Games Where I Use A Notebook

Once, long ago, there was a time when technology was so antiquated, that... bear with me here... we didn't have smartphones. Not only that, there was actually a time when there was no public internet! I know, I lived through that time. Which meant that, when playing video games on our 8 or 16 bit consoles, possibly even on PCs that could just about push some pixels around a screen, help was not easily at hand if we ever got stuck. Back in those dark ages, there were no video playthroughs (or possibly even videos!), no searching on forums for advice. If you wanted help, you could look in magazines, purchase a guide book - written on paper! - or just ask your friends if they had any ideas.

It was not even that common that games could always be saved to remember your last point. Some games could do this, by storing a battery in the cartridge to keep power to memory storage, but usually the cheaper option was to use passwords, such that if you completed a level or got a game over screen, you would be given a string of characters to remember your place for next time you power up the game. And that is where the mighty pen and paper came into play, having little jotted notes surrounding your console as reminders to where you were. No one would of course be writing down their passwords these days, naturally...

I've even heard of stories where maybe the more industrious players in the olden days may have gone some steps further. The original Metroid on the NES, for example, did not yet have a map system in place, possibly the original Legend of Zelda too - I can't speak from experience, as I never played them. However, I have heard stories of when people would draw their own maps of these games, acting as their own cartographers to uncharted virtual lands.

In this enlightened technological age we now live in, where games saves are automatically placed in a far off location called "the cloud" and the internet can provide us with any answer we desire, these old fashioned ideas of "writing things down" have gone by the wayside. Games are so sophisticated now that they can track many things for us. Yet have we lost something by not taking notes about what we're playing? What if that was part of the experience, the joy of discovery? Recently, for some very large games, I have started going back to this idea of taking notes to help me.

Exploring Hyrule

The first time I tried out my idea for taking notes while playing was during the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It starts with a tutorial area, the Great Plateau, to gently introduce you to the core concepts of the game. Even as an introduction, the Plateau is far larger than any section found in any previous Zelda game. So when I earned the Paraglider to gently glide off the Plateau and my feet touched Hyrule proper, ready to start my quest, I suddenly felt overwhelmed. The Plateau was a large, open area, but Hyrule, I realised, wasn't just big, or even huge - it was vast! I looked into the distance in multiple directions and, although I was given one suggestion of where to head next, I realised I could go absolutely anywhere… and I did not know where to start. Eventually I had to overcome decision paralysis and pick a direction - any direction - and push forward, settled in the idea that I can't explore everything at once.

Where would you start?

Now, here is a great design idea that Nintendo pulled off with this game. Far in the distance, you can usually pick out areas of interest, particularly if you use your scope like a pair of binoculars. Large land masses like mountains, lakes or seas obviously stand out, but there are other things that are present too, like shrines and towers, which give off a glow to separate them from the natural surroundings. It was explained to you early in the game that shrines and towers are important for you to locate, so if you are ever unsure what to do you could always head to those.

OK, location locked down, let's go! Off you trek, realising that even sprinting or horse riding across the land takes some time to reach your intended destination. Yet suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you spot something else. Perhaps it's a rock formation that looks different to the others, maybe you spot smoke rising from a fire or a stable you haven't discovered yet. Sometimes, someone is running away from a monster, perhaps you could help them. There are enemy camps of varying sizes and monster types, all guarding a treasure chest - I wonder what's in it? Should I try to take them all on? Maybe as you were heading to one shrine, your shrine detector blips and announces you are close by to another. You could pass through a village, with so many new opportunities presented to you. All of a sudden you spot what looks like a giant flower - what is that, is there something inside it? Did you just see a light shining up into the sky from that mountain top? What is that, why is it happening, should we go investigate?

These are just a tiny fraction of the possibilities that will try to grab your attention in Breath of the Wild. Because the great design of this game, in particular, is that it is open and wants you to explore it. As you fill in your map, you are not given a large number of icons or interesting things to do like other open-world games; you are just given... a map, showing maybe names of places, location of water sources, and contour lines for elevation. If you were given a map in the real world, it would probably look similar to this. If you want to find interesting things in the world, you need to look for them yourself, and fill in the map by hand. So what the game does is place large markers in the world - glowing objects, land masses, etc. - to grab your attention and give you a general direction, yet as soon as you start hiking to them, you'll find so many more additional areas of interest in between. And every one of these distractions produces something interesting or useful too, so you feel compelled to keep repeating this loop.

Personally, this causes a slight issue for me. I did really get into this slower pace of gameplay and taking my time navigating through the world, yet I am a completionist at heart; how will I be able to see everything that was lovingly placed into this game? When my plans for my next adventure were waylaid because something else piqued my interest along the way, I had to constantly make choices as to which path to take - continue as I am, or wander off course to investigate? Sometimes those investigations are time-critical - a shooting star, for instance, will land and shine only until the sun rises, then disappear for good. Or, if I did go off and investigate (possibly finding something else interesting along the way, causing nested levels of distractions), would I remember what I was originally looking for in the first place?

That is when I decided to take notes, making checklists as reminders. The game does provide some level of tracking for what you are doing - you can place markers on your map with various icons to act as reminders, or your quest log can show your progress even with side-quests - but it won't help you remember everything. You might look at your map one day and wonder "why did I put a star icon at that spot?" Some errands for the people you meet don't even qualify as full-on side quests so are not tracked. So I decided to go one step further, here is an example of one of my checklists:

It is nothing special or groundbreaking, just a list of short reminders for me to finish or come back to something. When I do one of them I simply tick it off, feeling satisfied that I experienced that small part of the game and can now move on with my life, removing the weight of guilt I might feel in missing something. I used OneNote for this particular list so I can access it from my phone, though I could have easily used pen and paper too, or any note-taking app. Having these checklists I've made also allowed me to review it when I'm not playing and decide what to focus on next time I play - especially as my play time cannot be for long periods due to the other responsibilities I have in my life, forcing me to plan ahead slightly.

Naturally, I have repeated this process when playing Tears of the Kingdom, and gone even deeper with my note taking, acting as reminders not just as I explore, but also writing down possible clues or memory hints for where I left off.

Other Games of Note

I've happened to experiment with this memory technique with other games too, generally on larger games requiring exploration. The Witcher 3, for example, is one such large game with many quests. The one advantage The Witcher 3 has over Breath of the Wild, however, is that quests in The Witcher are actually very well detailed and tracked; each one has its own mini-checklist which gets checked off as I run through them, so I don't feel quite so lost in that world - perhaps at the detriment of taking away some of the fun of exploring and discovering the world by myself. Even so, there are a couple of notes I take to remind me to try things, such as gathering some materials to forge particular weapons.

Metroidvania genre games are also a good contender for taking notes, I've found. Within the past couple of years, I was able to go back and play the Metroid games that were released on the Game Boy Advance - Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission. I'm well versed enough in Metroid games that I can tell that certain sections in a game would require a certain power upgrade, even if I haven't played that game before. For example, if I spot something like a missile upgrade or energy tank that is too high up, I'll know that there will eventually be something later that makes me jump higher or routes me this way somehow; I'll just make a note of it and its general location to make sure I come back to it at a better time.

Finally, although I cannot find any notes I made for this, I thought that I had done note-taking when playing Fez. That is a game bursting with secrets, not just finding golden cubes but understanding ancient maps and hieroglyphs, another game that promotes discovery and wonder.

Perhaps you do something similar, or can think of other games you've played where you think this might be useful - feel free to suggest others. Until next time, happy note-taking!