First of all, there's probably nothing I could say about this game that hasn't been said already. But, I still wanted to try to capture my experience with the game in writing; this is less a proper review than a reflection piece. As a result this essay ended up kind of long.
Though I haven't finished the game yet, this essay still contains spoilers for a few locations, events, and shrines in Breath of the Wild. I will talk about the solutions to several puzzles in the game. If you’d like to discover these things for yourself, I would save this essay until you’ve completed the game.
_ _
The rain begins to let up just around sunrise. There’s a golden glow in the sky as the clouds clear, revealing the dawning sun. I don’t usually consider myself a morning person, especially not after staying up all night to climb a mountain--but looking out at the vast valley before me, sunlight glinting off lakes and rivers… I feel a profound sense of peace. Of calm. Of awe.
It’s a view as breathtaking as a painting, but unlike the skylines I’ve seen in other games, it isn’t simply painted on. Each one of the mountains in the distance is something I can climb. No invisible walls keep me from scaling every cliff or summiting every peak. The map stretches as far as the eye can see, and not a single blade of grass is out of bounds.
Hyrule sprawls before me, daring me to find the edges of the horizon.
I get out my paraglider and take a step forward.
_ _
It’s a Thursday in March, and I’m sitting at my desk job at a synagogue. Work is slow, so I’ve got some personal writing to work on instead. But I can’t quite focus on it. I keep thinking about that pink horse I befriended in Breath of the Wild the night before. Her name is Shortcake. There’s an image at the back of my mind--of her blond tail swishing behind as we gallop across an open plain. Through a forest. Down a canyon, in the pouring rain. Hooves pounding on well-trodden soil.
I often find myself wishing I was home playing games while I’m at work, but I’ve never had this particular feeling before. A distinct feeling of longing for another place and time. The feeling that I should be back in Hyrule, riding my pink horse to the next town.
The journey to conquer Divine Beast Vah Ruta had not been an easy one--not that I had expected taking over a giant robot to be easy. I’d spent all of my arrows and died fending off blocks of ice before remembering I have a power that can dismantle them. I spent so long trying to wrap my head around the machinery puzzles that I had to look up a guide for what to do. It took ages to get all the pieces in place and bring Vah Ruta’s rainy rampage to a stop. I then went up against the boss--and was promptly creamed three times in a row.
Noticing the teleportation pad near the exit, I decided to warp back to the Zora village and, at the very least, restock on supplies. When I got back in town, I noticed that the tempest plaguing the village had disappeared. The Zora all thanked me for fixing their problem and restoring their livelihoods. I was understandably confused: there’s still an avatar of Ganon running around in there! I’m not done with the Divine Beast yet!
Aside from Sidon, who reminded me of the task at hand, nobody seemed to mind. All they knew was that the rain had stopped, and their lives could return to normal.
_ _
My boyfriend asked how my fight against the Divine Beast was going, and I told him I would need to take another few whacks at the boss--but it was frustrating, because he seemed to just oneshot me no matter what I did, and online guides weren’t helping.
“You don’t have to beat the boss right now, though,” he told me.
“What?”
“Yeah. There’s no penalty for just going and doing something else. You can come back later with more health and better gear.”
That option had never occurred to me.
I’ve never really played an open world game before. I usually expect games to lock me behind checkpoints--needing to win a badge or beat a boss before being able to advance the plot or proceed to other parts of the map. I’m not used to a game saying “You could do this now if you want, or you can explore more and come back when you’re more prepared. No pressure.” It honestly opened my eyes to an entirely new possibility for what games could be.
Breath of the Wild wants you to beat it; it wants you to reach the end and fight Ganon and save the world. But it also doesn’t force you to take on a fight if you don’t feel you’re prepared. (Conversely, it will also let you go straight to the final boss from the beginning if you’re up to that. Whatever floats your boat!). In this way, BotW invites you to enjoy it on your terms. You can take as much time as you need, or as little time as you want. You can take on the main quest, or you can spend all your time hunting Korok seeds. There’s no penalty for taking the long way around.
Again, new to the concept of open worlds--this kind of thing is probably old hat for people who’ve played games like Skyrim or Minecraft. But for someone who until now had mostly played Pokémon, the sheer level of freedom given to you in BotW was eye-opening.
