Austin School of Game Design. (2024, August 21). Ocarina of Time - (3/100) David Perry Challenge [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/live/jowgKsCcz6s
This live stream, the third installment in the David Perry Challenge to play and analyze the top 100 most popular games, features a game designer playing and critiquing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64. The streamer begins in Kokiri Forest, guiding viewers through the tutorial section where Link learns basic controls, collects items like the Deku Shield and sword, and interacts with NPCs such as Mido and Saria. He praises the game's effective onboarding, comparing it favorably to modern titles like Breath of the Wild and Portal for teaching mechanics naturally without overwhelming the player.
The playthrough progresses to the Great Deku Tree dungeon, with commentary on puzzle design (e.g., lighting torches to burn spiderwebs, navigating vertical spaces), combat mechanics (lock-on targeting and swordplay), and the slower pace of 3D dungeons compared to 2D Zelda games. The streamer discusses the game's innovative 3D transition from 2D predecessors, noting how it preserves the series' spirit while introducing handcrafted content, guided progression, and fetch-quest elements.
Narrative elements include Link's nightmares, the curse on the Deku Tree by a "wicked man from the desert," and the hero's journey setup. He reflects on nostalgia, childhood memories, camera controls, N64 controller limitations, and design choices that respect player intelligence. The stream covers roughly the first two hours of gameplay, emphasizing Ocarina of Time's lasting impact on 3D action-adventure games through thoughtful tutorials, puzzles, and storytelling.
00:00:03
Alright, I think we're live. Cool, so... um, one second, helping my kids.
00:00:39
Alright, so today we've got about two hours. Definitely going to be playing this game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I have a lot to say about this one. I'm a huge fan of the Zelda series, and I figured we’d just get started.
00:01:30
As a recap, this is the third game I'm playing as part of the David Perry challenge. In 2013, game designer David Perry, in an interview with a YouTube studio called Design 3 that no longer exists, offered a public challenge. He said if anybody played through the top 100 most popular games, analyzed them, and wrote a report about each one, he’d endorse them during a job interview. So, I'm doing that. I'm not necessarily looking for the job endorsement—I work in the industry as a game designer—but I figured it would be a really good experience and continuing education for me.
00:02:46
This game in particular has an incredible tutorial. Previously, we played Breath of the Wild, and its opening sequence, the Great Plateau, was incredible. This one is up there with the best tutorials ever, alongside Portal and maybe the original Super Mario Bros.. Since we’re playing through the first dungeon, I’ll talk about it while we play, and hopefully, something interesting comes out of it.
00:03:35
A lot of what’s cool about this game is the context of its transition as a series from 2D to 3D. In this case, the transition was very graceful. Not all series were able to make that shift as smoothly. There were some trade-offs in the design, but I think they managed to capture a lot of the spirit of Zelda without losing sight of what they were aiming for.
00:05:07
This one single area in the game is like a throwback to the original Zelda controls—top-down, move around. I wonder if this was included because they thought players would be unfamiliar with the 3D landscape. They also put in that 3D intro cinematic, which didn’t have quite the same impact. Who knows, maybe it was a bunch of last-minute decisions.
00:06:20
Let’s take a look at this opening intro area. It’s not quite as perfect a microcosm as Breath of the Wild’s, but it’s pretty darn close. It feels more like a tutorial area than Breath of the Wild’s did. You talk to people, learn how to lock on, run across things, and automatically jump. The stepping stones in the pond teach you that if you boldly go in the direction you want to jump, you’ll leap automatically.
00:08:11
Up here, there’s this bridge on top of the house. The camera follows you decently, but to have any success crossing it—especially since 3D game players weren’t really a thing back then—you need to learn how to Z-target to get the camera behind you.
00:09:13
It’s interesting—they don’t give you any items to attach to your C buttons yet. Everything’s telling me to go see the Great Deku Tree, so let’s figure out where that is and go do that.
00:10:01
I need a shield and a sword. I know the shield costs 40 rupees, so I’ve got to run around and collect a bunch of rupees. Cutting signs, but I don’t have a sword yet—how will I cut things?
