Wake up, Link
When Link first steps blinking into the sunlight after a quick nap of 100 years, you are greeted with a big panning shot of a large green space with forests, plains, and ruins. And that’s just the tutorial zone. You are free to explore this space of relative safety high above Hyrule at large while you learn the mechanics and nature of the game. While at first given specific locations on a map to go to, the reigns are quickly lifted off as you are told what to find, and shown what they look like, but not where or how to get them. The Great Plateau allows the player to explore for themselves, as they see points of interest and test methods of reaching them. One good example being a Shrine on top a frozen mountain, too cold for the player character Link, to withstand unenabled, slowly having his health tick down. The player can discover three different methods of reaching the shrine without dying, each through different creative paths, and even locations on the Great Plateau. Motivating them in all this are two promises the game gives, one more explicit than the other. One, the player is offered a paraglider for the treasures in the shrines, a tool whose use is made immediately apparent by the presence of fall damage (which the player, currently stranded on a tall tower, may quickly discover if they have not already). And two, when the player explores that first shrine, they are given a new ability, with the spaces for 4 other abilities shown, with the ability they’ve just obtained being off-center. This implies that the other three shrines on the Plateau have abilities for Link as well, giving the player a more immediate drive to explore.
High above the Land
The Great Plateau stands at the tutorial region of Breath of the Wild, the (as of writing) latest entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise. Being a large departure from the trend of linearity of many more recent titles, BotW is a vast Open World game where the player can go nearly everywhere in the map and climb almost every surface to get there. But this is only achievable when the main objectives on the Great Plateau are completed. Until then the rest of the kingdom is locked off, effectively making this one of the few temporarily contained levels in this otherwise open world game.
Growing Pains
But due to the relatively hands off nature of the tutorial, the game can allow players to miss some info that the game wants them to know. Some mechanic introductions are placed obviously on the main through paths allowing for natural player learning, but some, even crucial tutorials can be easily walked past without noticing, and the game doesn’t directly encourage returning to the points where the player would learn them any more than the rest of the plateau. This can lead to player frustration when they later discover a mechanic like Z-Targeting and realize they have unintentionally been making their life harder in the process.
Some suggestions
I feel like these issues can be resolved by a bit more redundant placement of these tutorial triggers. Just make it more apparent as the player nears these items so they don’t miss the important info relating to them. Perhaps specifically put some closer to the shrines themselves, places the player will already be heading towards for level completion and ability gain. That way the developers can help players gain the knowledge without forcing them into dedicated tutorial sequences which their level design was trying to avoid in the first place.
Still “Great”
Even with this issue, the great plateau excels at being an environmental teacher, and using the landscape to guide the player towards learning opportunities, if not perhaps needing a few more to round off the lessons. When Link finally gets the paraglider and is able to leave the Great Plateau he and the player will be well equipped to explore the ruined kingdom of Hyrule and prepare to take down Calamity Gannon.
Featured image is of BotW interior Cover Art taken form mobygames.com
Aidan Pohl's Game Design Blog 