Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau – Game Level Analysis

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

Arms Game Analysis

The Box Art as seen from Amazon

Tossing Hands, Almost Literally!

Pull no punches in one of the Nintendo Switch’s remarkable launch title, Arms. With quick paced action and great visual and audio design, Arms is a feast for the senses, and a half-decent work out as well, with motion controls integral to the combat controls, its almost as if the player is the one actually punching the digital opponent. Top on that with a roster of unique characters, each with a special power or ability, and a veritable catalogue of arm attachments, this game works as both a quick paced party game and a strategic fighter either by yourself or with/against a friend.

Spring loaded boxing gloves.

Arms for the Nintendo Switch is at its basic, a motion control based fighting system. Using a pair of Nintendo Joy-cons, one in each hand, the player controls their character by leaning, tilting, or jerking the Joy-cons to make their fighter navigate the arena, or throw punches in a pretty intuitive manner. Punching forward with the right Joy-con will sling the character’s right fist forward, connected to the fighter by some slinky like mechanism in a long distance punch that can be arced during the attack. Same with the left Joy-con and left fist. Punching with both Joy-cons simultaneously will start a grab attempt that will pull you towards the enemy, or the enemy towards yourself, so you can do a quick combo, while tilting the Joy-cons towards each other will make your character block. Tilting both Joy-cons in the same direction will make your character move in said direction. On top of that there are a variety of different arm attachments in different types, including dragon heads, chakras, and umbrellas, and elemental affinities, like electric and fire, which affect how you punch, and have different chargeable power attacks which can mess with your enemy.

A screenshot of a round during action. Image from Nintendo Life.

Rock, Paper, Scissors? Shoot….

Unfortunately, even will all that above, the core gameplay loop boils down to a simple rock-paper-scissors triangle of effectiveness. Blocking stops punches from connecting, while can make you very vulnerable to grabs, which are interrupted by punches. The issue, is that grabs can start a stun-lock cycle, where the moment a fighter gets up from a grab combo, they are immediately regard for a second, or third round of being flung around the arena. Sure they can try to dodge out of each grab, but that leads to the next issue. The controls being motion-detection based, are not the most precise. The characters can be difficult to control and may start walking to one side as you realize you have been leaning a bit, or a grab could be detected as two side-by-side punches. Even with the punches, a tiny rapid movement has the same affect as a more realistic punch so s game about exploring the uses of motion control encourages the player to move as minimally as possible, especially with the in-air arcing about as effective as a mild summer breeze and a prayer in changing the direction of your fists.

Working Out the Muscle Tension

None of this is to say that Arms is a lost cause, not at all! With some tuning of the motion controls, the game could feel more reactive and immersive, and possibly with more interaction with rates of motion some variety to the attacks would arise naturally. Along with this, playing more into the arm attachments, how the different hands and elements act and interact outside of the Power attacks could go a long way to adding more strategy to what you enter the ring with, and encouraging experimentation with different combos and otherwise rarely-touched arms.

Championship Contender

Even with what its got, Arms is a pretty fun, if mildly niche, party fighting game. Where the over the shoulder punching action of many boxing games crosses together with the zany powers and characters of many classic side-scrolling fighters. With both a tournament mode and quick fighting mode, along with a few minigames to spice it up, Arms is a fun game to pick up and play if you want to be a bit more active. Just make sure you got your Joy-cons strapped and clear space so you don’t deck a passerby or nearby ornamental vase!

Arms cover image from IMBD