The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Marking the biggest change of direction in the franchise in years, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild redefines the concept of “open world,” bringing an immense setting filled with the most varied forms of exploration and interaction. Also changing the format of its dungeons, combat mechanics, narrative structure and even the sound design of the series, the title represents a triumph in renewal, resuscitating the energy of elements long fossilized, without fear of subverting them when necessary .

The very name of the game already points to its most important component: the vastness of Hyrule’s wilderness and the sense of freedom tied to it. While in previous titles, mainly Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, the central area serves to connect the different regions visited, here there is only a single giant environment: as a true open world, cities, mountains, plains and rivers are all interconnected without any loading screens separating one from the other. But unlike other examples of the genre, such as Skyrim, moving around the world is one of the main focuses of the game’s design.

The key to opening the exploration in Breath of the Wild is the ease of movement. It is possible, for example, to climb almost any structure of the environment, regardless of its inclination, as long as the energy bar of the protagonist withstands the effort. So, if in Skyrim, the player often needs to circle a mountain until they find the road that allows climbing to the top, here, no matter the direction of the rock, they need to just jump towards it and start to climb. After getting to the top, the player, again, just need to jump off and use Link’s glider to quickly go back down or explore other locations by flying over them in search of secrets. This ability to climb any natural elevation, house, tower or whatever else is in the path, and go back down even faster, makes Hyrule an open field for exploration, making the action inviting and practical. The point is not only that the player can go anywhere at any time, but that he can do it quickly and without much difficulty.

Not that the game removes all the hindrances to locomotion – after all this would be detrimental to notions of difficulty and progress – but it certainly makes it more intuitive. One of the obstacles that can still be encountered, for example, is Link’s own energy bar, which, at first, makes access to certain places difficult, although it can be improved over the course of the game. Another complication comes from the influence of nature: rain makes surfaces slippery and, consequently, makes climbing more difficult.

Link’s interaction with his surroundings is one of the main attractions of Breath of the Wild. It is possible, for example, to cut trees to make firewood. Use firewood to set up a campfire, and use campfires to cook herbs and mushrooms collected in a forest or, perhaps, the meat of some hunted animal. And then use the food to improve Link’s stats momentarily. That is, the game not only adheres to the open world genre but also to that of survival. Thus, the player must now take into account the natural conditions of the environment and how they affect Link: if it’s too cold, for example, he’ll need to carry a torch instead of a sword, find a coat, or just eat something… spicy (because the game still retains the absurd sense of humor of the franchise). Besides that, wooden weapons catch fire – which increases the damage they cause, but decreases their durability – and fire can spread through the woods, hurting both enemies and Link himself. During lightning storms, lightning strikes a tree, but also any metal sword or armor that the protagonist or monsters may be using. In short, nature is not only in the name of the game, but is one of its main systems.

This ends up making experimentation one of the greatest attractions of Breath of the Wild. Once a metal is known to attract lightning, for example, a player may have the idea that, instead of attacking a monster with an axe, simply dropping it at the creature’s feet, running off and letting nature do its job will be even more effective. In the same sense, as metals also conduct electricity, instead of looking for specific objects to bridge the energy needed to solve a puzzle, the player can build it from their own weapons.

This does not take into account the possibilities opened with the new powers available to Link – all acquired at the beginning to allow the player to immediately have the means to solve any puzzle and visit any region, including go straight to face the final boss if they want. A power with a lot of potential for experimentation is the magnesis, which allows Link to levitate metallic objects: it is possible to make a distant chest fly to the protagonist or even drop it on the monsters’ head, create stairs with boxes to reach higher places, hold a boomerang while it comes back, locking it in a spinning state, or even creating flying structures and float across the scenery over them, looking like Magneto.

Another power that opens up innovative modes of interaction is the stasis, in which an object is locked in time. In addition to its obvious use in dungeons – like using it to climb a ramp during the brief seconds that a gigantic sphere is paralyzed at the top – it is possible to attack the locked objects, storing energy that is released at once when the effect goes away, making them fly very far. Creative players can use this ability both to skip stages of a puzzle (throwing a ball straight to its destination instead of guiding it through a suspended labyrinth), for example, but also as an unusual means of transport, by holding on to a chest as it is thrown over mountains. Meanwhile, cryonis – the power to create ice towers on water surfaces – has its use more restricted to puzzles, though they are still varied, being building bridges over water, raising structures and submerged objects, or serving as a platform in waterfalls.

