the Zora or Goron people, inferring a little more through your conversations about their culture and lifestyle. Or just the locations themselves, which as I've said are beautifully atmospheric if you have any hint of appreciation for that sort of thing.
 
The one thing about Zelda is that unlike most open-world RPGS/adventure games, Zelda doesn't just populate its world with a character creator. Outside of repeatable NPCs (Gorons, Dekus, Zoras, etc.), all other background characters are uniquely designed and animated.

There was some obvious reuse in the early 3D games, but they also used that to their advantage in some cases by going "oh all these guys are carpenters, these two dudes are twins, all the minigame guys in MM are a variation on this character model like they're all cousins..."

Hell, Skyward Sword has some of my favorite townspeople in almost all the Zelda games.

Consider this guy:

shopkeeper2.jpg


He's designed with purpose, he's animated with purpose, all to demonstrate a very specific and memorable character. You approach his stall, he follows you around with almost-terrifying eagerness. Buy something, he's ecstatic. But walk away without buying anything, and you'll see him slouch over after a failed sale.

Or this guy, at the potion shop:

157


Again, a specifically designed, posed, and animated character, in direct contrast to his confident wife who sells the potions herself.

SS_screen27.jpg


And yet just watch his idle animations, as he's constantly stirring, occasionally having to hush the baby on his back.


These are details most games completely ignore, giving almost all their NPCs the same body types, the same animations, the same interchangeable costumes and faces, all with no purpose but for scale. Twilight Princess did something similar for its Castle Town and it's by far the least interesting central town in a 3D Zelda game yet.


We'll see how BotW handles it, but I drastically prefer Nintendo going the extra mile for a few dozen NPCs than filling a game with forgettable ones.
 
My favorite Zelda game, Zelda II, absolutely nails this and one of the reasons it's one of my favorite games of all time c:

Loved the towns aspect and provided wonderful juxtaposition with the dungeons, which are my favorite dungeons in the series.
 
It would be nice if they added Xenoblade like quests from town NPCs

the quests could make you revisit dungeons just to collect an item from a room you have been to before but the item only shows up when the quest is active.

not sure if doing these things would totally change the feel of Zelda

I understand what the OP is saying but I am just curious to experience how much change would cause the shift away from what a ZELDA game feels like.
 
Smiles and Cries said:
It would be nice if they added Xenoblade like quests from town NPCs

the quests could make you revisit dungeons just to collect an item from a room you have been to before but the item only shows up when the quest is active.

not sure if doing these things would totally change the feel of Zelda

I understand what the OP is saying but I am just curious to experience how much change would cause the shift away from what a ZELDA game feels like.
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Why would you want garbage MMO-style sidequests from the series that gave you Majora's Mask?
 
The only Zelda game in the entire series to have many towns is Zelda II. Towns aren't really where Zelda shines in outside of Majora's Mask, which only has one town. Ocarina of Time has two, Twilight Princess has three. Most of the others have one or none. The other "towns" are essentially just puzzle areas most of the time.
 
Shig said:
Yeah, OoT's kind of a weird one to single out. There's probably more towns than any non-Adventure of Link Zelda game, though there might not be a ton to do in all of them.

It is a problem for the series in general, though. Too often there's one central town, a few scattered houses around the world, and that's it. I think they could definitely benefit from having 3 or 4 big towns that serve as hubs for different segments of the journey, rather than funnelling you back to the same place.

This was a big problem in Wind Waker, there was all that sea to explore and the mystery of what it held, yet you never came across any bigger settlements than the one you started on. Skyward Sword had the same problem with Skyloft. It's like if Frodo left the Shire, then never saw any town bigger than the Shire. Any good coming-of-age adventure story has some escalation of scale, something to make the hero realize how small their little corner of the world was.
Click to expand...
Oh I definitely agree the 3D Zeldas that came after OoT dropped the ball, but OoT's worldbuilding and its characters was top notch, which is why I was baffled the OP used OoT as an example. It helped that every adult dungeon had a character you bonded with one way or another in the past, Impa being the least developed. Twilight Princess simply couldn't emulate this because it didn't have time travel and ALttP is devoid of NPCs. Hell, you don't really even get to know Zelda in both games. OoT truly is unique within the series.
 
Personally skyloft was really good, not to big that it doesn't feel like a community and big enough to feel diverse. But generally I think they do a good job with towns and always manage to do what they're trying to do. Anyway I like all zeldas so you won't see me ever complaining about them.
 
