General Zelda Boss+Temple Hybrid

[RedLink]

As much as I hate God of War (and trust me, that hate is pretty big), one thing I will commend about it was the Chronos fight, which was both a level and a boss fight in one.

My question to you is this- since we always follow this pattern of temple to boss (with minibosses in-between of course), what would you think of a temple that WAS the boss? I have no idea how this would be implemented of course, but just a thought is all.

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

I'm assuming you mean something like Megaleg from Super Mario Galaxy? I dunno, it's not really Zelda. Maybe if done right, but I think it would end up making the 'dungeon' too short. As an overworld boss, however, it could end up being really cool. But as a dungeon, I can't really see it happening.

 

[Shadsie]

I think that could be a cool idea. The only thing I personally (remember) seeing in a game that comes close is the final Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. The first part of the puzzle is gettinng up to him without being blasted, but once you get up to him, you start climing - and he is a giant tower. The beast is this gently swaying marvel of archetecture that must be climbed until you get to his upper portions. There are walls, ledges, even iron railings.

I found a video with a quick YouTube search. It's a little dark, but the game on PS2 is that way... You get to see the "climb the boss tower" bit at just about the 3:54 mark. Spoilers for parts of the end of the game, of course.

[video=youtube;VFXlG8cHH6g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFXlG8cHH6g[/video]


For a Legend of Zelda boss/level hybrid, however, I can imagine something a little more like being inside Jabu-Jabu... but not as organic. I can see Link being inside a standard temple, stone walls and everything, and things happening around him that are... suspicious... like, little things that tip one off to the place being a Genus Loci. Torches he just lit going out, vines growing from the walls and trying to get him...

Then, he gets to the Boss Room. Suprise! Nothing is there! You go to a mysterious key, or rusted sword stuck in stone, or some other mysterious thing and you investigate. Suddenly, the temple begins moving! As the walls shake all around you, you get a shot of the temple becoming a giant turtle or something! A living head pops out of the front of it, its neck accessible to you from the Boss Room. Now it's time to ride the lightning... to make it not too much like the game referenced above and more like Zelda, maybe the living temple has chains as part of its archetecture, these chains that you didn't think much of and previously had to cut/unbind to get to various rooms of the temple. Way to break it, hero. Now your task is to run around on the moving temple (headed straight for Kakariko Village! Oh, noes!) and re-bind the chains to send the monster back to sleep.

Something like that.

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

For a Legend of Zelda boss/level hybrid, however, I can imagine something a little more like being inside Jabu-Jabu... but not as organic. I can see Link being inside a standard temple, stone walls and everything, and things happening around him that are... suspicious... like, little things that tip one off to the place being a Genus Loci.

Ya know, I never even thought of Jabu-Jabu. Now reading your post leads me to realize just how awesome this concept could be!

 

[BoxTar]

It could work. I could imagine Nintendo pulling such a thing off.

It could be that the entrance looks like a giant face, kinda like in SS with that giant sand...alligator..thing. I know that wasn't a dungeon, but it could be something like that. You're going through it, la-di-da, nothing crazy, when suddenly, you hit a complex switch or solve some sort of puzzle involving gears, generators, or other types of energy, thinking it opens a door when SURPRISE! The "entrance" begins to lift and the boss gets up and walks around. It changes the physics and dynamics of the entire dungeon. Now the second half must be spent trying to get to the top of the beast, where the head entrance was, or possibly to the center, whichever makes more sense. Things are shifting around, you get tossed back and forth once in a while, all heck breaks loose! When you get to the destination, you must fight some underlings, but then, a giant baddie (boss, of course) comes at you, and you must defeat it! It holds most of the creatures power. I can imagine a monster, mostly mechanical or organic, like a machine with wires or a plant with vines and roots, hooked up to the inside of the entire dungeon. Once you defeat it, the machine begins to fall apart and you only have so much time to get out before it collapses into the earth. Essentially, you have fought the dungeon itself in several ways, both environmentally and enemy-wise.

That, to me, would be an exciting dungeon. Even if something like that has been done before, I believe Nintendo could twist it in such a way that its brand new and unexpected. I'd love to see it one day. A man can dream...

 

[Justac00lguy]

I remember a thread a while back that was titled Create your own Boss, an idea struck me about a Temple/Dungeon altering it's structure and actually becoming a full on boss.

At first the dungeon could look static and to the normal eye it just looks like a normal external structure. When traversing inside we get to see that the dungeon is ever changing and after a set period of time the dungeon alters it's shape changing the general structure. This idea of a dungeon which constantly moves and changes will give a new dynamic and make it extremely hard to traverse and it will make for some unique puzzle designs.

By the end of it we come across the Boss Key and open a door however the key was simply the key to unlocking the boss from its static position and suddenly the dungeon seemingly starts the collapse and we have to quickly exit the dungeon before being crushed. This concept would certainly add a sense of action and pace to the gameplay, which in my opinion is needed. Then finally we would exit the dungeon only to find details that the dungeon wasn't collapsing as such but instead it was transforming into an unstoppable Colossus similar to what Shadsie said.

