EDIT: THIS TOPIC CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS. SERIOUSLY, DO NOT READ IT IF YOU HAVE NOT COMPLETED THE GAME!
Join me and flash back to your own forays into one of the best-reviewed games of all time. Join me on a journey of my own self-discovery. Join me, friends, for a post destined to inspire hundreds to scroll down, blink at its size, and exit the thread posthaste.
I have listened, and I have heard, the Breath of the Wild.
I harbor no delusions of grandeur. I do not believe that anything I am about to say has not been said before. This is a game that quickly became one of the medium's greatest zeitgeists, and that zeitgeist has echoed and reverberated for nearly two years. What I hope to accomplish today has a humbler goal. I am a writer. It is not within my character to experience a life-altering event and carry on living without writing about it. I do not feel complete until I have expressed myself in some literary way. Perhaps, then, this review is based upon selfishness. Ideally, of course, at least a few of you will enjoy the ride. I don't care so much whether or not you enjoy the presentation, the words themselves; what I'd like is for the fans of this wonderful game to wax nostalgic when they read my rambling quest for closure. If I inspire at least one of you to look back upon your own journey and smile, well, I guess I'll smile too.
In the final weeks of winter, in the year of our Lordess Emilia Clarke Two Thousand and Seventeen, the Nintendo Switch came roaring into the world like a lion. Apprehension surrounded the machine after the infamous failure of the Wii U to move the financial needle nearly as well as its company -- and, indeed, the industry -- had hoped. There were those who believed the Switch was destined to become king. Whether they looked to the promises of the latest upcoming game in the time-honored Legend of Zelda franchise or they were excited by the prospects of the system itself, they never gave up hope. Perhaps they didn't even care what anyone else thought. They had owned and loved the Wii U for years. But if Nintendo was going to get back into the playing field in a big and meaningful way, the Switch had to come out swinging.
Spoilers: it did.
Alas, I was nowhere to be found for any of this. I had been recovering from the literal worst year of my life in 2016 and I was neck-deep in a paid political fundraising gig out in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was living with a friend and his girlfriend at the time, and I won't bore you with the details except to note that the household dynamic was… poor at best. I hadn't stopped loving video games but I had completely lost the drive to play them.
Still, the buzz was palpable. I lurked the internet even then and I couldn't click two pages without bumping into the swirl of excitement encircling the Switch's successful launch and the new Zelda game's rave reception. "This is impressive," I remember thinking, "but surely the buzz will soon simmer down. Maybe there's a honeymoon phase here. I don't doubt that this Breath of the Wild thing is good but there's always another shoe to drop." The ten-out-of-tens kept pouring in. "Well, it's great to see this title doing so well with the critics. But sometimes these things don't go over quite so universally well with the fans." I might have made a passing Last Jedi reference if I had been capable of time travel at that point in my life. (Does this phrasing suggest I'm capable of it now? I'm afraid that's beyond the scope of this article's intent.) And yet, as I spent fifteen or so minutes a couple of times a week to taking a glance at websites like Reddit and NeoGAF, the enthusiasm didn't diminish. "Maybe there is no other shoe," I pondered. It would be a long time before I was afforded the opportunity to test that hypothesis.
With the help of two absolutely precious friends, I was able to move to North Carolina and, slowly but surely, get the physical and psychological help I needed such that I could return to my long-abandoned college studies. And at the tail end of September 2018 I purchased a Switch secondhand. I received Breath of the Wild for free from one of my old Tampa friends, popped the cartridge into its slot, lifted my Pro Controller off of the household's table-turned-makeshift-TV-stand, and at last we colonized Mars.
No, uh. I started a file on Breath of the Wild.
Somehow my earliest hours with Breath of the Wild feel like a veritable lifetime ago. Being confined to the Great Plateau? Following the advice of an old man who looked suspiciously like Wind Waker's King of Hyrule and even more suspiciously like Santa Claus? Going to a scant four shrines and gaining four Sheikah Slate abilities within the course of two hours? But you know, there is one moment that feels closer than all the rest.
Just as everything changed when the Fire Nation invaded, so too did everything change when Link was handed the paraglider. In the most recent episode of CBS All Access' Star Trek: Discovery, Saru -- delightfully played by award-winning actor Doug Jones -- tells Anson Mount's fresh spin on legendary Captain Christopher Pike that "you never forget your first jump." The context is different but the quote has added resonance. Four months ago I jumped from the Great Plateau for the very first time. And, as this entire paragraph has clumsily illustrated, I will never forget my first jump.
