Brilliance in Level Design: Skyward Sword’s Ancient Cistern
Posted on February 15 2015 by Theodore Homdrom
Hello everyone! For those who don’t know, this article is a continuation of a series about level design in
Zelda games. I’ll be looking at every single dungeon in: Link’s Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and A Link Between Worlds, seeking to find which dungeons are examples of excellent level design, and then bringing that analysis to you fine folks.
It’s taken me quite a while to get this article out. Part of that is my methodology for writing this article series: I play through the games, dungeon by dungeon, gathering my thoughts on the dungeon (or recording the playthroughs when I can) and then thinking whether or not that’s a great dungeon for this series. I actually thought I would use the
Lanayru Mining Facility, but even though I still like the dungeon, it had some tedious gameplay mechanics that dock a few points from its otherwise delightful design.
Today we’ll be looking at a frequently lauded dungeon from
Skyward Sword: the Ancient Cistern. This dungeon constantly finds its way onto top ten dungeons lists, but all I ever hear this dungeon praised for are two things:
- The theming (Heaven and Hell, Buddhist symbolism, etc.)
- The boss fight (Koloktos)
After that, I hear nearly nothing about the actual design of the level itself. So I won’t be talking much – well, at all, really – about the spiritual themes and whatnot present in the Ancient Cistern. Because, quite honestly, this dungeon would be a fantastic example of exquisite level design without any of that symbolism. Let’s dive in, shall we?
The Opening
The Ancient Cistern opens up in grand fashion, with a massive watery central hub around a giant golden statue. There are walkways along the edges, lily pads to jump across, and a whole bunch of water to swim in, but no clear direction of where to go.
It’s much like
Ocarina of Time‘s Water Temple in that regard, or many of the often derided water-based dungeons in Zelda titles. However, this gives the player time to explore and spend some more time swimming with the recently acquired Water Dragon’s Scale. Underwater, two giant hands hold silver rupees, and spin-dashing across them nets the player a whopping one hundred rupees each, but also causes the hands to close.
A curious development, right? Further examination shows the backs of the hands have symbols. Similar symbols are found by swimming around to the back of the statue. But what could these symbols mean? Entering the statue’s interior doesn’t yield much. Running along the walkways leads to a door going through a room, but the door at the end of the room is locked with a strange mechanism. A pedestal next to the door hints at a secret pattern, but what could it be?
This process of player discovery (
Fi doesn’t give you any clues of how to solve it!) is brilliant. Trial-and-error will get you through the strange rotating lock; I’ll admit, my first time through this dungeon a year ago, I passed by trial-and-error (a lot of error). However, heading back out into the statue room, there’s another pedestal to be found next to the statue, and it reveals the secret pattern. Those symbols found on the backs of the statue’s hands and other places? Those show the way to strike the rotating lock to proceed.
It’s a fun way of exploring the main area and gives the player a chance to take their time, put clues together, and deduce a solution. In an era of
Zelda titles often ridiculed for holding the player’s hands too often, this is a welcome breath of fresh air.
Indiana Jones and the Ancient Cistern?
The Ancient Cistern’s item is the
Whip, and what a brilliant tool it is. The entire dungeon is designed around using the Whip in many different manners, evoking memories of a famous treasure hunter. Before we get into its uses, though, I want to touch on the mini-boss before it: the Stalmaster.
This mini-boss does a great job emphasizing
Skyward Sword‘s love it or hate it motion control swordplay. Using four different weapons and being able to block from three directions at once (and sometimes four!), the player will have to use nearly every type of sword slash available. Both types of vertical slashes, both directions of horizontal slashes, and the stab attack are all used to excellent effect against the Stalmaster. For those like me who enjoy the sword combat in this game, this fight is a really exciting and enjoyable battle. As the Stalmaster becomes weaker, he switches his blocking positions more often and attacks more frequently, forcing the player to up their game as well. And once this foe is defeated, the Whip is acquired, and it has a ton of different uses.
The Whip’s most obvious use is swinging across chasms. It’s not all that different from the
Grappling Hook’s use in Wind Waker. But this is no simple Grappling Hook clone, oh no. The Whip can do what the Grappling Hook does, but because of the addition of Wii Motion Plus, it can also be used to flick switches back and forth and pull bird monsters out of the sky! The motion controls add to the feel of using the whip as well, pulling you into the game and making you feel more like you’re actually using a whip.
I love the way this item is implemented in the dungeon. It feels seamless to go from swinging across a gap, to grabbing and flicking a switch one way, to ripping a key off of a
Bokoblin guard. There’s even a fun swinging puzzle where the player has to guide their swinging movement to jump onto a pull-down switch to open a gate. There are also lily pads throughout the dungeon. Link can fall onto them to flip them, but if their bottom stem is sticking up out of the water, the Whip has to be used to flip it back to a platform.
