You Should Play This: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild

You Should Play This: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild

You Should Play This is a running column by Brandon Hyde detailing the unnoticed intricacies in video games.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild takes players to a familiar, but equally version of Hyrule. The game centers on Link, the usual cypher for the audience, who is awakened at the start of the game after a hundred years. Breath of The Wild focuses on open-world gameplay, instead of the tried and true Zelda formula of the last twenty years. Breath of The Wild forgoing the tradition of the franchise made for one of the most surprising games in recent memory, but the most surprising aspect of the game is hidden from most players. The reason why Breath of The Wild succeeds in both its storytelling and its gameplay is how the game isolates the player themselves. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild makes the player feel powerful by enclosing them in a sense of isolation.

Fans of the Zelda series know the history, the characters, and above all, the gameplay. Taking the player outside of a cramped dungeon and placing them into the hills of Hyrule makes for a sense of freedom. This freedom that comes with being in the open world of the game is at the expense of having the comfort of familiarity of a closed-off dungeon. The player is thrown into the world of Hyrule with nary a weapon, but instead the clothes on Link’s back and that is all. In the first five minutes of Breath of The Wild, the player is stripped of any sense of power or control, with no sign of hope in sight. As the game progresses, the player can freely choose to explore any corner of the map to their heart’s content. This exploration in the game makes for a tension that builds throughout the experience. The freedom of exploration comes with the equal sense of loneliness in the game. Scaling mountains, trekking across deserts, lurking in forests all come with the price of being completely alone. The landscapes of Breath of The Wild are filled with activities for the player to enjoy, but the amount of space between them is deliberate. Finding the next safe place to recover can be difficult and even tense. Behind every boulder could be any manner of enemy waiting in the darkness. There is no one else coming to save Link, only the wits and twitchy thumbs of the player. This tactic of isolating the player and Link eventually makes for a growing sense of power. The player begins the game as a lowly amnesiac, but as the game continues, the amount of weapons and skills pile up in their inventory. To truly feel powerful, the game has to first keep any sense of control away from the player and even more so from Link.

The quiet nature of Link himself makes for another added sense of isolation. There are no long dialogue sequences about Link’s backstory in Breath of The Wild or choice of dialogue. The only choice the player has for dialogue is simply to press onward with another push of a button. Link is a cypher for the audience, but there is still the silence that separates the audience. Link’s own silence makes it so the player is unable to know how Link truly feels. The most the player can do in Breath of The Wild is assume what Link feels at any particular moment, but there is never any confirmation on the game’s end. There is an excitement in this choice, where the player is not inhabiting Link, but instead discovering the world around him simultaneously. Every new instance of Hyrule is shared between the player and Link, with both being two separate entities. The shared experience is not without its own emotions and feelings, however. Every instance of emotional storytelling in the game is told in a visual way, with Link either reacting or not reacting to what is happening around him. This decision of Link not having a voice makes for a stronger connection with the player. Instead of being told what to think or feel, players are asked to decide for themselves what this moment could mean for them. At first, this tactic is isolating, with the player being kept away from Link, but by the end of the game, a journey has been made with the character. A journey of regaining power back from what has happened to the world.

Breath of The Wild has an inherent sense of discovery in almost every aspect of the game, but most importantly in its own story. The story of Breath of The Wild plays out with the player taking control of an amnesiac Link as he takes down another instance of Ganon. This storyline sounds familiar, but the way that Breath of The Wild plays out creates another break in what the player has come to expect from the series. Link in Breath of The Wild is awakened after a hundred years of sleeping with no memory of his past. The deliberate choice of making Link an amnesiac creates a sense of alienation, when it comes to every character interaction. Link is looked upon as a myth come to become reality, with his own history following him like a shadow in every step. The disconnect between Link and the characters that he meets is apparent in the sparse dialogue sequences. Being told about your accomplishments is not the same as being able to remember them yourself. Slowly but surely, the player progresses through the game, regaining lost memories belonging to Link. As Link regains his memory, the player is gaining new knowledge of the game, both in turn becoming powerful.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild is about discovery. Discovery of a new land, an entire history, and even the character of Link, himself. The isolation that the player will feel at times is about dipping them into danger before bringing them back into their own sense of power. Every new instance in the game makes for a chance to become closer to the world of Hyrule. Breath of The Wild asks its player to trust them with the sense of being isolated, only for them to feel more connected by the end.