 

[RedLink]

I think that could be a cool idea. The only thing I personally (remember) seeing in a game that comes close is the final Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. The first part of the puzzle is gettinng up to him without being blasted, but once you get up to him, you start climing - and he is a giant tower. The beast is this gently swaying marvel of archetecture that must be climbed until you get to his upper portions. There are walls, ledges, even iron railings.

I found a video with a quick YouTube search. It's a little dark, but the game on PS2 is that way... You get to see the "climb the boss tower" bit at just about the 3:54 mark. Spoilers for parts of the end of the game, of course.

[video=youtube;VFXlG8cHH6g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFXlG8cHH6g[/video]


For a Legend of Zelda boss/level hybrid, however, I can imagine something a little more like being inside Jabu-Jabu... but not as organic. I can see Link being inside a standard temple, stone walls and everything, and things happening around him that are... suspicious... like, little things that tip one off to the place being a Genus Loci. Torches he just lit going out, vines growing from the walls and trying to get him...

Then, he gets to the Boss Room. Suprise! Nothing is there! You go to a mysterious key, or rusted sword stuck in stone, or some other mysterious thing and you investigate. Suddenly, the temple begins moving! As the walls shake all around you, you get a shot of the temple becoming a giant turtle or something! A living head pops out of the front of it, its neck accessible to you from the Boss Room. Now it's time to ride the lightning... to make it not too much like the game referenced above and more like Zelda, maybe the living temple has chains as part of its archetecture, these chains that you didn't think much of and previously had to cut/unbind to get to various rooms of the temple. Way to break it, hero. Now your task is to run around on the moving temple (headed straight for Kakariko Village! Oh, noes!) and re-bind the chains to send the monster back to sleep.

Something like that.

Oh man, Shadow of the Colossus. Good times, good times.

And I can't believe I forgot about that boss from it. Of course, a more in-depth version, but definitely it could serve as the blueprint for a larger plan.

 

[Hylian_Monolith]

I came to this thread with one idea, read what Shadsie had to say, and suddenly... boom. Idea idea idea idea idea

This is entirely possible, and I'd love to see this type of concept brought into real-time. If you pull certain themes form past temples that flopped--say, the Palace of Twilight, Jabu-Jabu, City in the Sky, and perhaps the Tower of Spirits, and some ideas form mini-dungeons such as the Gerudo Training Center(whatever it's called, that place with the ice arrows) or the harsh complexity of a Water temple, put the blender on high speed, and make an incredibly cruel dungeon you won't want to set foot in.

Perhaps you could draw on the Colossus in Shadsie's post, and know that the dungeon IS the boss form the start. Then get the shock of your life when the goliath dragonlike beast changes from armored beast to crypt and joins with the stone ruins of an ancient place--makes me think of the Gerudo Valley after OoT. So you enter the crypt under the assumption that you'll find it inside, without knowing the truth, and slowly but surely get hints that the creature has somehow BECOME the broken temple. You find strange, fleshy-pink walls everywhere, surrounded by deadly, bladed traps that get harder and harder as you circle through the spiraling corridors and reach a pulsing, writhing mass of evil aura--the monster's heart. It is here that the true boss battle begins--the darn thing takes flight with you still inside it, reordering the dungeon's puzzles and eradicating your precious shortcuts. You lose soemthing really important--a crucial item or something--and have to redo it without it, knowing that to fall through the temple means to hit the ground hard and ahve to redo that phase, and that to stay too long is to be digested.

Boom. Dungeon.

Yes, I want to see this happen.

Also? Holy [CENSORED] I HAVE to play Shadow of the Colossus! I know how it ENDS and I've never played it!

 

[Shadsie]

I came to this thread with one idea, read what Shadsie had to say, and suddenly... boom. Idea idea idea idea idea

This is entirely possible, and I'd love to see this type of concept brought into real-time. If you pull certain themes form past temples that flopped--say, the Palace of Twilight, Jabu-Jabu, City in the Sky, and perhaps the Tower of Spirits, and some ideas form mini-dungeons such as the Gerudo Training Center(whatever it's called, that place with the ice arrows) or the harsh complexity of a Water temple, put the blender on high speed, and make an incredibly cruel dungeon you won't want to set foot in.

Perhaps you could draw on the Colossus in Shadsie's post, and know that the dungeon IS the boss form the start. Then get the shock of your life when the goliath dragonlike beast changes from armored beast to crypt and joins with the stone ruins of an ancient place--makes me think of the Gerudo Valley after OoT. So you enter the crypt under the assumption that you'll find it inside, without knowing the truth, and slowly but surely get hints that the creature has somehow BECOME the broken temple. You find strange, fleshy-pink walls everywhere, surrounded by deadly, bladed traps that get harder and harder as you circle through the spiraling corridors and reach a pulsing, writhing mass of evil aura--the monster's heart. It is here that the true boss battle begins--the darn thing takes flight with you still inside it, reordering the dungeon's puzzles and eradicating your precious shortcuts. You lose soemthing really important--a crucial item or something--and have to redo it without it, knowing that to fall through the temple means to hit the ground hard and ahve to redo that phase, and that to stay too long is to be digested.