00:11:21
All these things I managed to figure out as a kid, but I don’t actually know how. Was it just me reading everything because I was interested? I feel like you wouldn’t be able to get away with this kind of opening tutorial today—it’s not explicit enough.
00:13:36
Got the Deku Shield. I did a ROM hack for this forever ago where everyone had stolen your sword and Deku Shield and hid them as a prank. Now that’s kind of my own headcanon—finding this with my name written on it.
00:15:07
The N64 controller doesn’t map to a traditional gamepad very well. Putting the C buttons on the C stick works enough, but it’s not great for tactile button feedback, especially if you’re trying to shoot things.
00:16:43
From a story perspective, this is really the beginning of everything. The opening image of a beat sheet was Link having nightmares. Then it shows the setup here—initially, it’s carefree, but you know something’s wrong because of the nightmares. You talk to the Deku Tree, and he’s like, “Hey, something’s really wrong. I need you to figure out what’s causing it.” I’m going to assume the catalyst is when the Deku Tree dies.
00:17:27
This dungeon might be the quintessential beginning 3D Zelda dungeon. For being a very vertical dungeon, it’s interesting that you start on the ground floor, go up, and whenever you have a problem, you fall back down to this middle area. There’s not a lot of punishment for falling—it’s mostly about practicing.
00:21:30
These 3D dungeons are much more slow-paced and puzzle-oriented than action-oriented. If you think of the opening dungeon in A Link to the Past, there are rats, cobras, and armed guards chasing you. Here, everything’s really stationary and easy to figure out, which is probably appreciated given the difficulty of controlling a 3D environment compared to a 2D one.
00:23:29
This room is interesting because, unlike most puzzle rooms where completing the task opens the door, that’s not how it works here. I’m trying to understand how I would’ve figured this out as a 10-year-old. The torch was burning not too long ago, and the iron bars are blocking the door. Either I’m not giving 10-year-olds enough credit, or this room was stupidly hard. I can’t imagine Nintendo didn’t playtest this first dungeon to death—it’s kind of a big deal.
00:27:58
Nintendo sets up puzzles so they don’t trick you like an idiot. They make things obvious, like a switch you can flip that burns a spiderweb. But this doesn’t actually do anything—it just opens up the idea in your head that fire will burn spiderwebs. If I didn’t get trapped in the room where I learned to use a Deku Stick, would I have figured this out? I’m wondering if this isn’t as polished as it could’ve been or if I don’t trust players enough.
00:30:53
Looking at this dungeon with a designer’s eye, I know people who don’t play a lot of games have found this dungeon interesting, even if they never got further. Part of it is that you can polish your dungeons to death, or you can respect your player’s ability to figure things out.
00:33:53
As far as combat goes, it’s not that amazing, but it’s functionally fine. In the context of transitioning from 2D combat that was open and flexible to a 3D environment, it was really difficult. The lock-on targeting came from the development team watching a historical play where a samurai used a ball and chain to wrap around the bad guy’s arm, fixing the distance between them.
00:36:01
This is very good Nintendo puzzle design. We’ve circled back to a room we’ve been to before, a second-floor hub world. We couldn’t get up here before—we had to go through several rooms to reach this point. It’s easy to backtrack by dropping that block down, and it’s a requirement because you need to make inferences from things learned in this room. You use a torch to burn a spiderweb, and in the previous room, you had to run halfway across to get a torch to burn another. It’s a culmination of puzzles, and you need to be competent enough with controlling Link to get there in time since the Deku Stick is on a timer.
00:39:01
This boss is a great intro boss—it captures the essence of 3D Zelda so well. It’s ominous, mysterious, and just great. It teaches you to look up, just like Valve does in their games. This is the first real enemy, as the spiders and Deku Scrubs don’t move much.
00:41:18
Breath of the Wild took me about an hour to get through the tutorial. I just finished the tutorial in Ocarina of Time, and it clocked in at about 40 to 45 minutes.
