In almost forty years of existence, Zelda, Nintendo’s action and adventure video game series, whose new episode opens on May 12, has influenced a large number of creators with its mechanics or its unique universe. Here are some examples:
“Many games have sought to pick up elements from influential titles like Condemn, metroid EITHER solid metal gear“, reminds AFP Mark Brown, who discusses game design on his YouTube channel “Game Maker’s Toolkit”.
But Zeldahe says, “it’s always been different: developers have often been inspired by a more general feeling they evoked, made of exploration, adventure, mystery, surprise, and progression” of the hero.
Among the creators who have “professed their love for the series and created games inspired by their experience,” he cites Hideki Kamiya (okami), Hidetaka Miyazaki (Dark souls) or Fumito Ueda (Icon).
“More recently, we’ve also seen independent developers who have liked Zelda in his childhood trying to capture these feelings in his creations”, as Fez EITHER sayo.
Of Grand Theft Auto (gta) TO skyrim“Open world” games, which allow you to move freely and interact at will in a huge world, are now legion.
This element was already present in the first Zelda in 1986, explains Kiyoshi Tane, an author specializing in the history of video games: “The scale of the game was enormous at a time when most games took an hour or two to complete. The map was designed with a real emphasis on exploration and, from that point of view, it was kind of a pioneer of what would become of open world games.”
The last episode of the series. breath of the wild(released in 2017) “came at a time when people were getting tired of the open world” and helped reinvent it, adds Kiyoshi Tane.
He “challenged a lot of preconceived ideas, for example, relying on players to explore for themselves (the universe), instead of listing all the points of interest on the map”, details Mark Brown.
working in ocarina of timeThe first 3D game released in 1998, its creators are faced with a big problem: how to allow the player to easily target an enemy accurately in a three-dimensional universe?
The trigger comes when Nintendo developers watch a samurai movie, whose hero is surrounded by ninjas that he faces one after another. An enemy throws his kusarigama (a sickle attached to a chain) at him and moves in a circle around the hero, to whom he is bound by this taut chain.
These observations lead them to the creation of a so-called “Z-aiming” system: this automatically places the camera behind the hero and helps him focus on a character he wants to talk to or an enemy to attack.
“It really was the perfect solution,” said Kiyoshi Tane. “Later, action games multiplied -even on other consoles- adopting the same principle. Perhaps without ocarina of timegames on PlayStation and Xbox would have been very different.”
Source: BFM TV
