Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURe 2.2
in
Half-Life 2
the player
arrives in the game by
train but never leaves
the rails.
example:
The Legend of Zelda
Almost all the games and levels in the
Legend of Zelda
series are good examples
of games of progression. To give a detailed example of how progression works in
games, let's examine the Forest Temple level in
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
.
In this level, the player, controlling the game's main character Link, sets out to
rescue eight monkeys from an evil presence that has infested an old temple in
the forest. The mission consists of the player freeing eight monkeys, defeating the
mini-boss (the misguided monkey king Ook), and finding and mastering the “gale
boomerang” before finally defeating the level boss (the Twilit Parasite Diababa).
Figure 2.3
displays the Forest Temple level map.
Figure 2.4
summarizes the player's
tasks and their interrelation in a graph. To reach the goal, Link needs to confront
the level boss in a final fight. To get to that fight, Link must find a key and rescue
four monkeys, for which he needs the gale boomerang, for which he needs to defeat
the monkey king, and so on. Some tasks can be executed in a different order: It does
not really matter in what order Link liberates the monkeys. Other tasks are optional
but lead to useful rewards.
