What is a Good Beginner's Guide —— From Zelda: The Breath of the Wilderness

When there was a glimmer of light in the darkness, I heard the call of a stranger. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a completely strange place-this is the opening of the legend of zelda: a breath in the wilderness.

The protagonist's amnesia is an old trick in the game, and with the protagonist who can't talk, the whole look is the style of the old Japanese role-playing game. How's it going? A little boring? Or is there no sense of substitution in the plot commonly used in this novel? Never mind, in the face of such a scene, before sneering and closing the game, try to ask three questions like Gauguin, "Who am I, where am I from and where am I going?"

Here, Nintendo also sells a pass. They collect players' doubts. They just put this expanding curiosity into their bags and integrate it into the novice guide of the game. Then "Zelda: The Breath of the Wilderness" naturally revolves around these three questions, and designs a set of new book guidance links that are at first glance unremarkable and full of details.

In today's games, novice guidance (novice teaching) is often introduced after a short performance. Good broadcasting is like a wedge in front of readers in a novel, and excellent guidance is the touchstone. Whether players can quickly integrate into the game world after attracting their interest is a technical job, and to achieve this goal, speed, accuracy and cruelty are indispensable.

The game guides tens of millions. The possibility of combination is even more unexpected, and nothing is impossible. However, in order to facilitate classification, according to the simplest and most common trigger methods, it is divided into mandatory and non-mandatory.

Forced guidance

Forced guidance, as the name implies, when guiding players into the game world, the producer uses the method of depriving players of their autonomy to force them to operate according to the given requirements. This kind of guidance method rises in online games, prevails in page games, and gradually becomes the standard of most mobile games in the market. To put it bluntly, the system gives the player a clear and definite goal and makes a highly recognizable prompt. Players can stride forward according to the prompts and learn the basic common sense needed for barrier-free access to new games. For example, teachers in schools teach on the blackboard, and students draw spoons according to requirements and norms. More importantly, it will provide full automatic pathfinding and automatic fighting, which can be played only with stupid confirmation. Such as some page tours. Legend of xx, blue moon of xx. It is almost equivalent to directly holding the palm of a student's hand to teach players to write.

It is not difficult to predict that this guidance method is doomed to be boring, and it will extremely destroy the player's immersive game experience. But it is also easy to understand why it is common in mobile phone page games, because considering the uneven game level of the user group itself, this is the most time-saving and labor-saving solution. Of course, most games on the market now will also guide them into many small paragraphs, which will be carried out in the form of small tasks and small challenges, and some rewards will be provided after meeting the requirements. Or directly integrate these into a longer process, giving players a certain space to explore and learn while playing.

Nonmandatory guidance

Non-mandatory instruction often interweaves play with study. Give rules and encourage players to try. It's like playing a patient guide. Give an explanation when you get to the scenic spot. Let players no longer be tied behind, but have certain autonomy. For example, in "The New God of War", three generations of Kuiye who "fell off the altar" were directly placed in a completely unfamiliar environment. After defining the general goal, the player is given a lot of space to explore and decrypt independently, and then some miscellaneous fish are arranged to let the player guess and think about the plot trend while being familiar with the new combat system and new mechanism, and then end up with a hearty battle. At the same time, friends who play games can understand Gemini by acting.

If you are used to playing console games, it won't take much effort to complete the above operations. If you are a series player, it will be more handy. But when I gave the handle to my friend who seldom played games with curiosity, she clumsily changed the perspective with the right joystick. So such non-mandatory guidance is good, but relatively speaking, there is a certain threshold for players.

Few games exist only in one of them, just as most opinions are either black or white, and it is difficult for a single-dimensional label to define a complex definition. There is no good or bad, only suitable. In most games today, they are mixed. Even the forced guidance that the core players are disgusted with is useful in games like Excalibur 2.

Finally, I would like to mention that the above is only a rough classification, and it is impossible to frame every game type completely and accurately.

After all this preparation, I can finally get down to business and have a conversation with Zelda: The Breath of the Wilderness. First of all, we choose the key nodes on this timeline in chronological order as explanations.

The place where the player was born is called the initial platform in the game. At first, the platform environment was a one-way cave consisting of three rooms. In other words, there is only one road, no fork in the road. The purpose is obvious. Limit the scope of action, so that Link, who just woke up from the deep sleep of 100, won't get lost.

In the first part, Princess Zelda's voice is used as an introductory guide. On the one hand, it gives a general background introduction to players who have never been exposed to this series before, and on the other hand, it sets a vague goal in the players' minds. Whether it is a hint of conspicuous tone or a close-up shot of the pedestal before the end of the broadcast, it will be driven by curiosity to find out.

Naturally get the stone of Sika, and trigger the mechanism to open the stone gate. Since there are few interactive elements in the first room, players can quickly realize that it is time to go to the next room. At this stage, we got the stone of Hika as a reward, and also learned and practiced the basic operations (walking and interaction).

