Incomplete Translation: [CEDEC 2017] The Perfect Game World of "The Legend of Zelda: BotW", Born From Changes in Nintendo's Development Style
[The following is a translation of an article by Nishikawa Zenji at 4Gamer, found here, reporting on a talk given at CEDEC 2017 on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I stopped caring 2/3rds of the way through. It was a mistake to translate the entire article; the focus should have been specifically on the contents of the presentation, not some journalist reporting on it. Basically, I wasted a ton of time and got beaten to the punch.]
The number of presenters from Nintendo at CEDEC 2017 was extremely high compared to previous years, totaling in 8 presentations. This can been seen as a significant shift from their previous tendency of giving presentations at foreign conferences, but shying away from Japanese ones. It seems Nintendo has decided to become more proactive in sharing their experiences in the game development scene.
That aside, Nintendo held four sessions relating to “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” (below: Zelda: BotW) at CEDEC 2017. Out of these four, I’d like to report on one that should be easier to understand for the general gaming public, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Field Level Design ~ Creating a Complete Hyrule Field ~”
The presenters for this session were Nintendo’s Fujibayashi Hidemaro and Yonezu Shin¹.
Left: Fujibayashi Hidemaro (Nintendo, Director) Right: Yonezu Shin
First, Mr. Fujibayashi took the podium, and presented Zelda: BotW’s map, or more precisely, two heat maps (※maps that express differences in frequency through different colors). The left is before applying design principles, the right is after. In other words, the map on the right shows the results of their refinements.
According to Mr. Fujibayashi, these maps represent aggregate data on where playtesters traveled in Hyrule. Black paths are ones which few players chose. The other colors, blue to red, mean there were more players the hotter the color is.
Looking once again at the maps with this explanation in mind, there are a lot of black areas in the first map. Judging from how the map is almost entirely black, it can be seen that players sparingly took similar paths. While there are areas that are blue or red, these are the main roads drawn on the map.
In comparison, the second map shows that players tended to use roads more often, and there are far less black paths across the board. One of the main themes of this session was what policies they implemented to cause these changes.
“Attraction,” and how it guides players without removing their free will
Zelda: BotW, as an open world – officially, “open air” – game, allows players to travel and explore by their own free will. However, from the developer’s perspective, there has to be a certain degree of guidance for the sake of the game scenario.
You still want some guidance, even in an open world game.
First, they peppered the world with towers, places where players can gain information about the world, to act as guiding “points.” To add motivation to head to these “points,” they designed it so that players would run into game events while traveling between the towers.
However, Mr. Fujibayashi felt from the test players’ impressions that this plan was not enough, though it did have some effect.
The points-and-lines plan did not go as well as expected.
The people who followed the paths between towers felt the game was too linear, where as the people who went off on their own paths thought there were too few events. As Mr. Fujibayashi put it, “Players’ experiences had become varied in a bad sense.”
The game became too linear for people who followed the lines between points.
You want very little hand-holding in a game.
Based on these results, the development team began searching for a solution. There has to be a way for the game mechanics to let players believe they are choosing their own paths and exploring, without them feeling the limitations of the game scenario or being forced.
The solution that came about was the concept of “attraction.”
Use “attraction” to guide players!
Of course, we’re not talking about magnetism here. Mr. Fujibayashi defined it as “The power to make players want to go somewhere, by virtue of having value to the player.”
Mr. Fujibayashi’s description of attraction is much like a moth to a flame. In BotW, the flame is “places with value, that may give the player an advantage while progressing through the game”
This way, the player the player is free to take whichever path they choose, and while they travel, they will be drawn to other interesting places and take detours. Then, while on the detour, the player will run into new events.
Once the player is finished with their detour, they suddenly remember to go back to their original path. Then on their way back, they get hooked by something else with attraction, creating an infinite loop.
Attraction creates a loose path, which makes it possible to lead the player to progress through the general scenario the developers created.
Attraction and guiding lines. The player intended to go from one tower to the next, but ends up taking detours to other attractive places.
The developers believe that this loop has created a “perpetual gameplay machine”
So, what exactly is attraction?
In the world of BotW, rupees almost never appear out of nowhere, with a few exceptions. Instead, the player must search for plants, animals, or special locations, and fight against enemies in order to obtain various items.
Moreover, there are many different types of items, and by combining them, the player can create more valuable or more useful items. The more skilled the player is at collecting items, the more easily they will be able to survive, thus “where should I go to get a certain item?” is a simple example of attraction.
Mr. Fujibayashi then provided several concrete examples of places that utilize this type of attraction.
The first type he introduced were ones that “stand out because they’re big,” relying on size to create attraction.
Terrain that stands out from far away will pique the player’s curiosity, and thus has strong attraction. In a similar fashion, towers can be seen from far away and provide various data to the player, so they will easily hook players who enjoy exploring.
Amount of attraction by size
On the other hand, a player who is looking to become stronger will be more attracted to shrines, which provide Pieces of Heart², items that increase life, once cleared. If the player is looking to become stronger by obtaining better weapons, they may be more strongly attracted to monsters’ strongholds, where they’ll be more likely to find rare weapons.
Amount of attraction for players who just want to get stronger
Even more, once nightfall comes, places that give off light stand out more, so the levels of attraction change.
Things that glow stand out at night. If players are drawn to lights, they’re not too different from moths!
Letting the player catch glimpses makes exploring more fun
At this point, Mr. Yonezu takes the podium.
Mr. Yonezu explained that, when tackling the terrain design (field/level design) for BotW, the development team applied what they called “The Field Triangle Rule”
It may sound like some kind of complicated term, but it is basically “a little trick to make the terrain design more entertaining for the player.”
It looks like something out of a math textbook, but it’s actually very simple
Mr. Yonezu says that for BotW, they designed the terrain elevation and placement of items to generally make triangles.
For example, when the player is faced with a mountain or hill, they must choose between climbing or going around. In other words, it “tests the player’s decision making in exploration.”
Triangles in the player’s path create branching paths
Regardless of of whether the player climbs or goes around, once they progress enough, the landscape that was being obstructed by the triangle will come into view. This is part of motivating the player to think “Maybe I’ll try going over there next”
Climbing the triangle or going around, something interesting will appear from the side
Example of a tower appearing from the side
“Triangles have a strong tendency to draw the eye to the tip, so by placing something unique at the peak of a hill or mountain, you can get the player curious about it,” Mr. Yonezu adds.
When people see the tip of a triangle, they expect something to be there. In BotW’s case, it is common for Koroks to be hiding at the top of hills or mountains
Ultimately, the development team used “the triangle silhouette effect” for three main uses when designing the world.
Large triangles are made up of large-scale terrain such as mountains or mountain ranges. These play the role of landmarks that can be seen from far away.
Medium-sized triangles as obstacles, obstructing distant landscapes and locations farther away.
Finally, small triangles are mainly rocks and protrusions that obstruct nearby objects, used to encourage small-scale exploration, managing the “tempo” of the game. Mr. Yonezu explains that small triangles encourage constant maneuvering of the control sticks and have a direct impact on playtime.
The uses for the three types of triangles: small, medium, and large
Mr. Yonezu also discussed the use of rectangles and trapezoids when applying the field triangle rule.
Unlike triangles, rectangles do not slowly reveal things as you progress, but they have the ability to “suddenly unveil the area behind them.” In BotW, they are used to create sudden enemy ambushes, or to surprise players with hidden items.
Rectangles have the effect of keeping things hidden, so it’s possible to use them to have enemies jump out of cover at the player and such.
Meanwhile, trapezoids can have qualities of both triangles and rectangles.
It was surprising to discover that not only did they not use procedural generation to assist with creating BotW’s vast world, but that it was created using traditional game world design with careful planning and directing.
Many players have said that BotW is impossible to put down once you pick it up, or that it’s very engaging despite giving the player so much freedom. It goes to show how much planning and design went into the game.
The slide below shows practical usage of the field triangle rule in the game.
The field triangle rule being applied to the game world. You can see rectangles and trapezoids being used as well.
Looking at the slide above, you can see that large triangles take up a lot of area but are few in numbers. The opposite is true for small triangles.
Furthermore, there are many smaller triangle placed around landmark-sized triangles, so as to create multiple different paths leading to the larger triangle. This design increases the player’s perceived freedom.
Top view of a game world using three sizes for the field triangle rule
A view from a slanted angle. Junction points created by small triangles add variation to the routes players take.
To make the topics discussed more easy to understand, Mr. Yonezu then unveiled step by step examples of how the world in BotW was created.
First, the tower you can see in the distance acts as the pulling force. As mentioned before, having a road running straight to the tower is boring.
And so we curve the road. Curving the road with a triangle also adds verticality.
The tower is still visible, so we apply the field triangle rule and hide it.
Next, we make it so that instead of the tower, a different rectangular object comes into view as you progress
Then we curve the path more so that as you progress further, the tower pops out from behind the rectangular building.
It’s already surprising enough to see how calculated the level design is, but it’s even more surprising to hear that they walked through the game world one step at a time to understand how players would see the world they’ve designed.
Mr. Yonezu says that they never used no-clip or other debugging features. They only “actually walked around.” As he puts it, there are problems you can only find by walking around
¹ I am not 100% sure if this is the correct reading or proper romanization for his name. If anyone knows, please contact me so I can correct it.
² The article says “Pieces of Heart (ハートのかけら),” which are not actually present in Breath of the Wild. Spirit Orbs (克服の証) are received upon clearing a shrine.