The Boss Keys series of videos explores the dungeon design of The Legend of Zelda series, with each entry focusing on a different game in the franchise. The latest episode takes a crack at the dungeons of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and what series creator Mark Brown found was kind of weird.
You see, nearly all the dungeons in this game can be finished using the exact same path, as you move in the same directions in the same order. It’s a shape you can lay over most of the dungeons of the game and it works.
You may or may not have realized this when playing the game itself due to the varied visuals and gimmicks of each dungeon, but the video explains that this uniformity is why so many of the dungeons feel so similar to play, even if they look very different.
Take a look:
The dungeon design isn’t bad, nor is it lazy, but it does show that the more open exploration of previous games in the series has started to fall away to make room for a more linear — if flashy — design for these challenges.
We’ll see if the open world of Breath of the Wild does anything to reverse the trend. Until then, this is an interesting look at one of the more modern games in the series.