The second part, that is, after walking out of the first room, the first thing you can notice is the treasure boxes and worn-out barrels piled up at the door. On this only way, as long as you are close, you can trigger the prompt to open the treasure chest and pick up the items, and finally end up with the reward (two pieces of equipment) for opening the treasure chest.

Then the layout in front of the door is similar to the previous room, which easily reminds us of the operation of unlocking with the stone of Sika. After doing the same thing, what we learned not long ago was put into practice for the first time.

After I left the room, I finally saw a ray of sunshine, but when I approached the hole, I was blocked by a huge stone. The third content that wants to guide players is self-evident, that is, climbing.

You may notice that until you leave the cave, the operation of the game teaching is the basic foundation, and basically any player can play without difficulty after getting started. From here we can see Nintendo's game design concept-let as many groups as possible enjoy the fun of the game.

After completing these three parts, the player is like a child who has learned from babbling and turned into a youthful teenager. After a mirror image transmission, the close-up view from the rear-end collision perspective was gradually drawn to the distant view, and finally the whole Heralu continent was panoramic.

"Look, this is a world made for you."

In this process, there are only a few lines, which can be described as cherishing words like gold. But at the same time, it has achieved a guiding effect that is almost smooth and silent. Looking back, you will find that the guiding principle is always exploration-discovery-analogy-practice-reward. This is also the principle that 3A games follow under the guidance of novice designers. Except for a few producers who have bad taste, they will play some jokes on players in practice. Most games are teased at this stage for fear of losing players. Giving a challenge and a candy is the general idea of design.

Don't be deceived by Zelda's painting style, its lens application is absolutely professional. This book goes on. After a short pause in the panorama, the camera made a clockwise deflection around the link and kept up with the camera. With the shift of orientation, the old man and the fire not far away attracted new conspicuous landmarks. Invisible mission objectives can be achieved, and the direction to be taken is pointed out. Players who keep up with the rhythm suddenly got the message and reached a silent tacit understanding with the game.

Putting key props in a conspicuous position in the scene is one of the keys to stimulate players' desire to explore. Of course, this puts a very high demand on the design of the map-any element that can be explored on the map will attract the attention of players with obvious colors or clear terrain changes. In this way, players will soon find out, gain a sense of accomplishment and exclaim, "Wow, it can still be like this." This allows even players who didn't play games often before to integrate into the game world almost barrier-free.

More subtly, the learning and information input in this process are almost always obtained by the player actively, that is to say, in the process of novice guidance, the player feels that he is actively exploring, not an imposed external burden. The common fault of most mediocre open worlds is that the guidance is not good enough, so that players can only feel that there is nothing to do in the open world of Nuoda after entering the game. But freedom is not that you can do whatever you want in the game, but that you have the right not to do so. So I rarely tell you how to do it directly, but there will always be some seemingly inadvertently left clues for players to explore.

At the same time, it will not punish those impatient Mao Mao people. If you don't like exploring and loitering, you will miss a few apple trees and lose the chance to meet Heralu mushrooms, but so what? You can still play the game smoothly, and you can still get these props in the subsequent process. Even if it is strong enough, props can only play a icing on the cake.

For example, to learn the recipe of baked apples, players need to find unknown props by the fire to trigger a dialogue to learn the recipe of baked apples. Apples on nearby fruit trees have become the best practical materials for local materials. Throwing fresh apples by the fire and roasting them with fire can restore more blood. By analogy, the way of roasting mushrooms was discovered and practiced. It's like a paradise for exploratory players.

One week, I climbed the snowy mountain in the cold and got my winter clothes. The next week, I got winter clothes as a reward by cooking. In the case that I don't look at the raiders, I can still get unexpected surprises by playing repeatedly. You can follow the rules step by step, but if you are not going to follow the rules, there is no harm. It boldly gives you such freedom. This is why people often ridicule the game for losing money.

If we have to be serious, Zelda's mission design doesn't have much to praise, but it is solid and stable enough, and has been carefully polished and fantasized at the average level of the traditional open world. Its mission design idea is still not out of the shackles, but clever guidance and map design have given players endless exploration motivation. Exploration is the biggest selling point of the game and the most exciting and attractive place. Of course, in order to achieve this, there are also temples of 128 with different but high-level puzzles as support. These contents complement each other and become an organic whole. You often hear people say that you don't go to bed until dawn, because every time you finish a small goal, you can find something new on the map. So, you will feel the difference in the so-called open world that you have played before. Even gta5 fills and enriches the capital of Los Angeles with small games on a clear main line, giving it a real feeling, while The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wilderness sacrifices narrative and turns the key service object into exploration, allowing players to return to the state of seeing everything fresh when they were young and roam in the world of Heraro. It greatly stimulated our desire to explore and made us addicted to it.