I imagine many players struggled with the decision of which direction to choose for that first jump. There was a vast world of over a dozen regions completely unexplored and they all seemed to dwarf the Great Plateau as a dog would dwarf an ant. As for myself, the decision was simple. I had been told where to find Kakariko Village. It was suggested to me by, as I had correctly predicted, the ghost of Santa Claus that I ought to head there first to learn more about the events that had transpired while Link endured his century-long slumber. I jumped off the cliff which most directly faced the yellow blip on my wild and untamed map. And that was that.
"Oh wow," I said aloud. I turned to one of my aforementioned precious friends and said, "It's nice to see that this is another Zelda game with a fully-formed hub town. Sometimes I'm a bit let down by a lack thereof." I reckoned Kakariko Village was Breath of the Wild's Windfall Island. I'd come back here often. It would be my central nexus, however relatively eastern it was in mundane technical truth. I suppose I was at least right about one of those things. I did return here often. Of course, I was entirely mistaken to think this was the one big unifying hub town. It wasn't but a dozen or so more gameplay hours that I came upon this terrifically-designed settlement and stared in shock:
By then I'd already met a few koroks, discovered several shrines, initiated a number of sidequests, slept with Kakariko Village's arrow merchant (don't, uh, don't tell Zelda, I guess), began setting out to unlock Link's long-lost memories, thrown at least ten cuccoos for no logical rhyme or reason, questioned why a UFO was flying high in the western sky at least twice as many times, gotten frightened almost to tears when a stone giant emerged from the ground with great suddenness, scared a horse and tamed another, paraglided more times than there are days of the year -- yes, even Leap Year -- and had a blast through it all. I was committed.
Prince Sidon left a quick mark, inciting me to fits of chuckling. An elder detested me, a king of kingly size and stature had delighted to see me, and soon enough I had taken to the open water riding on Sidon's back in a bid to infiltrate my first Divine Beast. I navigated my way through the Beast, battled my first Ganon shade, found out how much the dearly departed Mipha wanted to flipper the flip out of Link, and so my journey continued.
I scaled mountains so hot my Sheikah Slate just flat-out gave up on telling me the temperature.
I met the oddly-evolved descendants of old friends from a long-ago era.
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My jaw gaped.
So.
Many.
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Times.
I cross dressed my way through a bazaar and Solid Snaked a ninja tribe.
I warmed up to a cast of fun and goofy characters who had met tragic ends one and all.
I felt for a princess who struggled with her destiny.
Hell, I even arranged a marriage.
There were many fearsome foes. Some challenged Link with steel.
Some challenged Link with weather's great extremes.
Some just went straight for the heart.
Everywhere I went there was beauty. Every new mountain to scale, every fresh forest to find, every enemy encampment rich with fun new bows to shatter at the next one. In the industry, we sometimes say that an adventure game's world lives or dies by its breadth, diversity and believability. I have no apprehension in saying that post-apocalyptic Hyrule succeeds unequivocally in each of these key ways and more. 190-odd hours had flown by and yet out here in reality it had been months. Almost every night after school I'd come home, boot up my file, and run. Whereas my initial decision on which path to take when departing the Great Plateau had been a simple one, I'd often hang around the local stables for a good long while before knowing whether I wanted to venture north, south, east or west.
The sun began to set. I played through the late-game questlines and gained access to some rad new toys as well as deeper insight into those whose lives had ended when Link's eyes first shut closed. My trusty Sheikah Slate had all but finished buzzing to alert me of nearby shrines. I revealed the final region, climbing the final tower. (It was the northwest snowfield region, for the record.) I even met a fellow in a secluded cabin up there in the cold and lonely north who looked so much like Santa Claus that in the final telling I accepted the fact that that other guy was the last king of Hyrule. 45 more hours were added to my playtime in the meanwhile, and each and every one of them made me feel like the sun was drifting closer and closer to the horizon. Night was falling hard and fast on me.
There are many words and phrases in many different languages which have little to no English equivalent. In Japanese, komorebi refers to "the sunlight shining through the leaves of trees, creating a sort of dance between the light and the leaves." I purposefully waited to make my ascent into Hyrule Castle until a great thunderstorm appeared overhead in the cold dead of night. I felt no more komorebi and I needed that to be emphasized.
In select Zelda games, there is a fateful duel between swordsmen at journey's end. As Ganondorf does not figure in Breath of the Wild's version of the timeless cyclical tale, the final battle was fought between man and manifestation. The Hero of Hyrule drew his Master Sword against the twisted abomination of pure malice...
...and a long-suffering princess awakened the full extent of her long-denied destiny to avenge the loss of the Hyrule she so desperately adored.
