>> All games should have clearly defined victory conditions so players know how they can win, as well as loss conditions which stipulate the condition of failure on the player's part. While the Prince of Persia series and Twilight Princess have a more vaguely defined win condition of setting each tumultuous world back to normal as alluded to by their plots, each level or stage is also defined by a series of quests, challenges, and subquests that must be completed in order to move on. Similarly, implicit loss conditions determine how one loses because they're not the first to win, while explicit loss occurs when a character dies from losing health or failing their objective; being single-player games, Twilight Princess and PoP generally employ explicit loss conditions, ending the game when the protagonist dies, or even if an ally dies in the case of defending Farah in SoT.
>> Challenges are a must of any game, which provide the player entertained with some obstacle to overcome or skill to master. Implicit challenges are intentional and immediate, such as the platforming and fighting involved in PoP and LoZ- The Prince is required to evade deadly traps for which reaction time is key, fight enemies by linking complex moves together, and platform across gaps, ledges, and walls. Link faces many of the same challenges, but also has to find the keys to locked doors in dungeons or sometimes compete in mini in-game competitions. Explicit challenges are emergent in the game, such as navigating dungeons in LoZ or finding your way through the complex, non-linear environments of PoP WW using spatial awareness.
Intrinsic knowledge is gained within the game world to help the player along the way, such as or learning how to use different weapons to throw switches or kill enemies in LoZ, or discovering where you are able to travel through time (in WW) or what specific combos work best on which enemies in PoP. Extrinsic knowledge conversely, is gained outside the game world, such as automatically guessing you might be able to explode a weak looking structure with a bomb or light a torch with a lantern in LoZ, or guessing you might be able to break through a cracked wall in PoP.
>> The goals of every game are important to establish early on in the design stage, so that levels can be constructed appropriately around them; players might struggle against advancement to reach a higher level, or puzzle-solving as demonstrated by the sequence where the Prince must set up the palace defense systems in SoT by pulling the right levers as hinted at in the diagram etched into a nearby wall. Exploration is a major part of every LoZ game, in which Link must travel back and forth between the richly detailed lands of the Hylians, Gorons, Zora, and Gerudos to retrieve essential objects and complete tasks. Conflict or combat between characters is frequent in both games, whether it be against a major enemy like a troll or griffon in PoP WW, or the smaller poes and skeletal dogs that harass Link whenever he travels accross Hyrule Feild at night.
Games can be categorized into three major themes relating to balance, and can strive for and encourage destruction, maintenance where the goal is to keep the game world constant, and restoration in the case of PoP and Twilight Princess, where it seems the player is ultimately supposed to move the world back to equilibrium.
>> Level design, which includes the creation of environments, scenarios, or missions for the player to complete should be immersive and help establish the mood or feel of the game. These 3D environments should be based on the intended goal of the level, the flow or progression the player takes through it, and the duration of time the player spends within the level before they lose interest.
> The beautiful environments of both games certainly succeed in creating the sense that the player has entered another world, masterfully integrating level function with impressive visuals; both handle flow well, keeping the player involved in the level for a long enough time to have gained the fullest experience from it, while making it just hard enough to get to the next stage or setting to provide a challenge that doesn't seem hopeless. Locked doors in dungeons or natural barriers that can only be removed by weapons acquired later keep Link from gaining access to every available area at once, while semi-linear environments in SoT and set time-travel portal locations in WW keep the Prince from accessing more than a few areas at a time. Link can access some areas only in his wolf form, while he can perform other platforming actions once he has switched back to being a human. Similarly, the Warrior Within Prince can access different areas based on whether he is currently existing in the past, the present, as himself or as the Sand Wraith, the alternate identity he adopts later to set the timeline straight. Sometimes, new levels will even be unveiled as a result of uncontrolled actions your character takes during cutscenes. Overall, the levels are well related and flow smoothly into one another unlike an arcade game’s levels might and integrate well with the larger plotline of the game.
> The duration of the levels in both games is often enough to explore the vast environments if you want to spend your time that way, although they offer the option to go through quicker, completing the platforming sequences and traps along the way. Twilight Princess offers greater level availability, since you can usually warp to another area of the map, while in PoP you usually have to get somewhere by on foot, even if you’ve already been there before.
> The space of each level or setting includes the physical components such as perspective, scale, terrain, objects, and structures. Both employ an isometric view that is ideal for the action/adventure genre and allows the player to see their character and environment in 3rd person, with the useful additions of an adjustable camera angle and a first person view to examine specific things closer.
> Both also utilize textured terrains, materials, and lighting to create a convincing environment, although PoP levels have more realism while the Twilight Princess visuals are a bit more stylized. PoP environments expertly blend ruins, columns, curtains, ledges, ladders, and platforms for the Prince to navigate through, and even the faded color schemes of the scenery create an ancient, majestic feel in SoT or TTT, while WW takes on a darker mood with sandy yellows, deep blues, and bloody reds. TP is more notable for its use of sprawling space and imaginative constructs to differentiate between the many geographic features and cultures found within the game, easily observed for example when comparing the organic, disorderly Forest Temple and the more linear, man-made Goron mines.
> Both series also incorporate game boundaries well, hindering the player's progression through the world or levels by what appear to be unenterable buildings, natural walls, mountains, or cliffs, although some areas or passageways circle back to previous ones.
> Game difficulty, which is instrumental in determining a balance between ease and challenge for the player, can progress in a variety of ways: While most games seem to be linear, steadily increasing in difficulty as the game goes on, they can also be flat, where the difficultly doesn’t really change, or graph like an s-curve, where the difficulty that begins and ends similarly, with rising difficulty in between.
PoP and Zelda seem to successfully follow the s-curve model, starting out rather simply as the player learns the basics through in game tutorials. Once you’ve acquired the initial skills used to play the game, the difficulty of each progressive challenge changes, although it seems to steadily increase overall by introducing harder obstacle courses, smaller time limits, and bigger bosses to overcome; the Prince is later pitted against deadlier traps and bigger sand creatures, while Link finds himself face to face with more involving dungeons and particularly hard monsters to defeat, such as the giant eel in the Water Temple. There does seem to come a point where the difficulty doesn’t change much any more, at least until it's time for the final boss battle.
> Time is another element to be considered in level design, as it will affect the player's experience and may contribute to or detract from the ease of gameplay. Authentic time is used as a gameplay characteristic in Zelda especially, since if you stay in an area for long enough, it will shift from day to night, and then back to day again regardless of what you’re doing. This is important because Link can do different things or talk to different people depending on what time of day it is.
Conversely, PoP naturally incorporates a sense of altered time- As long as you remain within a level, no real time seems to have passed until you complete your objective and move to the next one, with the exception of a timed sequence where the Prince might be required to outrun a collapse of the ground beneath him, race to perform a series of specific platforming maneuvers to escape timed traps, or reach a gate before it closes. The Prince can utilize the Sands to his advantage though, harnessing their power to actually change time around him by rewinding to a previous moment to correct a mistake, slow down time for his enemies, or momentarily freeze time altogether to destroy them in quick succession.
excellent analysis - 12/10 for your depth of detail
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