An eventful dungeon crawl

The Wind Temple is well suited to all of its dirt and trees. It's a low down place that takes advantage of your progressing through it. When Makar had sprouted all the requisite trees and the door into the main chamber opened, I balked at the brief scene in which he's surrounded by Floormasters, fearing the need to back track to the first room. I went ahead anyway, convinced that I could get the hookshot without him.

However, as it happened, Makar had just been moved into the main chamber, locked behind a giant stone statue. So I went on, and had my conviction confirmed. The hookshot was handily found and won, and Makar was as good as freed.

But this in-dungeon event is a solid example of what the Zelda team claims to be trying to do with the series. When we first had word of the game that would become Skyward Sword, making the overworld and dungeons more seamless was one of the major things that they were trying to achieve. In some small way, they did it here.

Dungeons are, after all, a space in a video game where players get to try their skills against the game's challenges. They have to use what they have with/around them to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and move forward. More often than not, these are solitary affairs, any accompanying characters basically becoming an advanced sort of box. You can drop them on switches, move them about, maybe use their special ability to solve puzzles, but they don't necessarily get much personality outside of their dialogue and appearance.

However, putting events, actual things that happen because x, y, and/or z have happened (or are "True," or are present), in dungeons changes their feel all together. It allows the other characters in the dungeon (traditionally populated only with monsters) to actually interact with the player as characters and not just another tool to be used.

In the briefest terms, it takes the dungeon experience (where the usual interaction is with enemies and involves putting your weapons through them) and adds a more nuanced interaction. Adding this interaction is what can make the dungeon/overworld split more seamless because it makes the two areas seem more alike, rather than each being especially set aside for different purposes. Dungeons thus have the potential to become bustling places of character and story development rather than being the thing that players work through to get to the next social area where story and plot can develop.

Hopefully we see this sort of seamlessness fully implemented in Zelda Wii U.