10 Genius Ways Video Game Developers Outsmarted You
4. The Entire World Is Slanted To Create The Top-Down View - The Legend Of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
A Link Between Worlds is 2013's spiritual successor to 1991's SNES classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and in remaining consistent with its aesthetic, is similarly presented from a top-down perspective, albeit in 3D.
But because a purely top-down viewpoint in 3D wouldn't allow players to glean any of the finer details of the characters or environments, Nintendo were forced to actually make the entire game world slanted.
Every item and character in the game was tilted backwards by 45 degrees, as players can momentarily observe for themselves by rotating the camera to the side when transforming into Link's 2D painting form.
It's something almost all of us take totally for granted, and yet without such a tectonic geometric shift, A Link Between Worlds and games like it would look completely flat and featureless from above.