I’ve lost track of time playing Breath of the Wild on more than one occasion. It’s easy to forget the passage of time when there’s always one more thing to do, one more hill to climb. I’ve stayed up far past my bedtime playing, then lay awake thinking of all the things I could do next. I’ve been late to appointments because I simply hadn’t realized how long I’d been exploring Hyrule.
But even though it’s easy to lose track of time playing, I’ve never felt like a single moment was wasted. In fact, the opposite: it feels like the game really values my time. I’ve yet to encounter a mechanic or quest that feels like a chore. There’s always something to do, and all the things to do are engaging. I’m making progress, even if “progress” is stuffing my pockets with mushrooms and cooking up different meals just to see what I can make.
When I first saw the tower at Akkala, I noticed the roaming helicopter Guardians and decided to turn right back around and go somewhere else. For a while, the region just north of the Zora’s Domain remained a dark patch on the map. Later on, faced with other prohibitively difficult towers--towers patrolled by Guardians and Shitty Wizards--I decided to give the Akkala tower another shot.
It wasn’t easy. It started pouring down rain the second I got there. Taking out the Bokoblins on the ground was easy enough, but the helicopter Guardians proved a bit more daunting. None of my arrows really put a scratch on them; if they hit at all. I decided that instead of taking my chances with a direct confrontation, I should just scale the mountain out of sight instead. The rain had started to clear up by then, so I figured it was now or never.
In this way I proceeded toward the tower like a sort of cross between Spider-Man and Solid Snake, avoiding the helicopter Guardians wherever possible. Once I realized that they wouldn’t see me once I got above them, it became pretty easy to avoid them. My stomach knotted each time I heard the sound of their rotary blades getting closer, wondering if I’d be spotted by one I hadn’t noticed yet. Luckily, I reached the top of the hill and was completely out of their range. Found a Korok seed under a pile of autumn leaves; a reward for a job well done.
Next came what would prove to be the tricky part. The base of the tower was covered in the toxic waste plaguing many parts of Hyrule--Ganon goop, in other words. To climb the tower, I’d need to get to a high enough vantage point to be able to jump to a spot above the goo. After clearing a couple of Bokoblins, I walked around the base of the tower, trying to find my way in. After several laps, I concluded that highest vantage point was the remains of an arch on the third floor of a ruined building nearby. Half the arch was covered in goop, so I’d have to be careful where I climbed. Thanks to a finicky camera and shaky hands, it took several tries to get to standing atop the arch. From there, it was smooth sailing. I activated the tower, and the Akkala region was finally added to my map, completing the eastern coast.
As I surveyed for shrines or points of interest, I noticed the patrolling Guardians down below--blissfully unaware that they’d been outsmarted by a sneaky Link. Even if I hadn’t brought them down personally, I still felt a sense of accomplishment. Akkala was now mine to explore.
_ _
I don’t have much experience with Zelda (Wind Waker HD on the WiiU was my first time really sitting down with a Zelda game) but I’ve gathered that a big part of the gameplay for Zelda games lies in environmental puzzles. Watching my boyfriend play through Wind Waker with the practiced muscle memory of someone who’s been down this road multiple times, I felt a little intimidated. There were puzzles in that game that would have taken me a million years to figure out. I was glad that my boyfriend was the one at the controls, or our Wind Waker journey would have taken us twice as long.
While Breath of the Wild is just as rife with puzzles as its predecessors, it gives the player a lot of wiggle room to get past those problems. Not every puzzle in the game has a single solution--if you figure out that a ball needs to go in a hole, the game doesn’t always care how you get it there. You have a wealth of powers and items at your disposal, and the game encourages you to try out different things until you find something that works. Even if your method isn’t the “right” one (or the one the puzzle was designed for), a puzzle solved is a puzzle solved.
In a similar problem-solving vein, not every problem in Breath of the Wild needs to be met head-on with a sword. You can choose to fight your enemies, or you can defeat them with exploding barrels, drop rocks on them, or hit them with an expertly-aimed swarm of bees. You could even pop a sneaky elixir and just avoid them altogether. There are no levels in BotW, and no experience; whether you fight every foe or avoid combat makes little difference in your ability to make progress (and since enemies respawn every few in-game days, a path you may have cleared for yourself will not always remain clear).
