I’ve noticed, over the years, I have a thing for symmetry.
It actively bothers me when I come across something — a building, a design, anything really — that isn’t essentially symmetrical, that actively goes out of its way to build up one side of itself differently than the other side. It’s a silly quirk that, nonetheless, can leave me bothered when I encounter yet another intentionally lopsided object.
This quirk could rear its ugly head in video games, especially the video games of the 1990s. Many action-adventure games and role-playing games alike used camera angles that hung above the action, meaning you could see an entire building at a glance. It specifically lost me gobs of precious playing time in one particular game which, unintentionally at least, weaponized my assumption of symmetry against me, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It was, in fact, the second dungeon of the Light World, the Desert Palace, which bothered me so. I had reached the dungeon entrance, used the Book of Mudora (later to be renamed the Hyrule Historia in a bit of sort of icky product placement I’d prefer my Zelda games eschew), entered the dungeon, worked my way through the large open courtyard and found the map.
It confirmed my assumption that the lower level of the dungeon was essentially symmetrical. There were variations in the east and west wings of the game, but the left-right divide was roughly there, enough to fulfill my expectations of binary matching. From the outside, seemingly confirmed by the in-game overworld map, the dungeon was also apparently symmetrical. It had a large central entrance in the middle, guarded by magic barriers covered in Hylian script, and two towers on either side.
It was the towers that got me.
To my long-lasting regret, I explored the eastern side of the dungeon first. This was essential, of course, as it was on this side of the dungeon I would find the Big Key, needed to access both the central treasure of the dungeon and the final boss’ chamber, but it also led me astray. The door to the eastern turret was there and I entered it at my first opportunity, only to find it led to, well, nothing, and I dropped to the desert sands below and had to work my way back to the dungeon entrance from the outside.
Once back in the dungeon, I explored the rest of the rooms, only to find no way to progress to the upper level of the dungeon, seen on the map I’d acquired. I’d gone everywhere, opened all the chests, bombed all the walls, caught all the fairies, killed absolutely everything I could, and gotten nowhere.
The one thing I hadn’t done? Gone through the door of the western turret, under the assumption it would be identical to the eastern exit, and simply dump me outside with no easy way back in.
I don’t know how long I wandered the dungeon aimlessly, hoping beyond hope to find some secret path forward before I finally went through the long-avoided door of the western tower. When I finally did, of course, I found it exited onto a plateau that allowed me to reach the upper door to the final wing of the dungeon, not into open space.
I was not a happy camper. I mean, I was glad to finally push on to the next level of the dungeon, but to see my assumption of the dungeon’s symmetry used against me was not a pleasant experience. I would not have left a good review on the palace’s Yelp page, for sure.
I tried to use that experience going forward and not make assumptions about future Zelda architecture without confirming it myself. But it still rankles in my mind sometimes when I think of the time I lost wandering around the Desert Palace, trapped in its chambers by an unknown lack of symmetry.
