The Legend of Zelda / Zelda II's dungeon design | Boss Keys

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

of Zelda games.

We’re almost at the end of this journey.

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

at the very first two Zelda games.

Well, actually I didn’t want to.

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

If this episode sucks, it’s your fault.

So let’s start with The Legend of Zelda.

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

of exploring the Japanese countryside.

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

screen and explore this strange, sprawling
landscape.

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

You’ll get those pieces in the dungeons.

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

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

new piece of the triforce.

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

a Zelda dungeon in future games.

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

and locks.

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

way to the exit.

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

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

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

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

unrefined.

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

Take the keys.

Every Zelda game has small keys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

making the dungeon a bit of a cakewalk.

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

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

don’t explore every dungeon thoroughly.

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

all the doors.

Take Level 6.

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

faced with two locked doors.

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

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

Ugh.

Or you can buy one from the shop.

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

when rupees are so quite hard to come by.

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

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

Here’s something else that later Zelda games
fixed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the Tower of Hera without picking up the Moon
Pearl.

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

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

Which makes a lot of sense.

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

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

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

dungeon three without the raft.

This brings us onto bombs.

And this is where things start getting really
messy.

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

bomb every wall.

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

1, destructible walls just look like normal
walls.

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

secret room.

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

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

Everything else, though, is optional.

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

helpful - but they’re not critical.

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

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

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

That’s cool.

But, again, they’re optional.

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

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

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

not tried to blow up.

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

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

You get given some bombs.

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

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

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

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

So at least you are warned.

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

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

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

a hole!

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

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

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

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

beyond challenging, to just unfair, and silly.

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

just suck.

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

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

about them in later games.

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

Zelda 2 is a weird game.

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

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

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

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

And it’s punishingly difficult.

Just... brutally hard.

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

unrecognisable as a Zelda game.

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

complete between dungeons would filter into
future games.

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

keys and locked doors, and a key item.

No map or compass though.

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

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

need to explore other rooms to find keys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

keys from one dungeon to the next.

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

normal Zelda dungeons.

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

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

potentially screw things up?

Maybe? I dunno.

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

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

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

the item before facing the boss.

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

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

Again, it’s a half step.

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

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

be screwed when you get to this room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

are basically no other puzzles or obstacles.

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

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

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

Zelda 1 had that problem too.

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

be fine.

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

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

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

because screw you.

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

frustration.

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

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

you during the backtracking.

So, there we have it.

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

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

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

were fixed.

Those games added actual puzzles.

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

more unique also.

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

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

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

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

like a puzzle box.

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

Oracle games and Minish Cap.

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

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

moments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Link Between Worlds.

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

ever made.

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

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