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Hi. My name’s Mark and this is Boss Keys - a
series about the dungeon design in the Legend

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of Zelda games.

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We’re almost at the end of this journey.

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But before we finish this series - I wanted
to go back to where it all began, and look

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at the very first two Zelda games.

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Well, actually I didn’t want to.

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But, I got a lot of requests to include these
games, so here we are.

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If this episode sucks, it’s your fault.

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So let’s start with The Legend of Zelda.

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This game was made as in attempt to capture
designer Shigeru Miyamoto’s childhood experiences

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of exploring the Japanese countryside.

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So the game is mysterious and surprising - it
begs you to simply wander off from the starting

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screen and explore this strange, sprawling
landscape.

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Oh, and hopefully find eight pieces of the
triforce and save princess Zelda.

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You’ll get those pieces in the dungeons.

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Yes, right back in the very first game, Zelda
was split between the overworld and the underworld,

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and had you exploring a number of underground
mazes where you’d fight a boss and get a

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new piece of the triforce.

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And these labyrinths absolutely established
a lot of the ideas that would go on to define

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a Zelda dungeon in future games.

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Every one of these mazes has a boss, an item,
a map, a compass, and a bunch of small keys

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and locks.

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And while almost every room is a tricky combat
challenge, the real goal is just finding your

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way to the exit.

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You’ll notice that the rooms are not laid
out in a linear fashion, but are interconnected

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and littered with locked doors and obstacles,
which means you’ll need to be careful to

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not get lost, and must go on the hunt for
things like keys and items.

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Unfortunately, pretty much everything Zelda
1 established in terms of dungeons, was quite...

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unrefined.

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And most of this stuff would get rethought
and fixed up in later games.

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Take the keys.

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Every Zelda game has small keys.

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They can be used on any normal door, but they
disappear as soon as you use them.

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In a typical Zelda game, these keys are restricted
to the dungeon where you find them - but that’s

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not true in Zelda 1, where a key can be used
in any door in the entire game.

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And, predictably, this leads to all kinds
of messy situations.

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It most often means that you have more keys
than you need.

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There are several dungeons with excess keys,
and plenty of locked rooms that you never

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need to unlock because they just contain optional
items like the compass or a hint.

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So that means you might saunter into a dungeon
with a handful of keys already in your pocket,

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making the dungeon a bit of a cakewalk.

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That’s not ideal, but it’s much better
than walking into a dungeon and finding yourself

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with not enough keys - which can happen if
you unlock every door you come across, or

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don’t explore every dungeon thoroughly.

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And there are dungeons where there aren’t
enough keys in the dungeon itself to open

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all the doors.

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Take Level 6.

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If you walk into the dungeon with no keys,
you’ll immediately pick up one key and be

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faced with two locked doors.

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The one on the right merely leads to a hint
room and then... well, you’re screwed.

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It’s either back to an earlier dungeon to
hunt down a key.

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Ugh.

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Or you can buy one from the shop.

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Which feels like a bit of a messy fix, and
these keys are super expensive, which sucks

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when rupees are so quite hard to come by.

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Ultimately, Zelda dungeons just work best
as self contained spaces - so the change to

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restrict a small key to the dungeon where
you found it, was a good decision.

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Here’s something else that later Zelda games
fixed.

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In Zelda 1, many dungeons let you finish the
level without ever picking up the key item.

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In Level 1, it’s really easy to just completely
miss the bow and arrow, and you might not

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even realise you did until Level 6, where
you need the arrows to kill this spider boss.

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Now, the solution to this problem can be found...
in the game itself.

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In another dungeon, the fourth one, you can’t
get to the boss room because of this water.

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So you need to find the stepladder, elsewhere
in the dungeon, to advance.

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It’s a simple solution to ensure that everyone
who finished level 4 has found the stepladder.

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But this still wasn’t fully implemented
even in Link to the Past where you can finish

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the Tower of Hera without picking up the Moon
Pearl.

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It wasn’t until Link’s Awakening that
Nintendo established that you’d need to

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get the dungeon’s item to reach the boss
room.

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Which makes a lot of sense.