With this arsenal, the dynamics of Breath of the Wild differs completely from that of its predecessors. The puzzles no longer have a single solution, exploration becomes inventive – no longer a matter of using the right equipment in the right place – and the structure is no longer a walk between temples with new equipment being gradually acquired in the process. Now it has become a trip without a predetermined destination, based on a continuous discovery of what is possible to do with the tools already at the player’s disposal.

It is appropriate, therefore, that the design of the traditional dungeons of the series reflects this new approach. Called Divine Beasts, they are gigantic mobile structures in animal form. While the ancient temples were a set of interconnected rooms, the beasts – like Hyrule – are open, no longer divided by doors or any arbitrary separation, contributing to the epic scope of the adventure. Instead of collecting keys in a given order, the goal here is to always activate a number of terminals scattered inside the beast in the order the player thinks best. Instead of solving confined puzzles in a particular room, the player must understand the layout of the beast, thinking of it in its integrity to advance. After all, they all have parts that can be tilted or rotated, changing the geography of the place and influencing its internal elements. In an airborne, bird-shaped Divine Beast, for example, tilting it left or right causes the objects within it to move in the same direction, and although the command is made simply by the map screen, the movement itself occurs in real time, forcing the player to position themselves correctly or calculate the precise timing for their actions as the environment changes. Now, in the Divine Beast in Zora’s realm, which is shaped like an elephant, the player can move the trunk of the animal, which spurts jets of water at different places, which triggers specific gears and can be explored with the cryonis ability in different ways. In this way, Divine Beasts are clear reflections of the Breath of the Wild design changes: they are larger in scope, allow for experimentation, are based on a physics system and, above all, are free in their structure, with puzzles that can be solved in any order.

Not that the game leaves out puzzle rooms, as scattered around Hyrule are more than a hundred of the so-called shrines, each containing a specific puzzle that is developed following the classic principle that guides Nintendo games: teaching a mechanic, and then subverting it at the end, besides offering an optional challenge for those who want to get some stronger equipment. In addition to the variety of indoors puzzles, there are also a number of shrines in which the enigmas lie in the outer world: during the adventure, Link may encounter unique challenges, such as recovering certain items on an island with all his equipment removed, or find a bard named Kass, whose music always contains a riddle to be solved.

Shrines represent the highest reward for exploration, presenting the player with a unique challenge and, if that is conquered, with a special sphere used to increase life or energy bar, besides each one serving as a fast travel point in the map, marking the player’s progress on their journey. And besides shrines, the player can also find treasure chests containing unique pieces of armor – Link changes clothes during the adventure, as always, but now each set has specific stats – and special weapons.

The combat system in Breath of the Wild has also been modified, making it the most complex of the franchise to date and, more importantly, it even serves to reinforce the need to explore Hyrule. Here, each one of Link’s weapons – which can be a sword, an axe, a hammer, and even a broom – has its own durability and causes specific damage. After using the weapon a few times, it breaks and the player must find others, either by stealing from enemies or by opening chests. This system ensures that the player always experiences fighting with new weapons, including new types – which have different attack patterns – and does not repeat the same pattern of attacking, instead looking for creative ways to defeat monster camps: rolling stones over them, activating hives, attacking them with boxes, or even infiltrating camps while the creatures sleep, silently eliminating them thanks to the new stealth mechanics – crouching and walking very slowly does not cause much noise, which can be further mitigated with specific clothing and feeding.

In addition, here Link borrows Bayonetta‘s Bullet Time ability, pausing enemies in time with a dodge at the last moment, making the clashes more cinematic. The changes, however, do not stop there: arrows are not infinite and must be collected from opponents’ bodies; jumping from Link’s mount activates Bullet Time when using the bow and arrow; the mount itself must now be acquired in the wild with Link having to slowly approach the horse to mount it by surprise, besides being able to keep in control during the  resulting rodeo. Breath of the Wild, therefore, is not simply the most open and free 3D Zelda, but also the most complex, full of systems and interactions to be discovered and explored.

One can complain that the weapon durability system is imposing, forcing the player to experiment when it could only encourage the action. However, the important thing is that it works in connection with the rest of the game: its crime is merely of degree. That is, to reject it completely is to reject the title’s whole design.

