Hi. My name's Mark and this is Boss Keys.
I'm researching the dungeon design in the Legend of Zelda franchise, to see how Nintendo
creates these imaginative spaces.
This time, I'm playing the GameCube and Wii game Twilight Princess - though, I used the
HD remaster on Wii U for this video.
To me, the real strength of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is giving each dungeon
a unique personality and providing iconic moments that stick in your brain.
Moments like waking on the ceiling, skateboarding around a temple, and basically just being
Spider-Man.
These enjoyable moments maybe hide the fact that these dungeons have moved far away from
the intricate level design of classic Zelda.
Or the fact that almost all of the dungeons in this game are eerily similar in their design.
Let me show you what I mean, starting with the Forest Temple.
Here, you work your way into this nice central room, and find three directions that you can
take. Left and up happen to be dead ends so you go right, and explore the east wing of
the dungeon to save a monkey. Then you come back to the central room and can now access
the west wing of the dungeon to save more monkeys. You come back to the central room
again, and now have enough monkeys to go up. Okay?
Now, look at City in the Sky. It's the same. And so is Arbiter's Grounds. And Lakebed Temple
is almost identical but here, the boss door is in the central room itself. Snowpeak Ruins
and Palace of Twilight have slightly different directions, but this knotted structure where
you come to the central room three times is the same.
And, so, what does this mean? Well, I'm not saying that Nintendo was lazy or that this
makes Twilight Princess crap. I mean, I never realised the full extent of their similarities
until I started mapping the dungeons out for this series so it didn't immediately impact
my enjoyment back in 2006.
But it does, perhaps, explain why the dungeons all feel a bit unremarkable, and why we remember
them for their atmosphere, boss fights, and crazy moments, instead of the actual intricacies
of their level design.
It also makes the game feel a bit flat, with no real progression in the complexity of the
game's dungeons. Though, there are a few anomalies: the second dungeon, Goron Mines, is a lot
more linear. And the final dungeon offers a bit more choice. And then there's the Temple
of Time which - well, I'll come back to that.
Now, this repeated structure - on its own merits - is actually pretty good. I mean,
they replicated it six times for a reason.
For one, it splits the dungeon into small chunks that can be accomplished in isolation.
In one of these chunks you might turn a giant water wheel, track down a ghost, or play with fans.
In most cases, those chunks can then safely be ignored altogether once you've finished exploring
that area - which stops the dungeon from ballooning out into this massively complex space that you
need to traverse. There's nothing stopping you from going back to an older chunk, but
nothing pushing you there either.
This structure also keeps the player focused on their long-term goal in the central room,
which might involve pouring in water so you can swim to the boss door, defeating poes
to light these four torches, or finding Yeta's bedroom key.
And by repeatedly bringing the player back to that previously explored room, it feels
less linear than just putting the chunks in a big row, one after the other - which is
effectively how you're going to play them. But when set up like this, you get a hint
of that lovely Zelda-like sensation of carefully unpicking a dungeon's knot.
Now, while the layouts are similar, these dungeons do have some tweaks that make
them feel different to play - and a lot of it comes down to the criteria I laid out when
talking about "find the path" and "follow the path" dungeons in the previous episode.
Well, there aren't many branching paths, outside of the multiple doors in those central rooms.
And there aren't many choices to make, outside of some monkey business in the forest temple.
But the backtracking and hand-holding stuff does play a role.
So, I kinda lied about the Forest Temple. Once you get the Gale Boomerang from the north
section, you actually do go back to the east wing to access this final chunk and fight
the boss. And so you have to backtrack to this area and it's up to you to remember where
However! The game does something very simple but rather clever to help you do so. Earlier
in the dungeon, when you're trying to unlock this door, you need to divert from your path
to get a key - which just so happens to be in a room that is otherwise
inaccessible because this bridge is facing the wrong way.
Later, you get the Boomerang and use it to twist some bridges, and hopefully you put
two and two together and think "aha!", I should check out that room again. So the game placed
a key to ensure every single player has visited that backtracking point, and has the opportunity
to add it to their mental map.
Smart stuff.
Lakebed Temple is another dungeon that trusts you to figure stuff out. And this time, it
pulls on the stuff we talked about waaaay back in the Majora's Mask episode, about considering
these dungeons as massive interconnected pieces of architecture.
The central room has a staircase that can be rotated in 90 degree notches. Because of
these walls, you need to twist and climb this staircase carefully to get around them and
access the different doors in the central room. And you need to use the staircase to
send water from one side of the dungeon to the other, because the water turns a waterwheel
that was previously blocking your path.
