one of my all-time favorite moments in any video game ever. I had already been playing for several days, hundreds of hours into the game. I played through the entirety of BotW blind, no guides at all. I was trying to find all the Zelda memories in the game, but I refused to use any guide, nor did I know you could ask someone in the game to mark spots on the map for you. Instead, I found them all just by studying the shit out of the map, and aligning monuments on the map to things I could see in the photos (yes, that actually works!) So I was exploring the land, trying to get to every inch of the map to find them. I had already finished two dungeons. At this point I was deeply into the game. I had already at one point stumbled upon this ice mountain that lead to an epic fight with a dragon, just out of the blue, and at another point I had found this enormous statue of this sword atop a giant spire, so I was really into this aspect of stumbling upon things.
Up to that point, i had mainly traversed either by foot, by floating, or by boat, but in my quest to find the Zelda memories, I finally started riding horses. It was nighttime in the game, and I wasn't noticing that this song was different from the riding at day music, until the Zelda theme started playing seemingly out of the blue.
Until the Zelda theme started playing, because I had been on a completely blackout of the game, i just assumed BotW was like OoT and lacked the theme entirely. I figured they thought getting rid of the theme was part of their seemingly endless bold decisions they'd made. Because I found it organically, after so long, and how subtle it was, just made it so much more meaningful.
On top of the theme being such an awesome nod that I found deep into the game, the actual composition is awesome, too. It's like this freeform piano jazz that is accented by violins. Awesome, awesome song. I could listen to it endlessly. Hands down my favorite zelda moment ever.