00:43:22
The catalyst in the “Save the Cat” beat sheet is the moment when the hero’s life must change—stasis equals death. The Deku Tree dying is a really good example of that. We’re establishing that things aren’t right—Link doesn’t fit in with his friends in the Kokiri Forest, he has a fairy, but no one respects him. Then he learns about a wicked man from the desert who cursed the Deku Tree, and he’s introduced to the outside world while living a very small life in comparison.
00:47:39
Everything’s different now. Mido’s not really a big guy in his small world, as we’ll learn when we come back as a grown-up. Saying goodbye to your friends like this was very impactful to me as a young kid.
00:50:44
I know the graphics aren’t as good as they were when they came out, but this was very cool and expansive when I was a kid. The day-night cycle and the distance to the castle are timed so you run into enemies at night, which are the first real moving enemies.
00:53:59
You’re still being funneled pretty solidly to the castle, but you can go to Kakariko Village or the beginning of Zora’s River, though it’s blocked by bombs. There’s not much to do at Lon Lon Ranch since Malon’s at the castle right now. It feels similar to Breath of the Wild, where it’s heavy-handed until the end of Act 1, and then the world opens up in Act 2.
00:56:03
It’s interesting to have Malon out there, then you have to leave and come back. They wanted you to try to get into the castle, get stuck, get kicked out, and then stumble across her for the solution. It’s linearly structured, but they don’t need you to follow the plot immediately—you can wander and feel the vastness of the world, which is pretty cool.
00:58:40
Let’s talk about some design choices. The core mechanics are running, exploring, and simplified movement. It’s not a platformer like Mario 64. Jumping is just to enable smooth navigation in a 3D world without causing too much ruckus—it’s about accessibility. Challenge and progression aren’t super difficult, but you feel progress because you’re constantly getting new items, beating dungeons, and unlocking new plot points. It’s a content-based game, not a systems-based one, with handcrafted content. The graphics and art style are bright, cartoonish, and cheerful, following the thread of previous Zelda games. The camera is difficult to control, especially on the N64 controller. The fact that this tiny game, less than 4 megabytes, runs on underpowered hardware is a technical marvel. The sound and music are high quality.
01:03:35
Nothing like making you feel antsy. So far, yet so far. The music is obviously high quality—it's gone down in history. Very catchy. Koji Kondo just makes really, really good music.
01:04:13
Story and theme narrative—kind of touched on this already. It’s a really well-structured hero’s journey, like The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The world-building is done really well. It’s kind of the beginning of establishing many continuing Zelda tropes. They went super heavy into the story because they had the expanse to do so. They started that in Link’s Awakening and then upped the ante here.
01:05:30
Engagement and addictiveness—mostly, the game evokes nostalgia for me. It’s hard to be objective. When I first played it, it felt like the expanse of everything—it was so big. It was a story I could progress through at my own pace, and it took skill and challenge. The game is engaging. I like the dungeons in this game a lot. There’s so much about them that was done right, and not a ton that was done wrong. If you don’t like dungeons like this, you won’t have a great experience, but as far as the dungeons themselves, I think they’re well-made. There’s addictiveness, that “just one more turn” feeling. I remember as a kid definitely feeling that. At this point, there are very graceful exit points—you finish a dungeon, and there’s such a complete, completed feeling that you can save and turn it off. It doesn’t feel like Hades, where I genuinely feel like, “Give me one more run.”
01:07:15
Novelty—yeah, it’s 3D Zelda. It’s got tons of new concepts and a fresh take on an existing one. They solved a lot of problems: the camera, the controls, etc. What can a game designer learn from this game’s innovation and creativity? Maybe don’t be afraid of exploring new ways of expressing old mechanics. This is a 2D series that made it into 3D, and they did it by making it more cinematic, but they had to upend a ton of conventions established across the first three games.
