The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Breath of the Wild is an open-world Zelda game with opportunities for physics mayhem. I’ve been putting it off for so long, in part, because I had open-world fatigue. I personally find the story a little boring, but if you like to run around climbing trees and picking herbs, and I do, there are plenty of other things to occupy one’s time. My friend told me one of the great things about this game is there’s the ‘expected’ way to beat shrines, etc., but you can always pull some creative twist out of your hat to meet an objective. I like that. I blow things up a lot to test the theory.

BOTW is truly open. You can climb any mountain, provided you have the stamina. You obtain a paraglider, but I learned the hard way this takes stamina too, so you can’t just coast endlessly.

It seems one of the more controversial design choices was weapon decay. Weapons degrade until they break, and cannot be repaired. Thus, the limited weapons starting inventory adds a new level of strategy, you never know when you’ll need a crappy weapon to beat off some low-level baddies. Unfortunately, I must have hit some sort of glitch early on. Shortly after leaving the starter area I had a run where every single weapon I owned broke in 1-hit, including the new guardian sword I’d just gotten from a shrine. After breaking 6 or 7 weapons consecutively with 1 hit I went online to see what I’d screwed up. I didn’t find an answer to that, which lead me to believe it really was some weird fluke/bad luck/glitch, but I did see a fair bit of tooth gnashing over weapon decay in general.

To be blunt, these open world games tend to blur together after a while no matter how good they are, and weapon decay adds a strategic element I don’t see too often. The point is that you’re always scrounging for weapons, and you have to ‘save’ the really good ones for an enemy that deserves it. I don’t have a problem with that. Since you can’t repair weapons, the game is gonna compensate for that by throwing A LOT of weapons at you. I haven’t played enough to know how serious of a limiting factor this truly is.

So far I like playing BOTW but it hasn’t captivated me. I like the fantasy technology in the game and the physics puzzles and items, but the story is the usual boring epic fantasy backstuff. It has a few of my pet peeves too, like collectibles gone wild (900 korok seeds? Really?).

IIRC BOTW swept the GOTYs in 2017. Nier: Automata was released the same year and that’s more where I’m at right now, as a player. That doesn’t mean BOTW won’t grow on me, and it has a really excellent exploratory component, which I enjoy, and I appreciate having to climb towers to get topo maps and so on. But BOTW also seems to emphasize how Nintendo and I have grown apart over the years. These fine hand-crafted First Party titles are perfect, some would say, but they have a weird sterility to me and they don’t hit, and stick, the way a lot of smaller, messier games do. I guess these days I’m just a hot-mess kinda gamer, happiest when I gaze upon imperfection and brilliance not-quite-fully-realized.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Revisited

In 2004 the film Napoleon Dynamite came out. I grudgingly went to see the film because my coworkers wouldn’t shut up about it and I didn’t like it very much. In retrospect I suspect the non-stop chatter set the film up for failure. The film became a cult hit (today I feel like we’d call it a meme) and my coworkers STILL wouldn’t shut up about it, so I ended up seeing it about 4 times. By the fourth time, I loved Napoleon Dynamite, and I harbor genuine affection for it to this day. I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it again but I certainly wouldn’t protest.

For me, Breath of the Wild has become a little like Napoleon Dynamite. Everyone telling me to play BOTW made me resistant to BOTW (see also, the Witcher 3). When I finally played a few years ago, I liked it ok but it never quite grabbed me and I sort of resented the hubbub. When I returned to it more recently, because my kid wanted to watch me play it, there were a lot of things I didn’t like about it. Some of my gripes were based on the starter area, which is one of the weaker parts of the game, but there were just a lot of disparate elements that really rubbed me the wrong way. I reached a point where I low-key hated the game, but now…

Now, finally, I truly like BOTW. I have reached the stages of acceptance and peace.

Being me I still dislike certain aspects, of course. I don’t like the physics puzzle shrines. I invariably get passed the controller for all the shrines and I just find navigating the puzzles annoying. The only shrine I ever liked was one where I just walked in and took something (a “Blessing”, which granted me climbing boots). The voice acting is a little annoying so far, maybe partly because most of the dialogue is unvoiced so it always throws me when someone actually speaks.

The game really opens up once you get past the starter area. Sometimes in not great ways (I die a lot), but I’ve come to appreciate and look forward to exploring the world and . After somehow making it to Zora’s Domain, we decided the area was simply too difficult for us at that time and we backtracked to the main area. We’ve since picked up armor, found Great Faeries (which are AMAZING omg), opened up a few shrines. I thought the memories quest, where you revisit locations from pictures in the camera) would be tedious until I realized they were marked with shining beacons and I wouldn’t have to memorize the pictures. We’re getting the hang of food and potions, and figured out pretty quickly we could make a lot more rupees by selling those. We’ve learned to tame spotted horses. I’m actually over weapon decay, which really annoyed me the last time I played, I’ve just accepted I need to carry weapons and pick up new ones and getting some big new weapon doesn’t mean anything to me.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Yes, Again

I played this back in 2019 and was kind of ambivalent about it. Played again in 2021 and I enjoyed the game a bit more and beat one of the divine beasts, but I lost interest shortly after. Well, Donut randomly picked this game up the other day and is now formally obsessed with horses and cooking. They took over my 2021 save file, so I started a new game. My goals are straightforward:

• Get off the Plateau as quickly as possible (done)
• Completely ignore the story (done)
• Get kicked in the head by a really cool horse (done, a green horse beat the crap out of me)
• Activate all the towers (work in progress, maybe 50% done?)
• Fill out my map by discovering the POIs and activating shrines for the fast travel points…
• …But otherwise ignore shrines, seriously fuck that
• Focus on horses, cooking, and enchanting or otherwise improving armor (just learned about dye, score)
• Find koroks (? like maybe 30? 30 seems like a nice, solid number)

The strengths of the game remain the same for me. I really enjoy exploration and appreciate the only real barrier is the stamina bar. Galloping through large, open plains is peaceful and relaxing. I like picking up ingredients even though the size of my ingredient stash is getting a bit unwieldy. The weaknesses remain the same as well, but I’ll note I am fully aware I am the only weirdo on the planet who hates the physics puzzles and the shrines. Weapons decay, lack of enemy variety, blah blah, everyone has heard it all a million times.