For me, Skyward Sword is the only Zelda game that feels like all you do is solve puzzles and dungeon grind. I'll admit that the dungeons and puzzles are top notch but there's very little exploration and general roaming around. Luckily BotW seems to fix the exploration part but it still remains to be seen if the game features traditional indepth dungeons. It better because if it doesn't then it's a huge letdown. It would be like Square-Enix making an open world final fantasy game and forgetting to make sense of the story...
 
I feel ALBW did this with its one town. Windwaker also does it fairly strongly with a new town to explore before being able to move on.

Skyward Sword is a messy game in this regard. I disliked the ground world. Yet the sand sea is a different but brilliant pre dungeon dungeon.
 
Why would rushing through the dungeons make people "miserable"? If they want to rush through the game, why would you want to force them to do even more things outside? The OP makes no sense.
 
Sounds like a recipe for people to complain about forced, boring padding.

The sidequests are optional for a reason. People who choose to speed from one dungeon to the next and completing the minimal requirements to finish the game are doing what they want to do. If you take that choice away, you'll get people complaining all the more.
 
My last Zelda game was Link Between Worlds, and I basically did just run through the dungeons. I tried a couple of the side things but mostly found them boring and went back to business. I definitely felt burnt out by the dungeons by the time I beat the game.
 
why do people always want to make great games into something different.

The reason I love Zelda is because it's Zelda.

Already pissed it's open world tbh.
 
I too would wish for more sequences of the Zelda adventures to occur on the outside, and for some leisure activities, but I would not want mindless side quests that would lessen te focus of the adventure.
 
Shaanyboi said:
The one thing about Zelda is that unlike most open-world RPGS/adventure games, Zelda doesn't just populate its world with a character creator. Outside of repeatable NPCs (Gorons, Dekus, Zoras, etc.), all other background characters are uniquely designed and animated.

There was some obvious reuse in the early 3D games, but they also used that to their advantage in some cases by going "oh all these guys are carpenters, these two dudes are twins, all the minigame guys in MM are a variation on this character model like they're all cousins..."

Hell, Skyward Sword has some of my favorite townspeople in almost all the Zelda games.

Consider this guy:

shopkeeper2.jpg


He's designed with purpose, he's animated with purpose, all to demonstrate a very specific and memorable character. You approach his stall, he follows you around with almost-terrifying eagerness. Buy something, he's ecstatic. But walk away without buying anything, and you'll see him slouch over after a failed sale.

Or this guy, at the potion shop:

157


Again, a specifically designed, posed, and animated character, in direct contrast to his confident wife who sells the potions herself.

SS_screen27.jpg


And yet just watch his idle animations, as he's constantly stirring, occasionally having to hush the baby on his back.


These are details most games completely ignore, giving almost all their NPCs the same body types, the same animations, the same interchangeable costumes and faces, all with no purpose but for scale. Twilight Princess did something similar for its Castle Town and it's by far the least interesting central town in a 3D Zelda game yet.


We'll see how BotW handles it, but I drastically prefer Nintendo going the extra mile for a few dozen NPCs than filling a game with forgettable ones.
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I like you.
096wKb5.gif

veiila3.gif
 
Big One said:
The only Zelda game in the entire series to have many towns is Zelda II. Towns aren't really where Zelda shines in outside of Majora's Mask, which only has one town. Ocarina of Time has two, Twilight Princess has three. Most of the others have one or none. The other "towns" are essentially just puzzle areas most of the time.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what the OP wants Nintendo to fix.

And I agree, but only if the NPCs get less ugly designs.

ordon_villagers_by_avatarus_one-d5ezx0b.jpg

1432226957445.jpg


Ever since going 3D, every ("human") character non named link, Zelda, or Gannondorf has looked grotesque.
 
OG The Legend of Zelda did this right. Few NPCs, no towns, small overworld, lots of dungeons and puzzles/secrets.

OP should post about how Soulsborne needs more dating sim elements and turn-based random encounters.
 
Slamtastic said:
Yes, that's what the OP wants Nintendo to fix.

And I agree, but only if the NPCs get less ugly designs.

ordon_villagers_by_avatarus_one-d5ezx0b.jpg

1432226957445.jpg


Ever since going 3D, every ("human") character non named link, Zelda, or Gannondorf has looked grotesque.
Click to expand...

Yet Groose is the most handsome NPC in a Zelda game, checkmate.
 
Wait, is the argument here that people who run through the game will be fatigued because of the pacing, when they decide not to do the pace-setting side content? What? All Zelda games have, to my experience, good pacing. Not only does it have things happening outside that's mandatory, but it also has tons of optional side content that is excellent fodder between dungeons.
 