That's a wonderful eureka moment and part of why Lakebed is my favourite dungeon in
this game.
There's also a brilliant second puzzle where you deliver water to the other side of the
dungeon but it's just for some optional item. That would have been a great place for the
boss key, if you ask me.
Anyway, the other dungeons are far less trusting and essentially guide you through the loopy
structure - a lot like the Temple of Droplets dungeon from Minish Cap, actually, which also
shares this layout. Hmmm.
So yeah, in Arbiter's Grounds, the rooms lead you through the east wing and bring you back
to the central room - but now on the second floor so you can hop on over to the west wing...
where you get lead back around to the central room again.
in Snowpeak Ruins, Yeta literally draws markers on your map to tell you where to go, and she unlocks
one door after the other, which is all, to be honest, a bit crap. And then you get to the
sliding block puzzles and, remind me why people love this dungeon again?
Okay, so using the cannons to smash ice is kinda cool. And the dungeon is less obviously
split into chunks than the others because it's laid out like an actual mansion rather
than four long corridors like most of the other dungeons.
So you'll find yourself skipping back over to previous chunks to pick up a cannonball.
And then getting that cannonball to the cannon involves a tiiiiny bit of spatial reasoning
which... well, i'll take what I can get at this point in the Zelda series.
Sadly, the cannon stuff is pretty quickly sidelined when you get the key item: the Ball
and Chain which is used to waste enemies and smash ice.
Generally, though, Twilight Princess does a good job of showing you the benefits of
each dungeon's item by giving you enemies that are a pain to kill with your current
tools - and then effortless to defeat with the new item. And the item also lets you get around
the dungeon more easily: the Clawshot, for example, makes the central room of the Lakebed
Temple easier to traverse.
Right. Temple of Time. Surprisingly, I don't hate this dungeon! Commenters kept betting
that I would because it is completely linear but the dungeon is interesting because it
leans heavily into that linearity. It does something interesting with its straightforward design.
So you go through the whole thing, solving some puzzles and killing enemies. until you
get to the end where you kill the mini boss, get the dominion rod, and then take control
of this massive statue. Now, the goal is to bring the statue back to the beginning of
the dungeon - now doing all the puzzles in reverse and taking into account that you have
to guide this heavy statue. It's not massively challenging. but it is clever, it is interesting,
and by golly it is different. Lots of bonus points, right there.
And Twilight Princess does have some good puzzles! In Arbiter's Grounds it sets up this
system where you pull a chain to lift a chandelier, and then run under it before it smashes down
on your head. Later, you do the same thing but just wind up at a dead end. You've got
to figure out that you need to drop the chandelier on your bonce so you can climb up on top.
That's a good'un. I also really liked these swinging platforms in Snowpeak that you bat
about with the Ball and Chain. Better than a sliding block puzzle!
I haven't shown any graphs in this episode because, frankly, they're pretty boring in
Twilight Princess. Forest Temple is probably the most interesting but, for the most part,
the graphs all look the same. Which makes sense.
In the Wind Waker episode I talked about warp pots, which help you get from the beginning
of the dungeon, to the middle, or to the boss door. Twilight Princess doesn't have any of
that stuff: probably because the looping structure means everything is pretty close to the central
room anyway. But more so because if you die, the game just lets you retry from the last
door you went through, rather than kicking you to the beginning of the dungeon.
Which, well, let's not get into a whole thing on Nintendo and difficulty. But I will say
that the bosses in this game are easier than ever. They all use the key item from the dungeon,
which makes them a bit trivial, and they all telegraph moves and highlight their weak points
super clearly. Oh, and this one is a total Shadow of the Colossus rip-off, right?
Bit cheeky.
Commenters ask me to talk about the atmosphere and aesthetics of the dungeons. and so, here we go:
They're good! Right? They look nice, they look different from one another, the
music's good, and you can pretend that the Zelda games have some kind of connected universe
or lore or whatever by noticing all of the interesting similarities to the Ocarina of
Time dungeons.
But yeah, Twilight Princess. I think these dungeons are pretty good. Inoffensive, at
least. They hide their simplicity better than The Wind Waker, and are full of those
memorable moments.
But this is, ultimately, a long way from where we started. This video series is about how
Nintendo builds intricately designed spaces, with clever architectural puzzles and interconnected
layouts that test your spatial awareness. And at this point... finding anything that
speaks to that legacy is like picking for scraps.
Oh well. Next time on Boss Keys, grab your sword and grab your stylus because we're going
to find out how making your own maps affects the dungeon design of The Legend of Zelda:
Phantom Hourglass. And maybe Spirit Tracks. We'll see.
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