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By all means, let less observant players go
straight past optional items, like the magic

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rod, upgraded candle, power ring, bible, and
magical key.

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But if the player needs to get an item to
finish the game, then don’t let them leave

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dungeon three without the raft.

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This brings us onto bombs.

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And this is where things start getting really
messy.

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One complaint that’s often levelled at Zelda
1 is that you need to burn every bush and

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bomb every wall.

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Unlike later Zelda games where you can clearly
see which walls can be blown up, in Zelda

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1, destructible walls just look like normal
walls.

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And yes, it’s true that pretty much every
screen on the overworld hides some kind of

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secret room.

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But there’s only one bush you HAVE to burn
- the entrance to dungeon 8 - and one wall

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you HAVE to blow up - the entrance to dungeon
9 - and they are both hinted at.

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Everything else, though, is optional.

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You do want the goodies because things like
heart containers and extra rupees are tremendously

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helpful - but they’re not critical.

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In the dungeons, though, it’s a different
story.

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So in the first four dungeons, there are walls
you can blow up to make shortcuts, bypass

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locked doors, and even discover secret rooms
like this hidden stash of rupees.

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That’s cool.

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But, again, they’re optional.

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But in the later dungeons, you have to blow
up random walls just to get to the boss.

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And this can be a maddening experience of
wasting bombs, and grinding for extra ones,

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and basically having to draw out a map just
to mark down which walls you have and have

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not tried to blow up.

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Now, okay, let me give Nintendo a small bit
of credit.

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In the fifth dungeon, you get locked in this
room.

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You get given some bombs.

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And you can see from the map, if you’ve
picked it up, that there’s a room to your left.

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So the only way to advance is to figure out
that you need to blow up a hole in the left wall.

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This is basically your tutorial - a way for
Nintendo to say “hey, from now on, you might

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have to blow up walls just to get through
the dungeon”.

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So at least you are warned.

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But it’s not much of a consolation, really.

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In dungeon 7, you need to blow holes in four
different walls to get to the boss.

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And the first room you blow your way into
isn’t even shown on the map - it’s just

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a hole!

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This is a tremendously bad bit of design,
if you ask me.

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And couple this with Zelda’s 1’s clumsy
“puzzle” design, and I’m using like

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19 pairs of quotes around puzzle - where you
have to push one random block in the room,

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but only after all the enemies are dead, and
you’ve got a recipe for a dungeon that goes

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beyond challenging, to just unfair, and silly.

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Look, I’ll defend the overworld design of
Zelda 1 forever, but some of these later dungeons

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just suck.

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I can appreciate this game for laying the
ground work for how dungeons would work in

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the Zelda series - but I’m glad to see that
Nintendo changed and fixed pretty much everything

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about them in later games.

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Right. Zelda 2. (Epilepsy Warning: Footage Contains Some Flashing Images)

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Zelda 2 is a weird game.

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It’s now a side scrolling platformer, with
a dedicated jump button no less.

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Except when you’re on the top-down overworld
- which has random battles, like Final Fantasy.

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It’s got intensely precise sword fighting
combat, and magic spells.

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There’s experience points and levelling
- which inevitably means grinding.

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And it’s punishingly difficult.

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Just... brutally hard.

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But while pretty much everything it did would
be forgotten by later games - it’s not totally

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unrecognisable as a Zelda game.

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In fact, the move towards a more linear structure
and the inclusion of small quests you must

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complete between dungeons would filter into
future games.

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And the dungeons are still non-linear, interconnected,
and have series staples like a boss, small

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keys and locked doors, and a key item.

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No map or compass though.

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So if we look at the first dungeon, Parapa
Palace, we can see that the path to the boss

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room, and the path and the key item - a candle
- are locked behind various doors and so we’ll

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need to explore other rooms to find keys.

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Annoyingly, Zelda 2 has a habit of putting
keys off at the end of a long hallway, and

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then - once you get it - you just have to
walk all the way back.

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This is the worst kind of backtracking - and
would later be solved by loops in the level design.

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Now, Zelda 2 did try to fix a few issues from
Zelda 1.

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Each dungeon now has the right number of keys
and locks.