For all the nearly-unanimous praise Breath of the Wild rightfully receives, I have seen it said that its ending is a letdown. Briefly I pondered whether or not I might say the same thing, as the credits began rolling scarcely three minutes after Zelda's lethal achievement. Zelda had asked if Link remembered her. "That was touching," I thought, "but short as hell and static, but I can live with it. Especially in light of those fairly strong rumors around these parts of an iterative sequel coming in 2020." The credits rolled, beautiful music played, and then two more scenes unfolded -- one after the words "The End" appeared on screen, even! While it's true that they were both filled with Zelda monologuing about the shape of things to come (I mean, it's not like she's going to get much by way of backup vocals from her beau) I thoroughly enjoyed them nevertheless. And no reference to the the game's ending would be complete without mentioning how it felt to watch the four fallen Champions break into pretty little blue bits of light like so many monks. I had interpreted those pretty little blue bits of light as spirits at peace fading into the netherworld forevermore each and every time I saw those monks vanish. Seeing it happen to Mipha, Daruk, Revali and Urbosa wasn't easy, but their peace felt more than earned.
From the lands to the sounds to the overarching narrative to all the charming little character stories, from Stasis to Magnesis to Cryonis to Amiibo, from Faron to Eldin to Hebra to Gerudo, from Kas to Beedle to Sidon and even to those scandalous Great Faeries who may or may not have taken Link for a late-night swim without his verbal consent, from hour 1 to hour 50 to hour 235, Breath of the Wild never disappointed me. I have traveled almost the extent of my entire country by way of uncomfortable Greyhound bus, seen dunes and canyons and rivers and valleys so beautiful you just wouldn't believe it unless you'd been there, seen our very galaxy reflected back upon me alongside thousands of stars in a majestic countryside nighttime panorama, and I can think of no greater praise than to tell you that I now count my virtual journey through Hyrule among these life-changing times.
There's another Japanese phrase with no direct English equivalent that I'd like to share before we part. Mono no aware. "The bittersweetness of a brief and grading moment of transcendent beauty." Perhaps it seems foolish of me to say such a thing after spending four months on this journey. Yet I would argue it still applies. In many ways, for all the longest nights and earliest mornings spent picking up my Pro Controller and continuing my adventure, my lasting thoughts will be that the transcendent beauty I encountered along the way was all too brief.
Breath of the Wild is, without the vaguest hesitation, my favorite video game of all time.
Oh yeah. And Phantom Thief, here's my damned write-up already. ;)
Join me and flash back to your own forays into one of the best-reviewed games of all time. Join me on a journey of my own self-discovery. Join me, friends, for a post destined to inspire hundreds to scroll down, blink at its size, and exit the thread posthaste.
I have listened, and I have heard, the Breath of the Wild.
I harbor no delusions of grandeur. I do not believe that anything I am about to say has not been said before. This is a game that quickly became one of the medium's greatest zeitgeists, and that zeitgeist has echoed and reverberated for nearly two years. What I hope to accomplish today has a humbler goal. I am a writer. It is not within my character to experience a life-altering event and carry on living without writing about it. I do not feel complete until I have expressed myself in some literary way. Perhaps, then, this review is based upon selfishness. Ideally, of course, at least a few of you will enjoy the ride. I don't care so much whether or not you enjoy the presentation, the words themselves; what I'd like is for the fans of this wonderful game to wax nostalgic when they read my rambling quest for closure. If I inspire at least one of you to look back upon your own journey and smile, well, I guess I'll smile too.
In the final weeks of winter, in the year of our Lordess Emilia Clarke Two Thousand and Seventeen, the Nintendo Switch came roaring into the world like a lion. Apprehension surrounded the machine after the infamous failure of the Wii U to move the financial needle nearly as well as its company -- and, indeed, the industry -- had hoped. There were those who believed the Switch was destined to become king. Whether they looked to the promises of the latest upcoming game in the time-honored Legend of Zelda franchise or they were excited by the prospects of the system itself, they never gave up hope. Perhaps they didn't even care what anyone else thought. They had owned and loved the Wii U for years. But if Nintendo was going to get back into the playing field in a big and meaningful way, the Switch had to come out swinging.
Spoilers: it did.
Alas, I was nowhere to be found for any of this. I had been recovering from the literal worst year of my life in 2016 and I was neck-deep in a paid political fundraising gig out in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was living with a friend and his girlfriend at the time, and I won't bore you with the details except to note that the household dynamic was… poor at best. I hadn't stopped loving video games but I had completely lost the drive to play them.