01:08:35
This is part of the debate sequence, maybe the catalyst—I don’t know. I’m not sure about the nuances of where the “Save the Cat” structure lies. It seems to me that breaking into Act 2 would be when you pull the sword from the pedestal. Criticisms and improvements—what didn’t work well or could be improved? The camera could be improved, the controls could be improved, the combat could be improved. They’ve iterated on all of these over the years. There’s nothing tremendously new I could say here. This was the first to make a massive technological leap into 3D very gracefully. It has some shortcomings, but any suggestions I have are basically, “Do what you did in later games.” I still don’t think there’s a perfect Zelda game. If you took Breath of the Wild and managed to capture the quality of the dungeons from Skyward Sword, that would be pretty incredible.
01:10:49
Princess Zelda here is young and naive. I find it interesting that the two of you are thick as thieves and go to save the world, but in trying to save the world, you basically doom the world—kind of a bummer. These camera flythroughs are everywhere, showing off what they can do with the camera. She’s not wrong, but she’s not wise yet. It’s interesting that she embodies the Triforce of Wisdom and had to earn her wisdom like everyone else. Now she’s too smart for her own good, naive, and a 10-year-old trying to save the world in the wrong way.
01:12:33
What have I learned this playthrough so far? I’ve got about 45 minutes left on this stream. I probably learned that I want to pay attention to the dungeons more. The story is fine—it’s presented pretty well and follows the “Save the Cat” or hero’s journey structure solidly. But were these dungeons as good as I remember them? Are they as accessible as I remember? Or do I know how to do them because I played them as a kid and had a strategy guide? I don’t know the answer to that.
01:14:26
Let’s say that was the catalyst—like, “You need to stop him.” Then this set of sequences would be the debate, which is stretching it. “What am I going to do? Am I going to take the sword out of the pedestal? Am I going to stop Ganondorf?” Those don’t really fit those questions, but thematically, the throughput is more important for “Save the Cat” than anything else, in my opinion.
01:15:55
Let’s go to Death Mountain. I wonder if I can set a minimum bitrate—this looks a little garbly, and YouTube’s recommending I bump it about three times higher than what I’ve got. I’ve got this place set up as a Steam VR home, and it’s really trippy to be in this setting. I can just give the guy my letter and blast through the plot, but is there any reason I should hang around here? I feel like there should be a little bit of hoop-jumping to get where I’m trying to go.
01:17:37
They’re saying I should go back and get a shield. I don’t need to, but they’re saying to backtrack, spinning off a side quest. This guy works too much for his kid. I have a lot of fun memories of spending time in Kakariko Village, but there’s a difference between being required to do something and just doing what’s interesting. As an adult, I know I have limited time, so I don’t invest a huge amount of time into side activities.
01:20:49
How do I know to play Zelda’s Lullaby to the Royal Family of Hyrule? Is it just trial and error, or is it inferred strongly enough? It didn’t seem like that big of a surprise to me as a kid—it was cool, and this video sequence is great, ominous. But why would I think it makes sense to play this song just because it’s a Hyrule thing with a Triforce on the ground? That wasn’t explicitly taught to me—I wasn’t handheld through that the first time.
01:23:20
This poem is dedicated to the memory of the dearly departed members of the Royal Family: “The rising sun will eventually set, a newborn’s life will fade. From sun to moon, moon to sun, give peaceful rest to the living dead.” That’s an interesting poem. It’s not explicitly clear what the Sun’s Song does: “Rest of souls who wander where they don’t belong, bring them calm with the Sun’s Song.” That’s almost a better poem than the one written on the wall.
01:25:34
Dampe says, “Hey kid, don’t mess around with the graves.” That doesn’t sound great. I’m pretty sure I could get a heart piece or something out of that, but I’m not super interested in exploring that right now.
01:28:00
Let’s cover those bases. Got the Hylian Shield—75 rupees, super good deal. It’s interesting to see how the expanse of the world increments up. They don’t just open up the entire world to you like they essentially do in Breath of the Wild. This one feels more guided. I’ve never asked my mom to play this game, but when I was playing Breath of the Wild in 2017, I thought she could play it. She’s not a gamer at all, but she said it was too open, too confusing, with too many options. She wanted more handholding. This one is great for knowing where to go and what to do, but actually pulling it off and playing the game, I think she would have a harder time. On a technical level, this is harder to control and manipulate than Breath of the Wild.
