Austin School of Game Design. (2024, August 16). Breath of the Wild - (1/100) David Perry challenge [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/8nnRfkUFRVc

Summary:

This live stream marks the beginning of the "David Perry Challenge," where the host from the Austin School of Game Design plays and critically analyzes the top 100 highest-rated games to understand their design strengths, appeal, and potential improvements. The first game examined is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The streamer, recovering from illness, plays through the initial tutorial area while providing real-time commentary on various aspects: gameplay mechanics (e.g., physics-based puzzles, flexible combat, Magnesis ability, and cooking), exploration (open-world freedom, climbing, Sheikah Towers for navigation), art style and graphics (beautiful layered colors, fog, and environmental storytelling), sound and music (effective shrine cues), story and theme (minimal narrative focused on awakening after 100 years to defeat Calamity Ganon), emotional engagement, innovation (breaking traditional Zelda conventions like immediate weapon access), and accessibility (appealing to non-gamers, including the host's wife and young child).

The host praises the game's immersion, fun factor, and polished execution, comparing it favorably to the original Zelda while noting improvements in Tears of the Kingdom. Criticisms include non-intuitive controls, lack of traditional dungeons, underwhelming crafting, and over-reliance on fast travel. Overall, the stream highlights why the game ranks highly despite flaws, emphasizing its innovative capture of exploration joy. The session is shorter (about one hour) due to time constraints, with plans for longer future streams.

Transcription of Stream with Section Timestamps

{00:00:00} Introduction and Setup
Alright, yeah, so this is the first time I’m doing this. Apologies, I’m sick, excuse me. I’m going to be streaming the top 100 best games as part of the Dave P. David Perry challenge, which I’ll talk about later. I’m just letting perfect not be the enemy of good and starting. On pretty much every list, Breath of the Wild is right up there. The David Perry challenge is about analyzing gameplay mechanics to understand why people like it. I’ll look at gameplay mechanics, graphics, art style, sound and music, story and theme, emotional fun factor, innovation, creativity, as well as my criticisms, improvements, and overall impressions. I’m mostly just going to play the game and talk about it while I’m playing. I gotta say, I really freaking love this game. It definitely has problems, which I’ll talk about, but I’m going to play it from the perspective of why other people like it, why it continually ranks high despite its flaws. I only have about an hour today, but normally my streams will be two or three hours.

{00:02:00} Game Start and Initial Impressions
{Game audio: “Open your eyes… Wake up, Link.”}
Good old Nintendo trope, Link starting out asleep—couldn’t have it any other way. If you’re familiar with my channel, years ago, 2017 when this game came out, I picked it up and was absolutely blown away. I made a video series talking about the Zelda series as a whole and how they all contributed to this game. It’s funny watching it now; it’s a little naive because I hadn’t played this game fully, and it certainly has flaws. But it’s impressive how well they captured the original Zelda’s open-world, nonlinear exploration feel in this game.

{00:04:00} Exploring the Tutorial and Art Direction
The parallels between this and the original Zelda are interesting. This beginning scenario focuses on exploring and going through things. They start the game out so slow—not action-oriented. They give you time to get used to the controls in a quiet environment, no music. You get your little smartphone-like Sheikah Slate and start playing around with it. It’s not until you step out that the game shows you how open it is. {Game audio: “Link, you are the light, our light, that must shine upon Hyrule once again. Now go.”} I always have to relearn the controls; they’re slightly non-intuitive. This scene, oh my gosh, they showed it in all the trailers. It’s the de facto “this is what this game is.” They captured the vastness, openness, the fog, the way things fade into the distance with layers of colors. The art direction is incredible—one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen.

{00:08:00} Gameplay Mechanics and Early Combat
The combat, I have mixed feelings about. It’s flexible but not as snappy as, say, Wind Waker’s combat, which I liked best out of all Zelda games. They don’t give you a sword right away; you get an axe, breaking conventions. It’s not until later you run into enemies. The Sheikah Towers are fantastic beacons on the map, drawing you around. They light up at night, are easy to see, and give you rewards—great for the early game.

{00:13:00} Accessibility and Personal Anecdotes
I remember so many people who didn’t traditionally play video games played Breath of the Wild. A mom who didn’t game would wait for her kids to go to school so she could play, then share stories with them. My wife, who isn’t big on gaming, played this non-stop and got good at combat, which led her to play more action-oriented games. But my mom, not used to video game conventions, felt lost. The game’s accessibility is interesting—it’s unforgiving if you don’t take initiative, but it’s also approachable for non-gamers.

{00:21:00} David Perry Challenge Explanation
Welcome to my first time streaming. I’m a game designer in the industry, and I thought I’d flex my continuing education by studying highly rated games and talking about them from a game designer’s perspective—what they did right, wrong, what we can take to other games, and what could be improved. That’s the purpose of the David Perry challenge. David Perry, a game designer who wrote the book on game design, made a public challenge in 2013 on a YouTube channel called Design 3. He said up-and-coming game designers should play the top 100 games, write a book report on why they worked or didn’t, and if you did that, he’d endorse you in a job interview. I’ve attempted this challenge before but never got further than 20 games, so I’m streaming it now.

{00:28:00} Shrine Puzzles and Design Critique
This shrine is interesting—the first time you enter one, it’s very different from the rest of the game. It has music, feels mysterious. The puzzles are physics-based, which my 5-year-old loves because they make intuitive sense. He can talk me through solving them, which is great for accessibility. But as a designer, I have mixed feelings. The extreme lack of traditional dungeons makes me sad; I wish there were more. The puzzles are cool but sometimes confusing, like this one with the bouncing ball. I kept trying to use it because I’m used to Portal puzzles where everything has a purpose.

{00:44:00} Tutorial Design and Core Themes
This tutorial is up there as maybe the best ever made. It’s a microcosm of the entire game in a safer area, with fewer enemies and NPCs, but that’s the point. You do almost everything in the tutorial that you do in the rest of the game—combat, bow and arrow, crafting, catching grass on fire, making rafts. The only things missing are riding horses and buying stuff. It’s so well-made, approachable in many ways, and genuinely good at being a microcosm of the game without overwhelming the player. The core theme is exploration—nonlinear, do it in your own time. Everything supports that, except maybe fast travel, which has no limitations and can detract from exploring.

{01:00:00} Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts
I’ve got about 10 more minutes before I need to cut the stream short. I’ve played this game a bunch off-stream, and I’ll put together my actual analysis later. I think it’d be valuable to make an edited video talking about why this game is done well and why people love it. It feels like coming back to an old friend. I have criticisms, but they’re because it’s so close to perfect that I’m mad it’s not. It takes me about an hour to get through this tutorial every time, which was probably intentional for E3 demos. The gameplay mechanics—combat, exploration, crafting—are fluid and accessible, though combat isn’t super snappy. The game is hardcore yet easy as you want it to be, capturing an open-world, Dark Souls-esque “living in the world” feeling. I’ve got a hard stop, so I’m going, but it was fun, and we’ll figure out this stream thing.