Friday, February 22, 2019

Link's Awakening Remake: Dungeon Room Transitions?

One of the nice aspects of the Link's Awakening remake is that we get to experience a seamless Koholint without any screen transitions, at least from the looks of it so far.

This won't be the case for dungeons, however, where so far we've seen two enclosed rooms. One in Level 3, the Key Cavern:


And the mini boss chamber in the Tail Cave:


Those are all shut off by doors, either locked with a key or shut automatically. And in the original game these were two of many rooms in the size of the GameBoy screen, which follows the dungeon design of the first The Legend of Zelda game on the NES, where one room always equals one screen.

Not every room in Link's Awakening was like that and the trailer also gave us a glimpse at one of the side scrolling sections:


On the GameBoy this used to be two "rooms" with a screen transition at the center. In the remake, however, it's one long tunnel, where it scroll seamlessly.

That's a real difference and this theoretically could apply to all dungeon rooms that are openly connected. The six rooms around the Nightmare Key at the center of the Tail Cave, for example, could be displayed as one big room. A majority of Level 4, the Angler Tunnel, could be arranged as one giant room as well. Also, the individual floors of the Eagle's Tower could work without transitions for the most part, where this would feel like the dungeons in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.

Of course the have to be careful not give away hidden rooms and other secrets, but that's probably why we're still getting the small, isolated rooms as well.

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