During the late 2000s, I was beginning to drift away from video games. High school was in full swing, work at the supermarket was consuming weekend after weekend, and my band’s drums weren’t going to play themselves. Any time I devoted to video games was largely reserved to either replaying one of my old favorites, or hosting a Mario Kart party here or there. I didn’t keep up with the new releases and, honestly, that felt pretty okay.
That trend continued into college, where Super Smash Bros. was, by and large, the game of choice for a suite of six college freshmen. While I did get into Fallout and Skyrim at that time, I really didn’t expand my horizons much further. Jumping back down that rabbit hole really didn’t feel worth my time. Friends and concerts were more tantalizing than learning a whole new control scheme, lore, or world.
Life after graduation went much the same way. Sure, I played Fallout 4 and Arkham Knight when they came out, but most of my time was still devoted to the classics. I used my newfound disposable income to buy a Wii U, but it collected more dust than it did play games. The controller was clunky and distracting and I just didn’t get the appeal. Maybe these were the telltale signs of adulthood creeping in?
Fast forward to today, and I’m voraciously consuming video games at a speed I haven’t seen since the height of my gaming in middle school. I count down days to the next Nintendo Direct, I regularly scan my favorite sites for reviews and news, and I listen to video game music on Spotify 24/7. Heck, I even started teaching myself code and have been making my own game for the past several months! It’s quite the change from a few years back.
All of this can be credited to one game and one game only: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Yeah, I was pleased to hear a new entry to a staple franchise was getting released. Zelda games are generally enjoyable and I was looking forward to trying out the new Nintendo console, but it wasn’t a particularly pressing item on my list. When I first booted up the game, however, things changed very quickly. It was very clear that this was not the Zelda I grew up, though that Zelda wasn't entirely gone.
Okay, let’s take a step back here and just refresh ourselves with a little Zelda history. Up to this point, I had only played five other Zelda games (and only really enjoyed four of them): Ocarina of Time (1998), Majora’s Mask (2000), Wind Waker (2003), Twilight Princess (2006), and Skyward Sword (2011). While I enjoy the first four games on that list, Skyward Sword was always an outlier to me. It didn’t have a world I could sink my teeth into as much, the controls were frustrating, and the character Fi was, well, if you’ve played the game, you know. I played it for about a week, never finished it, and moved on. The other four, however, were all games I loved. I went back to them several times and became pretty intimately familiar with the different worlds I had at my fingertips.
Take another look at those release dates…from the time I started with Ocarina of Time, there was a new Zelda game, at most, every three years. A new world, new lore, a new quest…every three years! It’s a rock solid level of consistency and the franchise was always finding new ways to keep the formula interesting. But, Skyward Sword aside, that pattern ended in 2006. There was no game that scratched my Zelda itch after that for eleven years.
Eleven. Years.
I always knew that more Zelda games would come, but were they all going to be like Skyward Sword? Was the Zelda that I loved gone, and all I’d have were those four games to last me going forward? When Breath of the Wild was announced, naturally I had my hopes, but I was also full of caution. I had to hold down the levels of hype that were starting percolate in the back of my head.
On March 3rd of 2017, the game was released. On March 4th of 2017, I was in love.
Let’s talk about why.
Breath of the Wild’s most brilliant facet is how much the theme of Link’s journey connects with us as players. In the game, Link wakes up after being asleep for a hundred years. The kingdom of Hyrule has fallen, beasts run rampant over the land, and the citizens are doing what they can within their small communities to keep going. Link awakens and discovers that he has only the foggiest of memories about what had happened. It’s up to him to piece together the fragments from his past. Throughout the entire game, Link has a general feeling of “Oh yeah, I think I remember something like that!” Whether it’s discovering a location or recalling an old conversation, Link’s returning memories are a key component to the story of the game.
But throughout my playthrough, I was saying “Oh yeah” much more than Link. I must have said it a hundred times. “Oh yeah, there is that lake over there! Oh yeah, I do remember a Rito Village! Oh yeah, I forgot I could do this.” Hell, even the music would have little hints here or there of songs from previous games that would juuuuuust manage to ping the memory center of your brain before trailing off again. Breath of the Wild does an amazing job of giving you a feeling of rediscovery. The act of tying in the character’s mindset with the player’s mindset is what makes this game resonate so heavily with all of us. I’m sure this isn’t an accident, mind you. Nintendo was well aware of the six- to eleven-year gap in between “satisfying” Zelda games. It’s no secret why this game was a launch title for the Switch.
So yeah, this game knocks “rediscovery” out of the park. But it also knocks “discovery” right out there with it.
A major selling point of Breath of the Wild was the sheer openness of the game. You can travel to any part of the map (if you had the mettle) at any time, you can conquer the four divine beasts in any order you choose, you can even go directly to the final boss at the beginning of the game. The only limiting factor is, really, you.