Still, the buzz was palpable. I lurked the internet even then and I couldn't click two pages without bumping into the swirl of excitement encircling the Switch's successful launch and the new Zelda game's rave reception. "This is impressive," I remember thinking, "but surely the buzz will soon simmer down. Maybe there's a honeymoon phase here. I don't doubt that this Breath of the Wild thing is good but there's always another shoe to drop." The ten-out-of-tens kept pouring in. "Well, it's great to see this title doing so well with the critics. But sometimes these things don't go over quite so universally well with the fans." I might have made a passing Last Jedi reference if I had been capable of time travel at that point in my life. (Does this phrasing suggest I'm capable of it now? I'm afraid that's beyond the scope of this article's intent.) And yet, as I spent fifteen or so minutes a couple of times a week to taking a glance at websites like Reddit and NeoGAF, the enthusiasm didn't diminish. "Maybe there is no other shoe," I pondered. It would be a long time before I was afforded the opportunity to test that hypothesis.
With the help of two absolutely precious friends, I was able to move to North Carolina and, slowly but surely, get the physical and psychological help I needed such that I could return to my long-abandoned college studies. And at the tail end of September 2018 I purchased a Switch secondhand. I received Breath of the Wild for free from one of my old Tampa friends, popped the cartridge into its slot, lifted my Pro Controller off of the household's table-turned-makeshift-TV-stand, and at last we colonized Mars.
No, uh. I started a file on Breath of the Wild.
Somehow my earliest hours with Breath of the Wild feel like a veritable lifetime ago. Being confined to the Great Plateau? Following the advice of an old man who looked suspiciously like Wind Waker's King of Hyrule and even more suspiciously like Santa Claus? Going to a scant four shrines and gaining four Sheikah Slate abilities within the course of two hours? But you know, there is one moment that feels closer than all the rest.
Just as everything changed when the Fire Nation invaded, so too did everything change when Link was handed the paraglider. In the most recent episode of CBS All Access' Star Trek: Discovery, Saru -- delightfully played by award-winning actor Doug Jones -- tells Anson Mount's fresh spin on legendary Captain Christopher Pike that "you never forget your first jump." The context is different but the quote has added resonance. Four months ago I jumped from the Great Plateau for the very first time. And, as this entire paragraph has clumsily illustrated, I will never forget my first jump.
I imagine many players struggled with the decision of which direction to choose for that first jump. There was a vast world of over a dozen regions completely unexplored and they all seemed to dwarf the Great Plateau as a dog would dwarf an ant. As for myself, the decision was simple. I had been told where to find Kakariko Village. It was suggested to me by, as I had correctly predicted, the ghost of Santa Claus that I ought to head there first to learn more about the events that had transpired while Link endured his century-long slumber. I jumped off the cliff which most directly faced the yellow blip on my wild and untamed map. And that was that.
"Oh wow," I said aloud. I turned to one of my aforementioned precious friends and said, "It's nice to see that this is another Zelda game with a fully-formed hub town. Sometimes I'm a bit let down by a lack thereof." I reckoned Kakariko Village was Breath of the Wild's Windfall Island. I'd come back here often. It would be my central nexus, however relatively eastern it was in mundane technical truth. I suppose I was at least right about one of those things. I did return here often. Of course, I was entirely mistaken to think this was the one big unifying hub town. It wasn't but a dozen or so more gameplay hours that I came upon this terrifically-designed settlement and stared in shock:
By then I'd already met a few koroks, discovered several shrines, initiated a number of sidequests, slept with Kakariko Village's arrow merchant (don't, uh, don't tell Zelda, I guess), began setting out to unlock Link's long-lost memories, thrown at least ten cuccoos for no logical rhyme or reason, questioned why a UFO was flying high in the western sky at least twice as many times, gotten frightened almost to tears when a stone giant emerged from the ground with great suddenness, scared a horse and tamed another, paraglided more times than there are days of the year -- yes, even Leap Year -- and had a blast through it all. I was committed.
Prince Sidon left a quick mark, inciting me to fits of chuckling. An elder detested me, a king of kingly size and stature had delighted to see me, and soon enough I had taken to the open water riding on Sidon's back in a bid to infiltrate my first Divine Beast. I navigated my way through the Beast, battled my first Ganon shade, found out how much the dearly departed Mipha wanted to flipper the flip out of Link, and so my journey continued.
I scaled mountains so hot my Sheikah Slate just flat-out gave up on telling me the temperature.
I met the oddly-evolved descendants of old friends from a long-ago era.
My jaw gaped.
So.
Many.
Times.
I cross dressed my way through a bazaar and Solid Snaked a ninja tribe.
I warmed up to a cast of fun and goofy characters who had met tragic ends one and all.
I felt for a princess who struggled with her destiny.
Hell, I even arranged a marriage.