Firstly, Zelda BOTW. Secondly, how can one say in OOT almost everything happens indoors? In just the first ~30% of the game, you visit a lot of areas and it looks something like this:

Kokiri Forest (town)
Inside Deku Tree (dungeon)
Kokiri Forest (town) again, leave

Hyrule Field (overworld)
Castle Town (town)
Hyrule Castle (meet with Zelda)
Castle Town (town) again

Hyrule Field (overworld)
Kakariko Village (town)
Death Mountain
Goron City (town)
Cavern (dungeon)
Back to Kakariko Village (town)

Hyrule Field (overworld)
Zora's Domain (town, albeit temporarily empty)
Lord Jabu Jabu's Belly (dungeon)
back to Zora's Domain (town, this time inhabited properly)
return to Castle Town (town)


During all of those moments you can easily take it slow for a moment and exploring, just looking around and stuff. I'd say there's more than sufficient amount of visiting towns and breaks between dungeons.
 
The worst part of Wind Waker was the compulsory Triforce piece fetch quest that felt like an effort to make the game longer and encourage you to explore the sea. I think I would have actually preferred if that 'break' was shorter or replaced by something else completely. Say... another dungeon?

I guess I do like the idea of compulsory bits in Zelda where you don't do dungeons, and I am one of those people that naturally looks to finish games pretty fast, but I think I'd prefer it if the devs trusted me to eventually look for all the optional stuff. If I like the game, I will do it. I do agree towns have been neglected tho. I do love Windfall Island, but it really is a wonder how The Great Sea only has one big 'town', even imo it was quite a good one. I particularly liked the little sidestory with the rich and homeless man, and auctions were a fun little distraction.

I think it's also worth bringing up that Twilight Princess had that Twilight Realm bug destroying thing and a subplot with Illia and the Ordon Village kids weaved into the story. I'm not gonna say I completely disliked them, but honestly I find those parts very boring to play and turn me off revisiting it another time.
 
CrazyHorse said:
I was watching a video of Maximilian Dood (the fighting games expert) playing Ocarina of Time and he mentioned a great point that I remember noticing when I played the game. Everything happens inside, and he wished more happened outside. You go from one dark dungeon to another. And this is good if the dungeons are amazing (e.g. TP) but no good if the dungeons are much poorer (e.g. WW). There is little to do outside unless you intentionally go for side-quests.

Due to human nature, a lot of gamers will try to complete a game as fast as they can. They will not do side-quests (unless they have the will to do it). Thus they go from dungeon to dungeon. And this can make people feeling miserable and fatigued. The games should add in much longer elements of down time.

Nintendo need to add more outside world compulsory sections with puzzles and interaction with people in towns. A lot of RPGs do this and it's what Zelda is really missing. Towns need to be more populated and greater in number. One Windfall Island is not enough; a Zelda game needs a few of them.
Click to expand...

Are you sure he was talking about OOT? There's a lot of puzzles and quests in OOT that occur outside of dungeons. There's even plenty of interactions with interesting NPC characters out in the towns and villages. As far as I remember some of these were compulsory to acquire items in order to progress; such as getting your horse and learning songs etc. For the type of game that OOT is and the limitations of the hardware during that time period, the sandbox elements were actually really good. Remember this was before 3D GTA games before we had seen any fully realised 3D sand box world.

Gaming is a different landscape nowadays. But back when I played OOT there generally less distractions and you would explore every nook and cranny of the game world. There was no youtube yet. I don't think OOT is game to be rushed through like a shooter.
 
CrazyHorse said:
I was watching a video of Maximilian Dood (the fighting games expert) playing Ocarina of Time and he mentioned a great point that I remember noticing when I played the game. Everything happens inside, and he wished more happened outside. You go from one dark dungeon to another. And this is good if the dungeons are amazing (e.g. TP) but no good if the dungeons are much poorer (e.g. WW). There is little to do outside unless you intentionally go for side-quests.

Due to human nature, a lot of gamers will try to complete a game as fast as they can. They will not do side-quests (unless they have the will to do it). Thus they go from dungeon to dungeon. And this can make people feeling miserable and fatigued. The games should add in much longer elements of down time.

Nintendo need to add more outside world compulsory sections with puzzles and interaction with people in towns. A lot of RPGs do this and it's what Zelda is really missing. Towns need to be more populated and greater in number. One Windfall Island is not enough; a Zelda game needs a few of them. And they should make the puzzles therein compulsory.