In this way, BotW challenged a lot of expectations I previously had about games. Getting to play more creatively and cultivate my own style of play is a huge part of the game’s charm.
I’d seen that spiral peninsula from mountaintops a few times, and now that I had Akkala’s map, I could finally visit and see what lay at the end of it. I took my fastest horse, knowing I’d have a long walk ahead of me. When I reached the start of it, though, I noticed a glowing ball lying in a reflecting pool--the kind of thing you normally only see in shrines. A sign nearby denoted what it was for: I would have to walk that ball all the way to the end of the peninsula.
Well, so much for the horse.
Carrying the ball meant I couldn’t ride my horse, run, guard, or pick up items at the same time. But, aside from a few enemies ahead, the path looked fairly clear. Resigning myself to a long walk, I picked up the ball and got moving.
I learned very quickly that this would not be a walk in the park. The path was dotted with several of the most obnoxious and powerful enemies in the game (though mercifully, no Guardians or Shitty Wizards). I found myself stopping every other minute to put the ball down and clear the path ahead. I very quickly ran out of arrows, and with a thunderstorm crashing around me, I couldn’t use any of my more powerful metal weapons.
As I was playing, my housemate came downstairs. He saw what part I was at and remarked, “Oh yeah, this place. I never did finish this part. I didn’t want to walk that far.”
By this time I was over halfway through; instead of giving up, or at least running back to buy more arrows and start over, I figured I might as well slog on through. There were a few places where the water was shallow enough that it looked like I might be able to take a shortcut--but fearing the wrath of whatever being had set up this trial, I decided against it. Though this game doesn’t tend to penalize shortcut-takers, I didn’t want to take my chances.
At long last--many hearty meals and wasted Moblin arms later--the ball and I arrived at the end of the peninsula. A glowing platform sat in the center of some sandy ruins, waiting for someone brave enough to bring the ball all this way. Not knowing what might happen (but guessing it would lead to a shrine), I finally brought the ball home.
The ground began to shake. Lo and behold, a shrine rose from the ground not too far away. I hastily got out my Sheikah Slate to activate it and headed inside, wondering what sort of trial awaited me.
Inside, however, this shrine had a single room. A treasure chest and the shrine’s owner were already there to greet me. Unlike the others, this shrine had no puzzle or trial inside--the very act of getting here was proof enough that I was worthy. I gratefully accepted the Life Orb and headed back out into the squall.
_ _
It was a strange feeling, having overcome a part of the game that my housemate hadn’t wanted to bother with. I’m used to the people around me being “better” at games than I am--going farther, doing more, taking bigger risks than I would typically like to. Overcoming this trial made me feel not only accomplished, but capable. Like if I could do this, then maybe fighting Guardians, Shitty Wizards, and Divine Beasts wouldn’t be so hard after all.
(And I was right--the two Divine Beasts I fought after Vah Ruta were much more manageable. I took on their bosses in battle and won. Guardians and wizards, though? Maybe baby steps on that one.)
BotW is a game I will probably never finish, but you know what, that’s okay. If I play BotW for years and never make it to Ganon, I won’t feel sad for never having finished. (Besides, I watched my boyfriend beat the game, so I already know how it ends). The game encourages me to be brave and try new things, but if I’m not feeling brave and just want to take some time and explore a little, that’s okay too. There’s plenty to do in Hyrule besides beating the main quest--countless NPCs to help, Korok seeds to find, shrines to complete, wildlife to catalog. There’s even this business with the Yiga clan that I’m still trying to figure out. The game is so vast, I could probably keep playing for years and never see it all. And that’s fine by me. If anything, that means there will still be more to do the next time I pick it up.
If I’ve learned anything from Breath of the Wild, it’s that it’s okay to take things at my own pace. I may bounce from game to game and interest to interest, but there’s something comforting in the knowledge that Hyrule will always be waiting with my next adventure.
I’ll probably be playing (and thinking about) this game for a long time.
