This is a entry in my "Quick-Write" series. Basically, just some minor thoughts quickly thrown into a blog entry as a kind of progress update on how I'm doing.

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Anyone familiar to Creative Theory on RRU or the Skype chats would know that Jamesster's been doing a lot of LoZ stuff recently. He found that brilliant essay, and recently he's been playing the first game for numerous reasons. As I'm sure anybody from RRU knows, once one popular member does something, it quickly becomes infectious and everyone does the same thing, and I got swept into finally playing LoZ for the first time.

Originally I was saving it for some kind of video series called "McJobless does X for the first time", but I doubt that'll ever come into fruition, so I decided that, with my newly founded game observation tools, I'd crack open LoZ and see what kind of good old school gaming is.

Why wasn't I born in the 70s?

I grew up as a Playstation fanatic, in an era where 3D was finally mass-market, and it looked like 2D games would fade out. Thankfully due to indie developers and mobile gaming, that hasn't occurred, but a much younger, s***tier me would of wished it had. The reason, you ask? A much younger me didn't know about mechanics. Didn't understand what made the game a game. Didn't get that, behind the façade of polygons and music, there's a beating heart which many, MANY 3D games simply lack in their desperate attempt to try cash-in on gamers looking for "next-gen graphics" and what else lies in the "concept" of a game.

The Legend of Zelda came from a simpler time. Maybe not literally, considering how difficult it still was at the time to make individual bits move on the screen, but overall lacking the high complexities of today's insane market. It was a time when games weren't produced to be interactive movie, but instead to actually bring you into that adventure, and make you feel like the hero. Gamers of that day and era could look past the relatively simple graphics, and see a whole world for them to conquer and save.

I'm going to stop with the sugar-coating at this point, and get to the real meat of this discussion. My experience in the first 30 minutes of gameplay. And, because this is a quick-write, and not a full entry, I'm going to do it dot-point style, which makes it a little easier on all of us.

• The game's opening midi sequence was epic, despite its subtle midi soundtrack. The story and objective were clear from the start, and you even got a great look at all the tools and items to find on your quest.
  
• Beginning the game, there was no cutscenes to faff about with, no boundaries, no forced tutorials. You were given a world to explore. If you didn't pay attention to the opening, that's your fault. That made the world immediately feel free.
  
• Loading each new area (which I shall now call "Rooms", based on how LucasArts used to name their sections of point-and-click adventure games) was a very simple, beautiful scroll from the previous room to the next. There was no giant loading screen, and no need for complex dynamic loading systems. It was all very simplistic and yet fancy.
  
• The game was clever enough to record which enemies you killed, and which you didn't, meaning when you exit and return to a room, it doesn't respawn enemies you've already dealt with. This made the world feel real. I wasn't fighting against an infinite amount of AI controlled by game designer scripts; each enemy was planned, and while their spawn location was randomised, I felt like I was having an effect on the world.
  
• When you start the game, you had to retrieve the sword from a cave. This was clever, because, without railroading the player, it gave them a subtle lesson that caves contain secrets and important quest-related-items/knowledge. Furthermore, although things may change in the road ahead (according to Jamesster), I never found myself confuse on any of the items in my possession. It sometimes took a little time to finally realise a concept, but then I felt clever for working it out. I wasn't having a billion information popups shoved in my face, telling me about an obvious concept.
  
• The sword has a special ability; you throw it when you have full health. This was very clever, and really made me have to think carefully about positioning, since I never wanted to lose that special ability. When I did lose health, I had to think even more carefully about how I would retrieve the health to gain that special ability; either go into melee combat to get a heart/fairy and risk enemies charging me down, or try and find one of the hidden fairy ponds.
  
• On that, after gaining another heart (increasing maximum health), when you die and spawn again or use a fairy on low health, you only start with 3 hearts. This didn't feel like punishment, but rather extra challenge; now, if I wanted to use my special sword ability, I would have to work harder to obtain it. This meant that the game was giving me a trade-off; by gaining "experience", it would be harder for me to obtain and use my abilities.
  
• When you die, the game doesn't reset you to a checkpoint like you're some baby having a tantrum. It allows you to keep everything you earned, but places you back at the start of the overworld/dungeon. This is okay, because I never felt frustrated or angry. I always felt as though, if I did slightly better, I would completely own this entire level. This death punishes you by removing your progress (as far as enemies are concerned), but that punishment really isn't too harsh in the long run.
  
• After you acquire them, arrows are infinite in supply. However, you must pay one rupee for every arrow you use. Suddenly, there was a new challenge; arrows are extremely powerful and kill those b****** water things instantly, but they cost the money I need to upgrade Link. This trade-off made me very careful about how I used my extra tools.
  
• Dungeons really changed up gameplay, with their slightly different layout, and the fact that, unlike the overworld (which required you to make your own map if you want to memorise where everything is), looking carefully through each dungeon will find you the map, compass and/or hint. Suddenly, I felt more compelled to explore these areas and find everything I could, especially after the first dungeon gave me the bow, heart upgrade, boomerang, more bombs AND a piece of the Triforce.
  
• Bombs were interesting, because the game made me compelled to use them. You could find secret entrances blowing walls up with them, and they were pretty devastating against groups of enemies, which is most of the areas in LoZ. Of course, they were limited, so effectively using them was a careful decision process I had to make.
  
• The music never got tiring or boring. It's a theme I could carry to my grave. It made me feel like a hero.
  

I'm sure there's a lot more I'm missing that I haven't written about. For now, I don't want to cover experience loops, skill trees or any of that until I've finished the entire game.

Anyways, thank you based Jamesster for getting me into this. At the same time, curse you, because I doubt I'll be able to put it down.