The main reason this tickles my brain is because I really don’t like being told what to do. The more “on rails” a game is, the less of a worthwhile experience it feels to me. I like my agency and I want to use it as much as possible.
The Hyrule depicted in Breath of the Wild is full of possibilities, ranging from the simple (climbing a mountain instead of walking around it) to the complex (throwing a metal boomerang at a group of enemies in a thunder storm so, instead of fighting them hand-to-hand, they are all electrocuted once the metal object gets struck by lightning). The sheer number of things that you can do in the game almost, by virtue of logic, means you can’t possibly do them all.
Remember when you were in third grade and a new video game came out? The next day at the cafeteria table you’d be sitting with your friends each talking about the little things you found here or did there. Breath of the Wild is this console generation’s version of that. The thrill of seeing that some guy on the internet figured out a way to rapidly travel across the map using only magnets and trees was what made the game an amazing communal experience. Hell, it’s been years after the game release and people are still finding new things to do.
The reason I talk up the feeling of discovery the game evokes, rather than, say, the excellent puzzle solving, tight combat, or flawless visual design, is because the emotions of the game are so important to its heart and soul. Strip away the “world” and string together the shrine puzzles and beast battles…what do you have? A game that would be favorably reviewed, but forgotten when the next Steam sale comes around.
Emotions are tough. They’re amorphous and intangible and subjective and hard to nail down. Unless you’re a Vulcan, however, they’re also the things that make you up as a person. Ambitious art recognizes the difficult task of being emotionally resonant. Good art actually succeeds in being emotionally resonant. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty goddamn hard to not only choose what emotion to target, but also create an artistic experience that will evoke that emotion in the audience.
Breath of the Wild was an all-consuming experience for me. I racked up over a hundred hours in the first few weeks of its release. I still put in a few hours every month, here or there. On its surface, it’s because the game just really scratched my Zelda itch. Finding a shrine and completing the puzzle within was consistently engaging, the world was beautifully rendered and encouraged exploration, and the various ways to tackle combat led me to seek out different enemies and try unique methods of eliminating foes. The game plays really goddamn well.
Digging deeper, though, the game did a lot more to me than just “hold my interest” by being fun to play. It took me a better part of two years to realize why, but as I’ve just resurfaced after a two-year plunge into video games, I finally understand. It evoked the emotions associated with discovering a new video game for the first time. It showed me that there are worlds left to explore and experiences still to be had. It unlocked a part of my brain that I thought had been sealed off forever.
It reminded me why I love video games.
Post Script:
Breath of the Wild is not without its flaws. Commonly criticized elements are the weapon-breaking systems and the “slippery when wet” climbing mechanics. While I don’t feel these elements are broken or fundamentally ruin their respective corners of the game, I certainly understand why they are the frequent gripes of the internet. The complaint I cannot, however, understand is that of the game’s music.
A phrase that surfaced around the game’s release was as follows: Breath of the Wild’s soundtrack was written by a cat walking across a piano. It’s a funny joke when you listen to a track like this, which is played when you explore the vast Hyrule field. It’s certainly minimalist and isn’t nearly as epic as some previous themes of Hyrule field, but at the same time, I spent more time in this field than those of previous entries. I don’t know if I could handle listening to even the best old-school tracks on repeat for over a hundred hours.
That being said, Breath of the Wild’s music can be just as exciting, sad, or mysterious as previous games. So, here are (some of) my favorite tracks!
Field Battle: When you approach enemies, the drums begin…quietly. Should you continue running, they’ll never get any louder. If you choose to engage, however, this theme plays at full blast! It’s an incredibly fun song that combines the thrill of battle with the primitive nature of your enemies.
Rito Village: Beautiful and calming, it’s the perfect track to accompany a village of bird-people. This is a unique area in the game, given how vertically this village is built. Elements of Dragon Roost Island, a Wind Waker track, make up a good portion of this song. After all, that was when the Rito first appeared!
Kass’s Theme: Every now and again, you’ll come across Kass, a wanderer who plays this song on his accordion. While his lyrics explore the past and present of Hyrule, listen closely and you’ll hear the Legend of Zelda theme and the Song of Storms.
Purified Dragon: I was nearly sixty hours into the game when, at long last, I was standing on a bridge and a goddamn dragon flew out of the lake. It was one of those “Holy crap, how did I not know this was in the game?” moments, and the score perfectly reflects that feeling of awe and wonder.
Maze Forest: I had to get to the center of the Lost Woods to reclaim the Master Sword. I approached the threshold of the woods and the challenge of navigating this enigmatic area presented itself in stunning fashion. This track expertly captures that feeling of eerie mystery.
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