It may have simple uses (swinging, grappling certain enemies, activating switches), but the way in which the Whip is used makes it exciting, fun, and intuitively integrated into the level design.
Plus, you have to add points for an item that makes you feel like Indiana Jones. And it isn’t just the item that makes you feel like Indiana Jones! The dungeon itself has a sort of “treasure hunter” vibe to it. The Ancient Cistern is much more about puzzle-solving and traversing the area than combat. Rotating cylinders covered in vines provide exciting climbing scenarios. The aforementioned lily pads are all about puzzle-solving; they function as platforms to jump across, but sometimes they need to be flipped in order to reveal passages to swim through.
The dichotomy between the upper, golden level filled with light, and the underground, dark, spooky portions of the level work great for this type of theming as well. Above, the dungeon feels like a palace, a place full of treasure. Below, it’s rotted, dank, dark, probably smells bad, and is full of bats, reanimated corpses, and deadly poisonous water. Above, you feel relaxed, but below, you feel the tension, the danger, the claustrophobia. Maybe it’s just me, but the Ancient Cistern felt like it could have come straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. And that’s worth tons of points in my book.
When Automatons Attack
One reason I didn’t touch on the Buddhism themes of the Ancient Cistern is because I just don’t feel it. I know that was the intent of the developers, but like I said, this dungeon really feels to me like a treasure hunting expedition, not a spiritual quest of enlightenment or whatever.
However, the other part of the Ancient Cistern that is constantly lauded – the boss battle – is something I cannot ignore. This boss battle
rocks. I’m a big fan of all of the boss battles in Skyward Sword (except The Imprisoned… meh), but Koloktos is easily one of the very best.
Koloktos really goes all-out against you. I like aggressive bosses, because they really challenge you to learn their attack patterns and respond, rather than just use the dungeon item to stun them, then hack away with your sword. Yes, Koloktos still gets “stunned” through use of the Whip, but the process through which this happens is sheer brilliance.
Koloktos has a ton of different attacks, and two different forms. His (her? Its? Whatever) first form is stuck in the center of the room. Giant hands will try and smash you, and he’ll throw boomerang axes (can Link get some of those in the next game?) at you if you keep too much of a distance. All of the arms have joints, however, and yanking on these joints with the Whip will disassemble them in raucous fashion, eventually leaving Koloktos armless and open to attack.
After a few rounds of this, however, Koloktos decides he’s had enough. He emerges on legs and pulls out six swords! Now it’s on. The ancient automaton will then pursue you around the room, slashing with his swords in multiple different patterns. He can also summon cursed Bokoblins, which actually serves to be more hilarious than anything else, because you can get him to destroy the cursed ‘blins for you.
This second form is even more exciting because you don’t stun him without getting aggressive yourself. Thing is, he’s constantly on the attack, so it takes a combination of guts and timing to find an opening. By disassembling Koloktos’ arms now, he’ll drop his swords, which Link can pick up and use against him, a la
Wind Waker. Evade his attacks and rush in close to hack off his limbs, then smash away at the core with a sword bigger than Link is tall!
It’s a memorable and challenging boss fight to cap off an impressive dungeon. It truly feels like the
Heart Container and upgrade to the Goddess Sword are earned through wits and combat prowess. That may be my love of Skyward Sword talking, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt uncommonly rewarded through this particular victory.
Conclusion
For those curious about what makes the points above marks for “brilliance” in level design, here’s sort of how I look at the levels, in a series of questions I ask as I play through these dungeons:
- Is the dungeon layout intuitive? (i.e. will the player get unnecessarily lost or confused because of poor level design?)
- Does the dungeon teach the player?
- How does it match up with the game as a whole?
Great levels, in my opinion, are fair. Unnecessary difficulty, like needing to memorize the dungeon to avoid deaths, are not okay in my book. They should also teach the player, introducing new concepts in controlled environments, but then combining them in interesting ways later on or placing them in more dangerous environments to challenge the player to expand on what they’ve learned. They should also fit within the themes and progression of the game, building on what has come before that point, and preparing the player for what comes next.
The Ancient Cistern is a delightful treasure-hunting excursion (seriously, I can’t get behind the whole Buddhism thing – this is totally an Indiana Jones level, and I love it). The Whip is a fantastic item, but items alone don’t make the dungeon. It’s about how they’re implemented into the puzzles and exploration, and the Whip is so intuitively integrated into nearly every facet of the dungeon and boss fight, it’s impossible to ignore. Cap it off with one of the best boss fights the series has ever seen (#opinions), and you’ve got yourself one heck of a dungeon.
What are your favorite
Zelda dungeons? And what did you think of the Ancient Cistern? Agree or disagree, leave your comments below!
Previous dungeons analyzed:
