What can Usability bring to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Let's see how to teach the player to be free with some simple concepts that can point out strengths and weaknesses in any game.
This blog post was originally published on LudoTIC's website (In french too).
LudoTIC presents « GameU.R. »
We sometimes see some articles about the meaning of User Experience in games, and it's usefulness. I'm a U.X. Designer at LudoTIC and I want to share with you what this field can bring to a game project and maybe some insight on game development in an accessible way.
Each month, we present a game’s review using our tools and expertise: our Game Usability Review (Game U.R. for short). The goal of these reviews is to find out what is good or bad, to uncover problems and discuss some solutions.
Game development is an art, here are some pieces of advice to turn your work into a masterpiece.
We use an internally developed method which sees a game from 3 points of view:
Usability: as a Human Machine Interface
Playability: as an object with playing potential
Gameplay: as a video game
For more details, see our related article!
You can see here our last review of Astroneer!
Today: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an Action RPG in an open world environment made by Nintendo. You are Link (and not Zelda !) a knight of the Hyrule realm and you wake up with no memory and in your underpants. From there you will discover Hyrule and the epic quest that awaits you to save the realm and princess Zelda!
It is an open world RPG with some mechanics like The Elder scrolls series (Skyrim …) or The Witcher.
A common struggle in these games that we will focus on today is: “How to leave the player free to do what he wants while giving him something to do, so he doesn’t get bored”, let’s see how Breath of the Wild crushes this question.
The Legend Zelda: Breath of the Wild is out since March 3, 2017 on Wii U and Nintendo Switch. We reviewed it the first week after it’s release on the Nintendo Switch version.
A lot of reviewers gave the game a perfect score (like IGN or jeuxvideo.com), here is our review from a user experience point of view.
1/ Usability
Player’s performance and mental load optimization |
The Legend of Zelda games are about solving puzzles and enigmas. Breath of the Wild doesn’t fail the recipe and provide an enormous pool of things to solve. But what is interesting is that they each exert different amounts of cognitive load.
In short: the cognitive load is the amount of mental effort being used in the working memory, much like the R.A.M. in a computer, but in your brain.
Advice | Usually, in games and interfaces, it is best to minimize the cognitive load on the user. But Zelda Breath of the wild is a game about puzzles, so thinking is part of the fun. |
In the game, quests and objectives vary in importance:
The main quest (saving the princess, vanquish evil …) is guided very precisely, with targets on the map and frequents reminders about what to do next.
Very low cognitive load: we have nothing to remember except to follow the guide.
Some quests are more elusive, to challenge reasoning, but let us have the important elements in the quest log, like the general direction of a shrine or the text of the “song with a secret in it”.
Medium cognitive load: we have to think for ourselves and sometimes remember directions and patterns.
And there also are undocumented secrets and objectives, there is no log for them anywhere but in our memory and eventually a sheet of paper beside us.
High cognitive load: we have to memorize a lot and correlate information.
| These different levels of objectives can serve as difficulty levels, the main quests are easy to follow so we can finish the game without too much difficulty. But then, to solve and complete other objectives the game help decreases, and the difficulty rises. |
Examples
I know where to go and what to do |
I am reminded of what is needed |
I think I need to remember something for later ... |
Good | To enhance player’s performances the spaces are designed for what is inside them. For example, when a fight occurs, we are always in a big area to let us strategize, prepare ourselves or just run. On the other hand, enigmas are sometimes in a much smaller place to limit the possibilities to solve it in other ways and because we have the time to think and be precise. |
Okay I’m ready, let’s kill this thing
In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, to regain our life, we have to eat, and the dishes that give the most hearts or give bonuses are to be cooked in a cooking pot. It is a fun experience at first but it quickly becomes tedious after some time.
Warning | Cooking doesn’t respect these good practices for mental workload and player’s performances. It takes too much time and actions, dishes are really useful for progression so we want to have some with us. But for each dish we cook, we have to select one by one each ingredient and then cook them, which takes time. |
Advice | These problems could be solved with a “cooking interface” when interacting with a cooking pot, presenting the discovered recipes and offering to cook multiple dishes when possible. |
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