I can see making a Mario level with very player friendly tools because the game is so conceptually simple.
A Zelda game on the other hand is much more conceptually complex. The complexity of the editor you’ll need to build a Zelda dungeon is either going to be very simple, but you then get a “shuffle the pre-made challenge rooms in the order YOU want” or maybe a mediocre maze editor, or you’ll basically have to ship a copy of Godot with the tile sets and enemies and such already made.
There’s also the fact that a single Zelda dungeon isn’t as interesting by itself. Without the context of the overworld, the dungeons that came before, the overworld puzzles, a given dungeon is “solve a maze and fight a boss.” Whee.
I suspect it’s more about the difficulty of generalizing a bug-free experience. Nintendo likely has internal tools which do this in a relatively reasonable and user friendly way, with the major caveat that it relies on a QA stage for production viability. The complexity is just too high to not have that safety net, so turning users loose on it would just make the experience too unstable to be viable.
Give me an F-zero 99 + Mode7 Mario Kart Mario Maker game. Simple 2D maps.
They already did it as a minigame that nobody cared about in the Link’s Awakening remake.
It also wasn’t well done. Specifically because solving a Zelda dungeon requires solving a puzzle. The dungeon builder they let you make was just “beat all the rooms” which isn’t fun.
To follow the traditional formula you need explore the dungeon and run into obstacles. Then you get the dungeon item. Now you return and unlock new rooms. It usually starts with obvious/easy uses of the item, then more complicated.
Except they gave up on that for botw/TOTK, there really aren’t any large puzzles in zelda games anymore.
I always said botw is an OK game, but it’s a shit zelda game, I might not have hated it if I didn’t go into it expecting a zelda game
I see where you’re coming from, and at one point I may have even agreed with you, but not anymore.
BOTW & TOTK are VERY different Zelda games, but they are Zelda games.
The biggest difference is that these games aren’t linear, even more so than most Zelda games.
Let’s look at Link Between Worlds. You can do many of the dungeons in that game in any order. You receive the dungeon item outside of the dungeon and as long as you have it, you can complete the dungeon that requires it.
Or let’s look at Ocarina of Time. While the intention is that you beat the forest temple and then the fire temple, you can actually do them in either order. The game will certainly take you on the path to the forest temple first, but it isn’t required.
BOTW and TOTK are definitely in a new class of Zelda games, in the same way you can look at and compare 2D and 3D Zelda games. You can compare Link’s Awakening and Minish Cap. It’s difficult to compare Link to the Past and Twilight Princess. It’s difficult to compare Wind Waker and BOTW. They are all Zelda games, so you can do it, but it’s difficult.
I mean, at the end of the day Nintendo gets to decide if they’re Zelda games or not. However, my issue with them is that they basically just feel like ubisoft open world games now. Since you’re given everything at the start their is no progression to the puzzles, the “dungeons” feel small and soulless.
Its not so much that they aren’t “Zelda” games, it’s that I think they deliver a more watered down experience. I think without the “Zelda” title these games would be reviewed very differently, and I personally believe that Immortals Fenyx Rising was a better game than BOTW or TOTK.
I argue that the feel of BotW is a return to Zelda origins. It’s the most any game has felt like the original Zelda.
There original Zelda game was a game about exploring a giant over world to find it’s secrets. The dungeons weren’t puzzle filled, they were essentially just combat challenges.
… It’s that feeling that you are setting out on a difficult journey of exploration across a giant world with no support.
Every Zelda game since the original has felt smaller in comparison because the role of the over world got shrunk to just a thing to connect dungeons.
My favorite is AlttP which I think has the best balance between dungeons and over world exploration, but I prefer over world to modern dungeons we got in skyward sword and such.
So BOTW changed it up, for them the key item was manipulating the dungeon.
In TOTK it actually went more back to the basics and the key item was the new ability.
They only had 4 main dungeons each, but otherwise it was still a puzzle dungeon. Where they make up for the lack of dungeons is by having a hundred plus shrines. BOTW leaned more towards your core abilities, but also had some padding with tests of strength. TOTK leaned more towards construction, which gave them a lot more variety.
And yes, to clarify, drive a pre built car to the end of the room, is a puzzle. Remember even some classic puzzles are as simple as, move a box on to a switch.
