I'm gonna talk about Skyward Sword's dungeons (Patreon)

So I just finished Skyward Sword's dungeons, and I thought I'd share the graphs with those who are interested (a Patron recently asked me to share some graphs).

I won't be releasing this episode for a bit as I'm focusing on Psychonauts and Dead Space, but wanted to get some notes down while the dungeons are still fresh in my memory. 

This blog post will only be discussing dungeon structure, but the actual video will touch on combat, puzzles, the lack of a compass, and other important stuff. 

A reminder: diamonds are keys, squares are locks. Okay, let's get to it. 

 Skyview Temple

This graph really shows how the dungeon is cut up into little pockets of complexity where you do some stuff, move on, and never return.

You do the first section, which involves raising the water level with two different switches, to get a key and get to the locked door. Then the middle section with the key item (beetle), and then the bit with the boss key.

The number on the A squares, represents how many A diamonds you need to have activated to get past the square. 

Earth Temple

A pretty simple dungeon, really. The A icons represent two buttons you must press (with a giant ball you're walking on) to open up a bridge. The key item lock is sadly spoiled by a big red X on your map. 

Lanayru Mining Facility

This is a nice dungeon overall, but very straightforward. While it uses timeshift stones for time travel fun, these puzzles are confined to individual rooms meaning they don't affect the overall structure of the dungeon. Something that will be fixed a bit later...

Ancient Cistern

This is a really, really nice dungeon... that is somewhat ruined by Skyward Sword's incessant handholding.

From the graph, you can see a long horizontal line at the top, which means the dungeon largely revolves around a central room that you keep coming back to. There's also a new "i" icon, representing a puzzle where you need to gather information from one room to use in another. 

The graph can't adequately explain the main puzzle, so you'll have to wait for the video (and the 3D map) for that. It's a great puzzle, but the game gives you the solution immediately, completing spoiling the fun. Boo.

That's why I wrote "simplified because game over-explains". Doesn't seem much point drawing the complex machinations of this section of the puzzle if the game just tells you how to do it. 

Sandship

Okay, this dungeon completely breaks my graphs. And I couldn't be happier. The best dungeons really stress the limits of my graph system. 

Like Lanayru Mining Facility, the dungeon involves timeshift stones that can send the dungeon between modern day (represented by an hourglass, and the initial state of the dungeon) and the ancient (but, confusingly, technological) past (represented by a clock). And you do this by hitting a timeshift stone (on the graph: the weird clock/hourglass diamond). 

Evolving Lanayru, the stones affect the entire dungeon meaning you may need to go to a different room to change timelines, and then go back to a previous room to see how things have changed. 

This sets up some great puzzles I can't wait to talk about, and they're only half-spoiled by the game! The main one is the source of all that mess on the left of the graph. It's so good! This is what Boss Keys is supposed to be about! 

Fire Sanctuary 

Hoo boy! Look how straightforward this one is. That's okay. A nice mix of different dungeons is no bad thing. 

Sky Keep

Literally un-graph-able, I think. I haven't really tried. But yeah, this one is bonkers. It's basically one of those tile-shifting puzzles you get in a Christmas cracker, but the tiles are rooms in a Zelda dungeon. Really smart, really enjoyed it. 

Overall thoughts

I'm gonna spoil a lot of the next Boss Keys video here, so don't read if you prefer to see the finished product. 

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As much as it pains me to say this (I really dislike SS on the whole), Skyward Sword has a pretty fantastic selection of dungeons. It has some straightforward temples, sure, but they're mixed in with some really complex dungeons too - with crazy, interlocking 3D designs we haven't really seen since Majora's Mask. 

I, personally, think Zelda dungeons are at their best when they make you consider the entire dungeon as an interconnected space. Sometimes that just means keeping a mental note of locked doors and other barriers, but even better is when the dungeon can be flipped on its head, or flooded with water, or sent back and forth through time. I love this stuff. 

It's clear that this is what Nintendo was going for in the early days, as games like Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and the Oracle games really focused on this sort of gameplay where the micro-challenges of puzzles and combat, were in service of the wider, macro-challenge of actually puzzling out the dungeon itself. 

For Wind Waker, though, this aspect of the design was greatly reduced. The focus was put on the micro-challenges of little puzzles and combat encounters and the macro-challenge of solving the dungeon itself was largely ignored, with more linear dungeons that lead you through the rooms. You rarely need to think about the dungeon as a whole: just the room you're currently in. 

I'm not sure why this was the case. Maybe the large overworld meant less time could be spent on the dungeons (dungeons were cut, and the last WW dungeon, Wind Temple, suggested a move towards more complex end-game dungeons that may have been removed for time).

Maybe Nintendo went too crazy with Majora's Mask's dungeons (Great Bay and Stone Tower are pretty gnarly) and Nintendo overcorrected to avoid players getting stuck. 

Whatever the case, this style of design stuck and from then on, Zelda dungeons really reduced that macro-challenge aspect in Minish Cap, Twilight Princess, and the DS games. There are a few exceptions: some find-the-path style stuff in Minish Cap, and Forest Temple and Lakebed Temple in TP.

And I have criticised these games for the simplicity of their dungeons. Because of this, some commenters have said that I have looked at the dungeons with too narrow-a focus. 

And maybe they're right. My lens has always been on the macro, structural challenges, with the micro-challenges as a secondary concern. 

And, sure, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess et-al have some really nice combat and puzzle micro-challenges. And aesthetic or thematic content that I could have spent more time on. I won't argue that. 

But Skyward Sword shows that Nintendo never forgot how to do the sort of complex dungeon design it was exploring in the early days, it just dropped the ball for a few years. I think the games suffered because of this, but not everyone will agree. That's fine, obviously. 

But to me, Sandship, Ancient Cistern, and Sky Keep feel like natural evolutions of the design seen in Majora's Mask: complex and clever, but more accessible to a modern audience, thanks to hints and map markers. It's a little too accessible for my tastes, at times, but a really good start. 

Anyway. Boss Keys has been a fun, fascinating, frustrating, interesting process. Doing the research in public is cool - I love the feedback, and I like sharing my passion with everyone. But it does mean I share some half-baked ideas, and I stupidly state them as these big statements that will annoy people. 

Oh well, hopefully it will all make sense when I finish the series :P