Chapter 150: Hidden Paths

By this point, Miyazaki had already realized that the entire map was one enormous open-world sandbox, and to make a world this large run on an 8-bit console, Castlevania adopted almost the exact same technique as The Legend of Zelda.

The massive world was divided into a series of self-contained rooms, allowing the game to load only a relatively small section of the map at a time.

Miyazaki looked at the map screen.

The long corridor was divided into several rooms by cyan-colored walls. It seemed that the scene transitions and the doors he'd been passing through corresponded to those cyan sections.

If that was the case, Miyazaki made a rough estimate based on the size of the current room.

The map in Castlevania was enormous. The distance he'd painstakingly traversed earlier accounted for just a little over 2% of the entire world.

"Wait... so that boss just now... was only the beginner tutorial enemy?!"

What kind of tutorial enemy took several complete restarts just to beat?! Wasn't a tutorial supposed to teach players the controls?

"Phew..."

Miyazaki took a moment to calm himself before continuing his journey. Just after passing through the boss room, another new item appeared before him.

Area Map

A thought suddenly occurred to Miyazaki, and he immediately opened the map again.

Just as he'd expected, the map, which had previously displayed only the areas he'd personally explored now revealed a large expanse of gray territory. This was clearly the information provided by the map item.

"Huh... wait a second?"

Instead of clearing things up, the map only made him even more confused.

There were still several areas along the route he'd already traveled that he had never actually reached. He knew exactly where they were, they had to be those unreachable spots on the various branching paths.

Compared to players like Miyazaki, who hadn't played many games before, veteran players familiar with GAMENOVA's previous hit, The Legend of Zelda, found Castlevania surprisingly familiar.

Aside from the brutally high difficulty, which certainly tested their patience, the map design itself posed very little confusion.

....

In New Mexico, inside an arcade.

The neighborhood king of the kids, Hunter, sat in front of a demo cabinet with several friends, trying out GAMENOVA's newest game.

"Ha! Such a classic ability-lock design. I remember running into this several times in The Legend of Zelda."

Hunter grinned and turned toward his new friend, Vincent.

"Hey, Vincent. Want to make a bet? Let's see how long it'll take before we get the ability to jump up to that branching path."

"Huh?... Oh! I get it. Like Link's bombs, right? You have to obtain a certain ability before you can get through."

Vincent nodded, immediately understanding what Hunter meant. The Legend of Zelda had featured plenty of ability locks, and by now, every gaming magazine had analyzed the concept to death.

Hidden caves that could only be opened with bombs, bodies of water that required a raft to cross.

For longtime Legend of Zelda players like them, ability locks were as familiar as breathing. Using the concept in a side-scrolling 2D game, however... that seemed to be a first.

This story has been stolen from NovelPhoenix. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

As it turned out, their intuition was correct. Not long after obtaining the map, Hunter reached the end of one branching path and acquired the game's first blue soul.

[Flying Armor]

[Reduces falling speed, allowing you to jump farther.]

"Haha! What did I tell you? Now I can finally get that cloak and leather armor from the beginning!"

.....

Elsewhere, Miyazaki was having a similar realization.

Using the Flying Armor he'd just acquired, he successfully crossed the path that had previously been impossible to traverse, finally reaching an entirely new area.

The sense of discovery that washed over him in that instant was utterly intoxicating, but once the excitement subsided, a new question surfaced.

"Why?"

He looked toward the worn booklet resting on top of the TV cabinet.

The pages had become curled and creased from constant flipping, with some of them even beginning to split. It was the introductory Nova Language programming book the bookstore owner had given him.

He'd been studying video game programming for quite some time now. Because of that, he no longer experienced games solely as a player, he had also begun thinking about their underlying design.

Why did ability locks exist? Were they simply there to stop players from wandering off and force them along the route the designer intended?

Miyazaki didn't think so.

At the very least, that couldn't be the primary reason. He guided his character back along the route he'd painstakingly cleared, eventually returning to the giant skeleton's boss room.

"My character hasn't actually grown that much..."

Opening the menu, Miyazaki examined his Level 3 status screen. His character hadn't become dramatically stronger during the earlier exploration, yet the world no longer felt the same.

The swarms of bats that had once ambushed him from dark corners could now be skewered before they even reached him with a well-thrown spear. The skeleton soldiers that had previously chased him around in panic could now be eliminated effortlessly by maintaining the proper spacing.

Even the knights that threw battle axes could now be handled perfectly by timing his jumps and crouches to avoid every attack. His character hadn't become much stronger, but this world no longer felt as dangerous as it had at the beginning.

"I've become stronger..."

The existence of ability locks allowed Miyazaki to explore the world naturally and smoothly. Only after learning certain skills or acquiring certain knowledge could he enter entirely new areas.

And with every new ability he gained, his understanding of the map was fundamentally reconstructed.

Places that seemed impossible to reach might actually conceal hidden paths. Entire routes could unexpectedly loop back beneath one another until, in the end, they connected all the way back to the starting point.

The world resembled an enormous labyrinth, yet it was utterly captivating.

"Ah!" Miyazaki suddenly cried out. He finally understood what ability locks were really about.

At their core... weren't they simply another form of puzzle solving?

Why place an irresistible item on a platform the player couldn't reach? Because it was a puzzle.

A hook.

It was the game blatantly telling the player: 'You want it, huh? Then figure out how to get there.'

Wasn't that simply presenting the player with a challenge? And wasn't his entire journey of exploring the world, defeating powerful enemies, and discovering new abilities, the very process of solving that challenge?

The seemingly interconnected world itself was the hook that continually lured him onward. It was something linear games simply could not achieve.

"I need to write this down!"

Miyazaki hurriedly grabbed paper and a pen, scribbling furiously.

"Ability locks are only an abstract concept. Maybe I don't actually need to limit myself to literal 'abilities'..."

"This lock... could also be an item lock!"

His pen paused for a moment as he remembered the door in the game shop that could only be opened from the inside.

"'The door can't be opened from this side!'"

"A looping room-based map! Once the player finds the key or reaches the other side of the door, they unlock a shortcut or gain access to an entirely new area!"

"Exactly! The mechanic where monsters respawn whenever you switch rooms is brilliant too. It lets players repeatedly farm for the items they want. That's so cool! I need to learn that as well!"

"Let the player's own growth drive the game, instead of relying on character stats to steamroll it!"

"Give monsters diverse attack patterns that respond differently to player actions, making fight more exciting and preventing battles from becoming rigid memorization exercises!"

"Boss fights are the primary source of pressure. Once the battle begins, players must not be allowed to escape. That's extremely important!"

"No save point before the boss. If players die, they have to run all the way back. That greatly increases the penalty for death and encourages players to avoid dying at all costs!"

"Fragmented storytelling. Hide a grand narrative throughout the world itself!"

As Miyazaki looked over the growing list of design philosophies he'd written down, his eyes shone brighter and brighter.

This was it. Castlevania was the perfect video game he had been searching for all along.

-----------------------

Guys if you liked the chapter just leave some comments and reviews, it's fun to read them.

And if you want some extra chapters, be sure to check out my Pa-tron page, it's 60 chapters ahead and the chapters are also long so you can check it out.

p at re on . co m / NovaScribe

(Just remove all spaces and then search)