Looking at the team in the meeting room, Lucas connected the screen on his computer to the projector.
On the big screen appeared the pre-written design concept and the name above it, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."
But what surprised everyone the most was the annotation below, and the concept art colored by Zack.
A blond young man in a blue coat, with a bow and arrow on his back and a sword and shield in his hand, stood on a mountaintop gazing into the distance.
Regarding Link's design, Lucas used the Breath of the Wild setting.
First of all, Link is not left-handed, his dominant hand is his right hand. In previous early settings, Link was left-handed because the early producer Shigeru Miyamoto was left-handed, but later it was changed to the right hand in support of motion sensing 'Twilight Princess' and 'Skyward Sword'.
As for the green hat, it was thrown aside, after all, it doesn't have a good meaning. Moreover, in Breath of the Wild, Link's setting is a guard and there is no hat to speak of. Of course, the green hat in the game is still a collectible item, and players can collect and wear it if they want.
There's also the gameplay aspect: puzzles.
Everyone was a little confused.
Is there a slight connection between open world and puzzles?
Looking at everyone's confused look, Lucas smiled.
Mazes and puzzles are actually one of the cores of the Zelda series.
Including Breath of the Wild as well, by solving various shrines, you can obtain corresponding trial certificates. Collecting four allows you to increase your health or stamina, which is also a characteristic system of the Legend of Zelda series.
Of course, in one game, the producer had a whim and changed these trial certificates from four to five, making countless players grind day and night.
And as an open world game developed on the Switch, like "Red Dead Redemption," it is obviously not feasible to create a world that allows players to immerse themselves through multiple NPCs and numerous realistic details.
That is combat, puzzles, and environmental interaction.
In terms of combat mechanics, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" can be said to be so rich that it feels scary.
From the most basic shield parry, dodging to enter Link time (slow motion bullet time).
There are also various high-end action techniques in the game, using the built-in remote bombs for bomb shield parries, and entering Link time after dodging by holding and sheathing the bow in mid-air.
How to judge whether a Breath of the Wild player is a master player or an ordinary player mainly depends on how he fights monsters.
Those who only go up to slash obviously are just awakening and going to save Princess Hyrule's Link.
Those who can skillfully use various techniques, enter Link time and even play as a golden flash, are definitely master Links who have honed their skills for fifty years before going to save the princess.
And players who can not only use Link time with superb skill, but also use the environment and Link's special props, such as remote bombs, time freeze, ice makers, and magnets to play various fancy actions, are definitely old rogues of Hyrule who have wandered for more than a hundred years and have forgotten what the princess looks like.
"Before developing 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,' everyone needs to do two preliminary tasks. The first is that Hector and your team are responsible for creating a unique environmental interaction mechanism framework, water condensing into ice, wind increasing fire, and the impact of conductivity, temperature, and weather on the environment." Lucas said, looking at Hector's side.
Listening to Lucas's words and the simple list of characteristics, Hector and others were all stunned.
Because in Lucas's introduction, they can clearly understand some of the characteristics of this game.
If "Red Dead Redemption" makes players feel real through countless details,
Then "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," according to Lucas, makes players feel real through environmental interaction.
When wooden weapons touch flames, they will automatically burn and be destroyed after a period of time.
Each weapon has its own unique durability, and will be damaged after being used for a long time.
You need to have cold-proof clothes and cold-proof food such as peppers or hold a torch to feel better and not lose health.
And there are weapons with different attributes in the game, ice attribute can freeze, electricity attribute can paralyze...
Players also have many special abilities, such as the magnetic power to attract metals.
Using this method, players can suck up some iron boxes and throw them on the heads of monsters to smash them to death.
Freeze the water surface into ice, allowing themselves to walk and climb on it, and go to areas that cannot be reached normally.
Round and square remote bombs can blow away some monsters.
There is also a special ability to freeze time, for example, to freeze a stone and then constantly attack it with weapons to make the stone fly further.
Continuously chop down trees, freeze time at the moment when they are about to fall, and then continuously attack and climb the trees, you can fly out like riding a rocket.
In addition to this, there is a lot of other content. Almost everything in the environment can interact with the player.
At this moment, Marcus and Hector and others understand why Lucas said this is a puzzle game.
This puzzle is different from the traditional puzzle of finding roads and clues.
Just like "Minecraft", this puzzle maximizes the player's imagination and uses various means to kill monsters.
Stealing the monster's weapons, setting fire to the mountain to burn the monsters to death, or using various mechanisms and special abilities to kill the monsters.
Listening to Lucas's introduction, everyone was a little excited, because just by imagining it, they could already feel the characteristics of this game.
The only thing left to do is to create this system and framework, and this is not an easy task, especially on the Switch platform.
"In addition, in terms of art, because it needs to be developed on the Switch platform, the game's art will adopt an animation style, which can save a lot of resources for the development of game content." Lucas said, looking at Anna and Rachel.
At the same time, the screen on the big screen enlarged the concept artwork, as well as some key points.
The art style of the game in "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" will adopt an animation style.
At the same time, an effect in the game is not done with particle effects, but with frame-by-frame animation stickers.
The biggest advantage of this method is that it fits the animation style of Zelda itself, and another point is that it saves resources.
In addition, in this case, in order to allow players to fully accept this artistic style.
Large color blocks need to be used in the game to show the exterior style of the game.
Whether it is the bluish sky and water surface, and the clouds with highly hand-painted textures.
Zack's exaggerated atmospheric perspective gives players a sense of seeing watercolor paintings.
The advantage of this technique is that it uses artistic colors and styles to show the entire game world.
Instead of purely pursuing realism, which is different from the low saturation of the real world.
This makes the tone and style of the entire game tend to romanticism, and more consideration is given to the overall color perception and the aesthetics of the color scheme.
Of course, there is also one point, which is saving resources.
(End of this chapter)
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