Zelda 2 had lots of towns and it did benefit the game. MM also did well with town puzzles at certain points, but should have done more between dungeons.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with you, OP. This is why I love Majora's Mask so much and feel that Okami is better than TWW, TP and SS. We need more towns and NPC interaction in Zelda games.


I feel OOT and especially MM understood this importance and took steps in the right direction
 
Slamtastic said:
We've barely seen the hints of NPC characters in one trailer, and there's no confirmation of there being a good number of them, or them having meaningful interactions or quests...
Click to expand...

OP isn't only asking for more NPCs. His main issue seems to be a lack of engaging and meaningful gameplay outside of dungeons. BotW is clearly focusing heavily on improving this. I'd argue Skyward Sword already accomplished this quite nicely, though it had its own issues.
 
you noticed the opposite of the real problem

Zelda needs _less_ towns, less breaks, less dumb exposition, and more dungeons, more non stop puzzles/gameplay and more continuous challenge

I get that some of the games were designed around the town mechanic (like Majora) but if you are not going to do that, towns are just a downer in zelda
 
Shaanyboi said:
The one thing about Zelda is that unlike most open-world RPGS/adventure games, Zelda doesn't just populate its world with a character creator. Outside of repeatable NPCs (Gorons, Dekus, Zoras, etc.), all other background characters are uniquely designed and animated.

There was some obvious reuse in the early 3D games, but they also used that to their advantage in some cases by going "oh all these guys are carpenters, these two dudes are twins, all the minigame guys in MM are a variation on this character model like they're all cousins..."

Hell, Skyward Sword has some of my favorite townspeople in almost all the Zelda games.

Consider this guy:

shopkeeper2.jpg


He's designed with purpose, he's animated with purpose, all to demonstrate a very specific and memorable character. You approach his stall, he follows you around with almost-terrifying eagerness. Buy something, he's ecstatic. But walk away without buying anything, and you'll see him slouch over after a failed sale.

Or this guy, at the potion shop:

157


Again, a specifically designed, posed, and animated character, in direct contrast to his confident wife who sells the potions herself.

SS_screen27.jpg


And yet just watch his idle animations, as he's constantly stirring, occasionally having to hush the baby on his back.


These are details most games completely ignore, giving almost all their NPCs the same body types, the same animations, the same interchangeable costumes and faces, all with no purpose but for scale. Twilight Princess did something similar for its Castle Town and it's by far the least interesting central town in a 3D Zelda game yet.


We'll see how BotW handles it, but I drastically prefer Nintendo going the extra mile for a few dozen NPCs than filling a game with forgettable ones.
Click to expand...

Great post. Even the 2D games have super charming NPCs (really starting with Link's Awakening).

OrbitalBeard said:
OP isn't only asking for more NPCs. His main issue seems to be a lack of engaging and meaningful gameplay outside of dungeons. BotW is clearly focusing heavily on improving this. I'd argue Skyward Sword already accomplished this quite nicely, though it had its own issues.
Click to expand...

I don't really understand the criticism though. Every game has had good gameplay outside the dungeons except for OOT, Twilight Princess and arguably Wind Waker.

The rest of the games had really interesting environments to explore that are often laced with secrets everywhere. I just finished a replay of LTTP for the first time in years and there was literally not a single screen without some sort of interesting thing to discover. It was lush and densely designed. And Link's Awakening (which I'm replaying now) is even tighter.
 
Majora mask's side quests were pleasing and frustrating at the same time because reverting the clock defeated the consequences of your efforts(sure you unlocked a mask, but people you had helped would be in trouble again).
 
No game or series should be beholden to a formula. Something as generic as "more towns with more people" is a particularly troubling demand. Zelda can do whatever it pleases. Sometimes it will suffer, sometimes it will excel, as long as it doesn't succumb to be being standardized.
 
Peltz said:
I don't really understand the criticism though. Every game has had good gameplay outside the dungeons except for OOT, Twilight Princess and arguably Wind Waker.

The rest of the games had really interesting environments to explore that are often laced with secrets everywhere. I just finished a replay of LTTP for the first time in years and there was literally not a single screen without some sort of interesting thing to discover. It was lush and densely designed. And Link's Awakening (which I'm replaying now) is even tighter.
Click to expand...

I don't really understand it either, but it does seem like BotW is doing more than most other Zelda games to make the overworld a major focus of the experience. But I agree with you, Zelda games have never felt lacking to me.
 
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