Regarding the story, if it has not been commented so far it is because it has even less significance than in the previous titles, to the point that almost all of its cutscenes are optional. When Breath of the Wild begins, Link is waking up from a long hibernation in a special room. Hyrule is in ruins, with Ganon – now a destructive force without personality – having won the last battle against the heroes. With them dead, Zelda imprisoned, and the world in a decrepit state, the narrative takes on a melancholy tone. The cutscenes also work as rewards for the exploration, for they are actually Link’s memories, recovered when he returns to the places marked by his first journey: an excellent narrative structure to suit the exploration guided by the player himself.

The objective of the protagonist is to reactivate the four Divine Beasts to weaken Ganon and free Zelda. Before entering the dungeons, he encounters a descendant or relative of one of the champions who died protecting Hyrule, remembering his former relationship with them. This is where the main problem of the Breath of the Wild narrative lies: the champions and their descendants are sparsely developed even with the DLC focused on them. Some are better than others: Princess Zora’s altruism, frailty, and kindness work alongside her crush on Link to give her a tragic narrative arc, whilst her brother has an iconic smile that instantly transmits self-confidence and bravery that contrast with the melancholy that surrounds him. On the other hand, the Gorons range from not having any striking features – such as the gigantic champion Daruk, whose size is inversely proportional to his complexity – and having an artificial narrative arc, such as the cowardice of Daruk’s descendant that is too quickly overcome when he is aided by Link.

It is Zelda who turns out to be the most fascinating figure in the story, embodying the tragic spirit that spans the entire narrative and configuring the most complex version of the character to date. The princess suffers with the burden of being chosen to defeat Ganon, manifesting doubts about her own abilities; doubts that are reinforced by each defeat she suffers. Being oppressed by a father who, paradoxically, suppresses her virtues and aptitudes so that she can live up to what he believes to be her duty, Zelda feels imprisoned by her fate and, precisely because of this frustration, fails to manifest her powers. What Zelda explains about a flower called “Silent Princess”, in fact, is a confession about herself: “Despite our efforts, we cannot get them to grow domestically yet. The princess can only thrive here in the wild”. It is no wonder that her ultimate moment occurs when she is being authentic, acting on her feelings rather than her regal duty: Zelda’s power comes from her freedom, a theme more than appropriate for the narrative of a game like Breath of the Wild.

The title also innovates when introducing actual voiced dialogues in the series, although the results are a mixed bag. The actress who dubs the princess in English, for example, conveys the melancholy of the character by rarely varying the tone of her voice, which ends up making it monotonous and taking away some of Zelda’s strength. However, this can be remedied by switching the audio to other languages ​​– and there are many options – until the player can find a more homogeneous cast.

Still in the sound aspect, Breath of the Wild also brings a new sound design for the series, discarding the epic tone of the previous instalments and adopting an experimental approach, preoccupied in reflecting the peculiarities of each situation. When Link finds the Temple of Time in ruins, for example, the melody played in the background is the same as that of Ocarina of Time, but this time it is broken, with brief piano notes being interspersed with long periods of silence, depicting the current state of the building. When Link is mounted on a horse, the song, instead of being bombastic like before, decides to simulate a trot with its beats and during the night it includes a melancholy version of the main theme of the franchise to maintain the sense of adventure. During the Divine Beasts, new instruments are inserted at each triggered terminal, marking the progress of the player and preparing him for the climax. In the same vein, the theme of Tarrey Town accompanies the development of the city, since each race that inhabits it is accompanied by a corresponding instrument, reflecting the multicultural nature of the place. And the theme of champion Mipha incredibly has its main melody composed by the notes mi and fa, while other Zoras also have notes composing their names (Sidon and Dorephan).

It is true that the game is not free from problems. There is little variety of enemies compared to the size of Hyrule, making them repetitive after some time. Likewise, attacking camps becomes of little advantage in the end because the equipment that Link will break in the process is probably better than the reward for the battle. In addition, there are too many shrines dedicated to battling the same kind of enemy and it could be argued that some of their puzzles should have their ideas developed further. Not to mention that several secondary missions are mainly fetch quests, not reaching the level offered, for example, in Majora’s Mask. However, none of this comes close to eclipsing the inventive dynamics of gameplay and the process of player discovery.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild represents the biggest change of direction of the series since its formula was established by A Link to the Past and later cemented by Ocarina of Time. However, it is a game that goes even further, creating a brilliant paradox: it shows all its trumps from the outset, but still ensures that the player will discover them gradually.

December 29, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on January 20, 2018.

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