01:31:28
Death Mountain has a different vibe. They’re already directing me to go back to where I was. To maximize the expansiveness of the world, they have you running back and forth between places. It’s like, “Go to Death Mountain, but also say hi to Saria. You got to Kakariko Village—why don’t you go back to Castle Town to get your shield?” I’m curious about what that means from a design perspective.
01:32:46
This is the first time you need to use the song. The text says, “You’re standing on a soft carpet for guests. It feels so plush under your feet.” How do I know to play Zelda’s Lullaby here? It says, “Wait here for the Royal Family’s messenger. The song of the Royal Family.” That’s plenty enough, but I’m curious if there are other hints.
01:35:29
Darunia’s animations are great. It’s pretty cool that he shoves you off. Is that because I get pushed backward by the jars, which pushes me off the ledge into braver mode? He’s like a big brother. I’ve never played Roblox—it came out when I was already an adult. From the surface, Roblox is interesting, but I’ve never opened it. I have mixed feelings about letting my 5-year-old play it, with live chats with random people online. I played Tears of the Kingdom, and I didn’t super love the building aspects—it was my least favorite part. So, I haven’t picked up Roblox.
01:38:34
You’re still an animator, just animating on Roblox. I think it’s cool that that’s even a thing. Why do I know I need to go back to Saria? Is it just because I’m lost enough that I push up on the C button and Navi tells me I need to go back to see Saria? I wonder what Saria would think. In hindsight, I know that’s going to make Darunia happier when he listens to Saria’s Song.
01:40:04
I wonder if this would feel as fetch-questy. When I was younger, my older brother, who’s like 11 or 12 years older than me, said, “Zelda’s that game where you constantly run back and forth.” At the time, I didn’t know the term for that was a fetch quest. This game definitely feels like that. I wonder if the reason it feels like that is because they’re trying to maximize the expansiveness of the world.
01:41:17
Saria’s just a tutorial dude. She said she’s waiting at the usual spot, but we haven’t talked in real life, Saria—I don’t actually know the usual spot. I appreciate the setup as if it were a spot I should know, that we were friends and all that. Mido’s not going to help me. I know Saria’s in the Lost Woods, but I’m curious how I’m supposed to know that.
01:43:13
Mido says, “You’re looking for Saria? She’s in the Lost Woods, as usual. Don’t tell me you don’t know where that is. The entrance is up on the cliff overlooking the village. I know you’ll get lost—don’t worry, you’ll just end up back at the entrance.” He’s a grumpy head.
01:45:06
The music does get louder when I get to the right one. After going through the Lost Woods, you’ll come upon the Sacred Forest Meadow, a sacred place where few people have ever walked. I’ve already made it through a couple of rooms, but now he’s telling me how to do it. The fog effect means you’re going to leave, so don’t go that direction. You need to pay attention to the music to know what you’re doing.
01:48:34
The battle controls in this game are not perfect. It’s been so long since I’ve played this game from the perspective of a new player. This has been an interesting one, trying to understand how I know what to do instead of just, “I’ve played this a million times.”
01:50:59
What’s the purpose of coming back here and talking to Saria? From a story perspective, what were the writers trying to do? Mechanically, it makes the world feel more expansive, and you get to backtrack and get more familiar with the world. But why do I need to go from the Kokiri Forest to the Castle, be told to go to Death Mountain, then go back to the forest to get back to Death Mountain? What’s the value in doing that?
01:52:17
The relationship between you and Saria is the most interesting one in this whole game. Growing up sucks—it’s hard, it comes with sacrifices. That’s what it feels like your relationship with Saria is about: showing you that growing up comes with sacrifices.
01:53:05
That was my two-hour stream. That was pretty great. Tomorrow is The Witcher 3. Cool. Y’all have a good one.
David Perry suggests using gameranker.com for [[202501031828 The David Perry Challenge]], and filtering for platforms you own. I found this list to be...