There were many fearsome foes. Some challenged Link with steel.
Some challenged Link with weather's great extremes.
Some just went straight for the heart.
Everywhere I went there was beauty. Every new mountain to scale, every fresh forest to find, every enemy encampment rich with fun new bows to shatter at the next one. In the industry, we sometimes say that an adventure game's world lives or dies by its breadth, diversity and believability. I have no apprehension in saying that post-apocalyptic Hyrule succeeds unequivocally in each of these key ways and more. 190-odd hours had flown by and yet out here in reality it had been months. Almost every night after school I'd come home, boot up my file, and run. Whereas my initial decision on which path to take when departing the Great Plateau had been a simple one, I'd often hang around the local stables for a good long while before knowing whether I wanted to venture north, south, east or west.
The sun began to set. I played through the late-game questlines and gained access to some rad new toys as well as deeper insight into those whose lives had ended when Link's eyes first shut closed. My trusty Sheikah Slate had all but finished buzzing to alert me of nearby shrines. I revealed the final region, climbing the final tower. (It was the northwest snowfield region, for the record.) I even met a fellow in a secluded cabin up there in the cold and lonely north who looked so much like Santa Claus that in the final telling I accepted the fact that that other guy was the last king of Hyrule. 45 more hours were added to my playtime in the meanwhile, and each and every one of them made me feel like the sun was drifting closer and closer to the horizon. Night was falling hard and fast on me.
There are many words and phrases in many different languages which have little to no English equivalent. In Japanese, komorebi refers to "the sunlight shining through the leaves of trees, creating a sort of dance between the light and the leaves." I purposefully waited to make my ascent into Hyrule Castle until a great thunderstorm appeared overhead in the cold dead of night. I felt no more komorebi and I needed that to be emphasized.
In select Zelda games, there is a fateful duel between swordsmen at journey's end. As Ganondorf does not figure in Breath of the Wild's version of the timeless cyclical tale, the final battle was fought between man and manifestation. The Hero of Hyrule drew his Master Sword against the twisted abomination of pure malice...
...and a long-suffering princess awakened the full extent of her long-denied destiny to avenge the loss of the Hyrule she so desperately adored.
For all the nearly-unanimous praise Breath of the Wild rightfully receives, I have seen it said that its ending is a letdown. Briefly I pondered whether or not I might say the same thing, as the credits began rolling scarcely three minutes after Zelda's lethal achievement. Zelda had asked if Link remembered her. "That was touching," I thought, "but short as hell and static, but I can live with it. Especially in light of those fairly strong rumors around these parts of an iterative sequel coming in 2020." The credits rolled, beautiful music played, and then two more scenes unfolded -- one after the words "The End" appeared on screen, even! While it's true that they were both filled with Zelda monologuing about the shape of things to come (I mean, it's not like she's going to get much by way of backup vocals from her beau) I thoroughly enjoyed them nevertheless. And no reference to the the game's ending would be complete without mentioning how it felt to watch the four fallen Champions break into pretty little blue bits of light like so many monks. I had interpreted those pretty little blue bits of light as spirits at peace fading into the netherworld forevermore each and every time I saw those monks vanish. Seeing it happen to Mipha, Daruk, Revali and Urbosa wasn't easy, but their peace felt more than earned.
From the lands to the sounds to the overarching narrative to all the charming little character stories, from Stasis to Magnesis to Cryonis to Amiibo, from Faron to Eldin to Hebra to Gerudo, from Kas to Beedle to Sidon and even to those scandalous Great Faeries who may or may not have taken Link for a late-night swim without his verbal consent, from hour 1 to hour 50 to hour 235, Breath of the Wild never disappointed me. I have traveled almost the extent of my entire country by way of uncomfortable Greyhound bus, seen dunes and canyons and rivers and valleys so beautiful you just wouldn't believe it unless you'd been there, seen our very galaxy reflected back upon me alongside thousands of stars in a majestic countryside nighttime panorama, and I can think of no greater praise than to tell you that I now count my virtual journey through Hyrule among these life-changing times.
There's another Japanese phrase with no direct English equivalent that I'd like to share before we part. Mono no aware. "The bittersweetness of a brief and grading moment of transcendent beauty." Perhaps it seems foolish of me to say such a thing after spending four months on this journey. Yet I would argue it still applies. In many ways, for all the longest nights and earliest mornings spent picking up my Pro Controller and continuing my adventure, my lasting thoughts will be that the transcendent beauty I encountered along the way was all too brief.
Breath of the Wild is, without the vaguest hesitation, my favorite video game of all time.
Oh yeah. And Phantom Thief, here's my damned write-up already. ;)
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