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Which means dungeons are now self contained
sections, with no intention for you to carry

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keys from one dungeon to the next.

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Hey, I could even make graphs for these dungeons
if I wanted to, and they’d almost look like

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normal Zelda dungeons.

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Zelda 1 on the other hand is like "what is going on..."

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But you can still use keys in different dungeons
so if you start sequence breaking you could

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potentially screw things up?

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Maybe? I dunno.

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Either way, it’s still a half step towards
the proper solution.

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Also, you can still leave the dungeon without
the item in most cases.

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Only one dungeon, the second one, puts an
obstacle in your way that forces you to get

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the item before facing the boss.

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But at least the dungeons turn to ruins on
the overworld if you have both found the item

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and killed the boss, so you won’t backtrack
into old areas unnecessarily.

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Again, it’s a half step.

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Also, Zelda 2 still lets you go into dungeons
without the necessary gear.

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I hope you found the somewhat secret upward
thrust move from Darunia Town, otherwise you’ll

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be screwed when you get to this room.

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And I hope you have the reflect spell and
the thunder spell before fighting the bosses

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of dungeons four and seven, respectively,
or it’s game over.

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Finally, the game has no bombs at all - so
you don’t have to worry about that - but

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there’s still a secret wall you have to
walk through because, why not, eh?

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Really, though, the dungeons in Zelda 2 are
not all that difficult to navigate.

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They’re mostly quite small, and the only
thing to worry about is keys and locks - there

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are basically no other puzzles or obstacles.

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And as soon as the dungeons get much bigger,
you unlock a magic key which means that you

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don’t even need to look for keys in the
last two dungeons.

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You may lose your bearings, simply because
everything looks so damn similar.

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Zelda 1 had that problem too.

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But as long as you keep a quick map of the
dungeon - mental or otherwise - I think you’ll

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be fine.

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But it’s the demanding combat, the invisible
pits, getting knocked back into lava, going

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into pointless dead ends, and so on, that
will truly challenge you.

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And if you die too many times, you’ve got
to go all the way back to the very first screen,

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because screw you.

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All of which makes you not want to explore
because it’s so fraught with danger and

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frustration.

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Zelda games would eventually learn that more
linear dungeons can have difficult fights,

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but more open and exploratory levels would
have fewer enemies so as to not frustrate

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you during the backtracking.

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So, there we have it.

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Zelda 1 and 2 both set the groundwork for
the franchise.

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But it’s clear that Nintendo made some mistakes
when designing the dungeons for these early

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games - and it wasn’t until A Link to the
Past and Link’s Awakening that these issues

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were fixed.

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Those games added actual puzzles.

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They made the dungeons much more distinct
from one another, and the individual rooms

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more unique also.

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And they introduced more elements to keep
track of, like a big key or more obstacles

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that could only be overcome with the dungeon’s
new item.

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Then, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask
brought those ideas into the third dimension.

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Suddenly, dungeons weren’t just sprawling
mazes but intricate 3D spaces that unlocked

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like a puzzle box.

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On handheld, another developer, Capcom, confidently
explored different dungeon designs in the

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Oracle games and Minish Cap.

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Meanwhile, on console, Nintendo decided to
make the dungeons easier to navigate in Wind

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Waker and Twilight Princess, as they focused
more on individual puzzles, combat, and memorable

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moments.

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The DS games followed suit, but the Temple
of the Ocean King in Phantom Hourglass and

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the Tower of Spirits in Spirit Tracks gave
Zelda players something new, with dungeons

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that you’d revisit over the course of the
adventure.

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And Skyward Sword helped Nintendo return to
brain-busting architectural puzzles, with

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places like the time-travelling Sandship and
the shifting rooms of Sky Keep.

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On 3DS, Nintendo would start to rethink the
Zelda formula entirely, with the non-linear

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A Link Between Worlds.

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Which, in retrospect, was a dress rehearsal
for the most radically different Zelda game

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ever made.

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Part retro throwback, part modern masterpiece,
Breath of the Wild is a complete reinvention

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of the Zelda formula and it will be the focus
of the final episode, of Boss Keys.