Wunderbar
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2015
- Messages
- 8,825
A good breakdown of Zelda's "clockwork" dungeons:
Actually made me wanna try out Skyward Sword just to see those 2 dungeons.
From the 9 minute mark on he explains why we can't have good things anymore...
i'm in the middle of Skyward sword playthough and i just finished those two dungeons (haven't watched the video, i assume he talks about ancient cistern and the sandship). The moving statue and a time shenanigans are interesting ideas, but the game utterly fails to capitalize on them.
You only required to move the Ancient Cistern statue two times - first to open the way into the basement, then to raise statue back and get the boss key. It's a far cry from lowering/raising water levels in the Water temple, or changing the waterflow direction in Great bay temple, or rotating staircases in the Lakebed temple. Even if you ignore that stone tablet, Ancient cistern doesn't require any real thought or effort, it's very easy and straightforward.
Same with the timeshift stones, which were only used in three dungeons - the first one introduces the mechanic (the dungeon is very easy and the stones are only used to change the layout of the room), the second one adds one portable stone that you can carry around (the dungeon is very easy and is also like 10 minutes long), and the third one - the sandship - is again very easy, doesn't have a portable stone (what was the point of introducing this mechanic if you're not expanding on it later?) and also spoils the only decent puzzle. I heard about the Sandship before playing the game and expected some miracle of level design like "a crack in the slab" mission from Dishonored 2, but alas.