Max Nichols' Game Design blog
I present to you: a huge flowchart showing all of the confirmed (and some of the speculated) influences on the first Legend of Zelda title. And then, for good measure, 5000 years of those influences’ influences. See below for a list of citations demonstrating all of these connections!
A short awhile ago I was interviewed by Play Sense, a game marketing company that, on the side, has a series of interviews with folks in or around the games space with. It was a really fun chat with Sandra Mad. We touched on my own history with Zelda and game development, why this website exists, and how it’s impacted me.
We can all list genres of games: FPS, action-adventure, roguelike, otome, hidden object, and so on. When someone uses these terms we (mostly) know what they mean, and they help to quickly summarize a lot of information. Developers use them as shortcuts to answer a lot of design questions, retailers and award shows use them to categorize, gamers use them to describe games to their friends, marketing uses them to set expectations. Everyone loves to argue about where exactly to draw the lines between them.
I was fortunate to be a guest on Post Games podcast’s episode about the history of the Zelda series! I was interviewed on the podcast,…
This post is a long timeline image. The image is a collage of screenshots, photos, and quotes related to the career of Satomi Asakawa, an accomplished character designer who worked on many Zelda games.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughby discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer and a Zelda historian.
This time: Tears of the Kingdom! The first new 3D Zelda since I began contributing to the podcast. We dove into every topic we could think of, from the nature of awe in games to the nitty gritty of how physics and audio systems are implemented in games. A ton of fun!
I hooked up my 360 and Guitar Hero 2 and was shockedpikachu.jpg that my skills had decayed enough that I had to play Medium, hahah.
There’s a lot of great stuff about the game, but I think it is really an absolute masterclass in difficulty ramp design, and teaching players mastery. It’s worth study.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughby discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer and a Zelda historian.
At last! Ocarina of Time! I’d been looking forward to discussing this game in more depth for years by this point, and the brothers’ return to the game with their master Quest run was a good excuse. Since their first Ocarina season I had become a much more, well, seasoned Zelda historian. I knew way more history! So I got to discuss in a lot of depth the specific history of design choices that went into each of these dungeons, and then into the game as a whole in the history episode.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughby discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer and a Zelda historian.
I had a chance to talk about the Oracle games several times across their two seasons. A lot of discussion around dungeon design and top-down map design, as well as info on the history of their development and the people involved!
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughby discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer and a Zelda historian.
Echoes of Wisdom! A new Zelda game, the first one to apply the Breath of the Wild design philosophy to a top-down game. I was very excited to get a chance to discuss this one, and how all the new design choices fit in the context of the greater series’ evolution.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughby discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer and a Zelda historian.
Majora’s Mask is a fascinating, unique game with an interesting development history and a lot of public information about how it was made. I got to do an in-depth exploration of it’s development with the Willoughby brothers, and also offer some particular insight into it’s most unique dungeon.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughby discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer and a Zelda fan.
I got to talk about the history of Four Sword Adventures’ development and place some of it’s design decisions in the context of the larger series’ history!
How the goals goals and approaches in the #Zelda series change over time is a favorite topic of mine!
I think that through a certain lens Kat (quoted below) is right, but there are interesting distinctions to be made between different eras of the Zelda franchise.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a towering achievement, a game that raised the bar far above all that had come before.
In 1998, 3D games were not new: 3D games with first-person, top-down, and side-scrolling viewpoints had already arrived, as had third-person platformers. But nobody had yet made a third-person game with both strong camera control and melee combat, especially not in a vast, immersive world. There was no blueprint, and design pitfalls awaited any team that tried.
Ocarina of Time solved that puzzle decisively. It was a model for making third-person 3D action games that were approachable and ambitious. It broke new ground in camera control, melee combat, level design, and world design. It achieved a high standard for readability and approachability; nothing like it had ever been made before, and it set a high-water mark that wouldn’t be surpassed for years.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughly discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer who and a Zelda fan.
I appeared in a couple A Link to the Past episodes. We discussed topics like verticality in dungeon design, and 2D vs 3D gameplay. We paid special attention to the infamous block-dropping puzzle in the Ice Palace – and I discussed why it is so difficult and why I suspect the Zelda team considered it a failure.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughly discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer who and a Zelda fan.
I appeared in a couple Skyward Sword episodes, where we delved into topics like dungeon design, and contrasted Skyward Sword with Breath of the Wild.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughly discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer who and a Zelda fan.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is quite special to me, and I specifically requested one of these episodes- the Face Shrine! This is the most pivotal moment in the game, where it becomes clear that this isn’t a simple castaway story. I talk about why this moment is so important to the game as a whole, and to me as a player, and we also discuss the design of the Face Shrine dungeon.
They also invited me to join them for Level 7, Eagle’s Tower, one of the most interesting dungeons. It’s the only dungeon that features vertical play, and the only one that drastically changes the state of the dungeon after solving a particular puzzle.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughly discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer who and a Zelda fan.
My first guest appearance was to talk about the Water Temple, Ocarina of Time’s most infamous dungeon. In the main episode we discussed the lead-up to the temple, and the experience of playing through the temple more generally. We also recorded a subscribers only Bonus Episode, where I helped break down Temple’s design in more detail.
I recorded a truncated podcast version of one of my articles, Ocarina’s Image: Fundamental Challenges of 3D, for the Zelda Universe Podcast.
Fifteen years after Ocarina of Time, the Zelda team finally retired its time-worn solutions to the problems of 3D. They shifted their philosophy, drew from the inspiration for the first Legend of Zelda, and rebuilt the beating heart of the franchise from first principles.
Previously we examined the challenges of building the first 3D Zelda, and the tradeoffs that Ocarina made to maintain approachability. These compromises attempted to balance two unsolved problems: decreased readability, and greatly increased complexity. In this final article, we’ll see how Breath of the Wild found new solutions to those problems.