How Breath of the Wild Feels

I got my Switch for my birthday in 2017. At the time, it was a rather new game system, so I got it mostly with an eye toward future releases. (Fire Emblem, Pokemon, and the still-upcoming Animal Crossing in particular). Of course, it was a huge bummer to have a game system with no games, so my parents asked me what game I wanted with it.

And I said Breath of the Wild.

At that point, I had never played a Legend of Zelda game before. I knew very little about the series, only interacting with the characters in Smash Bros. But I had heard the (pardon the pun) breathless praise directed at this game, and all I had seen of it made me feel like I would enjoy it.

Anyway, I got the game, and I played it for a while. And then, I sort of bounced off of it. It was my freshman year of college, I was spending a lot of time figuring out what my life would be now that I was living away from home, and I repeatedly found that I didn’t have the time or motivation to explore the vast world of Breath of the Wild. I thought it was a nice game, but I stopped playing and started looking toward the releases I was more excited about.

Then I got into that awful loop where I would feel motivated to play the game, remember that it had been a while and I would surely not know what I was supposed to be doing or how to play if I tried to pick it up again, and would abandon the notion.

And that was that for my experience with Breath of the Wild for a long while. But recently, inspired in part by some excellent YouTube channels that talk about game design (and the fact that I needed a new game to tide me over until Animal Crossing New Horizons), I decided to restart my save file on the game and give it a second try.

Guys, I’m hooked.

I am not yet finished with Breath of the Wild, so this post will not be a complete review of the game in its entirety. I do think I may revisit it as a topic once I actually do finish the game, but for now I want to share some thoughts on what makes this game so downright brilliant that it physically pains me that I didn’t appreciate it on my first playthrough. I think it all comes down to this feeling I get that when I play it. Everything in Breath of the Wild just feels good.

Let me explain.

All of the games I really love tend to not be focused on the physical. What I mean is that many of my favorite series are casual, creative, or more focused on storytelling than combat, exploration, or survival. Fire Emblem as a series focuses on combat, but you aren’t actually playing as the soldiers, you more play the role of the strategist moving the soldiers around like chess pieces. So, Breath of the Wild is a very different kind of game for me.

I guess the closest game I’ve sunk a lot of time into that features the same combat, exploration, and survival is Minecraft, and on the surface that would seem very similar to Breath of the Wild. You play as a character mostly alone in a vast, hostile world where you must carve out a living any way you like using breakable tools to defend yourself and craft what you need. Yet, there’s this style and this mood and this feeling to Breath of the Wild that Minecraft lacks, and that’s what I want to talk about.

In the game, you play as Link, a young adventurer who has just awoken from a 100-year slumber to discover the war he nearly died fighting a century ago has sparked again, and he must travel the world to train himself and recruit others to help him defeat his old foe. And from the very first moments of the game, where Link scrambles out of the ancient cave he awoke in to gaze over a cliff face at the lush landscapes, shaking grass, and distant mountains of the landscape, a tone for the game is set.

There is something so dreamy and constantly gorgeous about Breath of the Wild. The music is subtle and piano-based, and changes based on what the player is doing. When Link is soaring above the landscape on a glider, the music hushes into a lovely, quiet melody. When Link is surprised by a powerful, threatening mechanical Guardian, a frenetic and startling jangle of keys signifies that it’s time to start running. It’s the kind of soundtrack that fades into the background, so carefully crafted to fit the gameplay and the world that it seems like it isn’t even there.

What also adds to this dreamy beauty is the sheer vastness of the world of the game. Besides some light encouraging from a few early tutorials, the player is free to explore the massive landscape of Hyrule and its surrounding kingdoms at whatever pace and in whatever order they would like. You can climb the towering mountains, set sail in a raft along the rivers and into the ocean, explore tiny, bustling villages and run errands for the villagers, seek out the secrets of the past, fight monsters, collect ingredients to cook meals, look for treasure… etc etc etc. As far as I’m concerned, Breath of the Wild is the game most deserving of the “open world” label.

There is no “critical path” here. In fact, it’s entirely possible to climb out of the starting cave and immediately run for the castle containing the game’s final boss battle (like this person, who completed a game I’ve sunk hours and hours into in less than a half-hour). It’s also just as possible to spend days-worth of time visiting all 120 shrines, finding all 900 Korok seeds, completing all 15 main quests and 76 side quests, and exploring every nook and cranny of all 15 areas in the game.

All of that content available and in such a flexible method allows the player to really craft their own fun. If you’re the sort of person who loves to fight, you can seek out all the big scary bosses and fight! Or, if you’re like me and want to avoid combat if at all necessary, you can hang back in dangerous situations and have fun figuring out ways to stealthily and quickly take out your enemies before they have a chance to respond. The tools you’re handed at the beginning of the game are versatile and can be used in so many ways that the adventure truly gets to feel like your own.

And I talked a little at the top about the physical feeling of this game too, not just the emotional one. As I mentioned, I’m not used to games where you play as the combatant, the explorer, the adventurer. I am also not an expert in game design by any means (but I have watched enough content on the subject to feel slightly confident.) But there’s just something so satisfying in the way Link moves through space in the game.

He controls very heavily. His run is not particularly fast, he has a small, weighty jump with audio cues that suggest that the multiple swords, bows, shields, and arrows weigh him down, and some actions in the game see him scrambling, clambering, and grunting under the effort of movement. Silly as it seems, this sound design and game control speed really makes Link feel realistic. And that realism, pseudo as it may be (I mean, the man can climb crazy heights, soar through the skies on a glider, and swim up waterfalls if he wears the right gear), is enough to make the player also feel like they’re adventuring alongside him.

Right along with the freedom to create the kind of adventure you want to go on, Link controls like a real person adventuring. The combined effect makes you feel like you’re making your own adventure, and it’s you putting in the effort, striving to survive and save the world. It makes everything in the game so satisfyingly real.

It’s also why the more challenging aspects of the game, like the punishing difficulty spikes if you wander into an area unprepared, the constantly breaking weapons, and the vague directions for some quests that require a lot of exploration (or looking up the answers on Google), feel earned and justified. I just finished my first big boss fight, and it took three tries (the last try finally succeeding after I literally left the area to go find better weapons and gear). And I felt absolutely incredible after finally beating it. It felt like an effort I put in, an effort that was well rewarded.

I’m deeply impressed and in love with the world and gameplay of this beautiful game. It’s been out for a few years now, but I’m so happy to have finally given it the chance it deserves, and I’m surprised to say I even may find myself picking up the sequel when it comes out… whenever it comes out.

That is, if I can get this game finished in time for that (there’s a lot of content!)

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