Boom. Dungeon.

Yes, I want to see this happen.

Also? Holy [CENSORED] I HAVE to play Shadow of the Colossus! I know how it ENDS and I've never played it!

Like I said, there's a lot of ways to play with a Genus Loci (if I've gotten my trope right, "living location," "intelligent place.")

As for SotC, you MUST. Sometime after I played that game... I decided that it surpassed even any single Zelda game for me. It is my very favorite videogame. The atmoshphere, the themes... the sheer amazing visuals... I mean, best bosses ever! The only real drawbacks I find is that some of the art/landscape gets jaggy/blinky (in the PS2 version, dunno if that was cleaned up for the HD version) and the fact that once you've played the game through, subsequent playthroughs are easy. Much of the difficulty of the game is figuring out just where the weak spots on the Colossi are and how to get to them. Once you know that, the challenge is gone. Even Hard Mode, where they give you extra weak points and make the Colossi more homicidal, it's like... it's never as awesome as the first time. The incintive for secondary playthroughs is fun, extra weapons, but they become kind of beside the point since you cannot access them until you've beaten the game once already. I took to the mini-quest of "gain enough stamina to climb the big central tower to reach the secret garden" - which took a couple of playtrhoughs to build to, but then, not much is there, really.

It ends up being a game that's awesome the first time, then later on, played for atmosphere rather than challenge.

 

[Hylian_Monolith]

Like I said, there's a lot of ways to play with a Genus Loci (if I've gotten my trope right, "living location," "intelligent place.")

As for SotC, you MUST. Sometime after I played that game... I decided that it surpassed even any single Zelda game for me. It is my very favorite videogame. The atmoshphere, the themes... the sheer amazing visuals... I mean, best bosses ever! The only real drawbacks I find is that some of the art/landscape gets jaggy/blinky (in the PS2 version, dunno if that was cleaned up for the HD version) and the fact that once you've played the game through, subsequent playthroughs are easy. Much of the difficulty of the game is figuring out just where the weak spots on the Colossi are and how to get to them. Once you know that, the challenge is gone. Even Hard Mode, where they give you extra weak points and make the Colossi more homicidal, it's like... it's never as awesome as the first time. The incintive for secondary playthroughs is fun, extra weapons, but they become kind of beside the point since you cannot access them until you've beaten the game once already. I took to the mini-quest of "gain enough stamina to climb the big central tower to reach the secret garden" - which took a couple of playtrhoughs to build to, but then, not much is there, really.

It ends up being a game that's awesome the first time, then later on, played for atmosphere rather than challenge.

Naturally. There are countless ways it can be done--I just wanted to share my take. there are countless ways to do everything.

And now I really have to-four or five recommendations since I decided to, lol. I'll do that.

 

[LittleGumball]

This idea kind of reminds me of the Scarecrow periods from Batman: Arkham Asylum, how Batman has to avoid Scarecrow's gaze while jumping around platforms.

 

[Spirit]

I think that could be a cool idea. The only thing I personally (remember) seeing in a game that comes close is the final Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. The first part of the puzzle is gettinng up to him without being blasted, but once you get up to him, you start climing - and he is a giant tower. The beast is this gently swaying marvel of archetecture that must be climbed until you get to his upper portions. There are walls, ledges, even iron railings.

I found a video with a quick YouTube search. It's a little dark, but the game on PS2 is that way... You get to see the "climb the boss tower" bit at just about the 3:54 mark. Spoilers for parts of the end of the game, of course.

[video=youtube;VFXlG8cHH6g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFXlG8cHH6g[/video]


For a Legend of Zelda boss/level hybrid, however, I can imagine something a little more like being inside Jabu-Jabu... but not as organic. I can see Link being inside a standard temple, stone walls and everything, and things happening around him that are... suspicious... like, little things that tip one off to the place being a Genus Loci. Torches he just lit going out, vines growing from the walls and trying to get him...

Then, he gets to the Boss Room. Suprise! Nothing is there! You go to a mysterious key, or rusted sword stuck in stone, or some other mysterious thing and you investigate. Suddenly, the temple begins moving! As the walls shake all around you, you get a shot of the temple becoming a giant turtle or something! A living head pops out of the front of it, its neck accessible to you from the Boss Room. Now it's time to ride the lightning... to make it not too much like the game referenced above and more like Zelda, maybe the living temple has chains as part of its archetecture, these chains that you didn't think much of and previously had to cut/unbind to get to various rooms of the temple. Way to break it, hero. Now your task is to run around on the moving temple (headed straight for Kakariko Village! Oh, noes!) and re-bind the chains to send the monster back to sleep.

Something like that.

Dammit shadsie!

but yes, what she so perfectly said.