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8/4/2025, 7:41:19 PM
>>717277325
I'd argue the point of dungeon items was to benefit the player's sense of power fantasy and Hero's journey.
A large part of old Zelda was the fact that they were fantasy at all. Nintendo based most of their early games on popular movies and favorite Disney Cartoon classics, like Sword & The Stone especially. I strongly felt there's a similarity to the whole Sword in the Stone tale where it's a monomyth, a little normal boy who is the "real hero" when others who think they're brave and heroic are actually not worthy, but the boy can pull out the special sword without using any particular raw strength, but part of getting to the point where he can pull out the sword he must learn about "Life" first. That involves a lot of trials with the wizard Merlin (very similar to the owl in Ocarina of Time) who keeps correcting him and guiding him, and sends him his way to find the macguffins. So over the course the child grows in wisdom and experience. I think of the items as that growth in OoT and its alikes. It's the player "gaining more tools and experience" by going deeper into their adventure, so that they become the "hero" so that by the midway point when you find the Master Sword, Link is ready to pull it.
BotW's way of simulating that is more pedantic. There's nothing "learned", you're just doing more Shrines and stacking up a generic item, until your HP is large enough to take the sword out. But the player may feel like they've seen a lot at that point, so there is a sense of "turning the page" when you finally pull out the sword.
So I feel that Items in Traditional Zelda was largely there to give the player a sense of growth by the expanding item screen, which they earn by the sense of "overcoming" that items provide inside the dungeons as you're able to go through previously inaccessible contraptions. The player has an "aha" moment in realizing that the thing they couldn't get across had a solution, but they had to experience the "I can't do it" first.
I'd argue the point of dungeon items was to benefit the player's sense of power fantasy and Hero's journey.
A large part of old Zelda was the fact that they were fantasy at all. Nintendo based most of their early games on popular movies and favorite Disney Cartoon classics, like Sword & The Stone especially. I strongly felt there's a similarity to the whole Sword in the Stone tale where it's a monomyth, a little normal boy who is the "real hero" when others who think they're brave and heroic are actually not worthy, but the boy can pull out the special sword without using any particular raw strength, but part of getting to the point where he can pull out the sword he must learn about "Life" first. That involves a lot of trials with the wizard Merlin (very similar to the owl in Ocarina of Time) who keeps correcting him and guiding him, and sends him his way to find the macguffins. So over the course the child grows in wisdom and experience. I think of the items as that growth in OoT and its alikes. It's the player "gaining more tools and experience" by going deeper into their adventure, so that they become the "hero" so that by the midway point when you find the Master Sword, Link is ready to pull it.
BotW's way of simulating that is more pedantic. There's nothing "learned", you're just doing more Shrines and stacking up a generic item, until your HP is large enough to take the sword out. But the player may feel like they've seen a lot at that point, so there is a sense of "turning the page" when you finally pull out the sword.
So I feel that Items in Traditional Zelda was largely there to give the player a sense of growth by the expanding item screen, which they earn by the sense of "overcoming" that items provide inside the dungeons as you're able to go through previously inaccessible contraptions. The player has an "aha" moment in realizing that the thing they couldn't get across had a solution, but they had to experience the "I can't do it" first.
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