I have no designs on the upcoming sequel. I have a feeling if I enjoy it will be more for aspects of it rather than the whole.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild II

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how I easily got sucked into this game after the ambivalence of my previous attempts. I usually play at least 30 minutes a day. Filling out the map by activating all the towers ended up being a fun task and I only have one left, the one near Mr. Doom or whatever it is–le big volcano.

Activating towers allows Link to download a topography map of a region but the details are filled in by exploring on foot or horseback. Seeing interesting areas on the map and visiting them and learning their names has been rewarding, and occasionally I’ll come across a new enemy (not many, but I loved the fake treasure chest octos, which startled the crap out of me the first time I encountered one on a beach; they are easily revealed by checking with the magnet, but every now and then one will still startle me). I found the three giant fairies, who are total freaks and I absolutely love them. Their intense need to sexually intimidate Link is welcome and appreciated and I am extremely interested in pursing the possibilities further as giantess size kink is of great personal interest.

One issue I have with the UI, as an ingredient hoarder and devoted Picker-Upper of All the Things, is the dumb pagination. Having to scroll past all the ingredients before reaching cooked food and potions for healing/buffs, and vice versa to get back to weapons and armor, is definitely annoying. I refuse to accept that a game this well-designed did this by accident. I’d be perfectly willing to accept “Nintendo doesn’t want you to hoard things” as A Reason except I don’t ever know what I need to upgrade armor so if that’s the case they are placing an unreasonable demand on me. If you could mod this game, I’m positive a QOL that moves the cooking tab to the left 1 slot would have been released within days.

I discovered the Lost Woods, which I loved but also hated for obvious reasons. The Deku Tree is all like, “I’ve protected Hyrule for ages,” or whatever and I’m like “well u sure fucked that one up buddy” I mean, come on. We all know who’s really doing all the work out here. Give me a break.

I finally relented and started working on shrines last night, after an intense and unrelenting pressure campaign from Donut. I’d worked my way back around to the areas near the base of the Plateau, which I skipped because I first hit Gerudo and explored outward from that direction, so I figure I can at least try the easier shrines for now.

The game has not yet forced me to attend the main quest, but we’re getting there. I uncovered a few areas I think are locked until I am at the appropriate place in the story (a second lab, for example, that is currently empty). I found a shrine asking for shit and I have no idea what it’s talking about. Stuff like that. I haven’t gotten the camera upgrade yet and yeah, it probably would have been smarter to do that before I explored 80% of the map but… (points to Quina Quen sign).

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild III - Shrines, Photos, and Koroks Edition

Remember when I pissed and cried about how shrines are too hard for my smooth brain or whatever? Yeah, well, it turns out I was just being a classic pissbaby. Go figure.

At Donut’s insistence I finally decided to complete a few shrines and before I knew it I’d done about 40 of them. Most were perfectly fine and I only noped out of a handful I didn’t like. It turns out the 2 I remembered being unfairly tedious were tedious because I was trying to complete them in the most difficult way possible because uh (raises hand, points to self) smooth. Facts are facts, folks.

Most of the shrines have puzzles you need to complete, but if the puzzle is the act of getting to a shrine (it’s in a maze, for instance) it’s called a blessing and you just get straight to the good stuff. I am always down for this, because I’d much rather run around in a weird giant maze than do a physics puzzle. I think I’ve marked all of the shrines that are visible from higher altitudes, so the remaining 70+ must be tucked away or hidden in caves or underground. It’s hard to imagine there are 120 of these, and harder to imagine completing them all, but I’ll keep looking.

I also rediscovered the camera and figured out I could take wildlife pictures. Donut asked what I get for doing this. “Nothing!” I replied cheerfully, as a electric keese fried my ass while I was trying to get the Perfect Closeup. I’m not sure that’s actually true, but in the grand scheme of Things Link Must Do filling the Hyrule Compedium is firmly relegated to side hustle.

Last, I must address the elephant in the room. The koroks. In a game whose main gameplay flaw is aggressive weapon decay, having limited slots for weapons is annoying. Koroks, of which there are 1000000 (or 900, whatever), can be found for points to open more slots. Nintendo basically said, “we want a collectible element that satisfies completely insane trophy hunters while managing to be useful and not overly burdensome to normies,” and this is what they came up with. You’ll probably encounter several dozen koroks just by walking around, and that’s enough to unlock a few extra weapon/shield/bow slots.

There are about 5 or so different type of korok encounters. Most of them are catagorically stupid (chase the sparkle, pick up the rock, shoot the target, drop the massive boulder into a hole somewhere, run fast as hell to this mountain, and some other thing I’m forgetting). The only ones I like are koroks under rocks, because when I drop the rock on its head it says, “Ouch!” (Donut likes this part too.) Some of the puzzles/games to get the koroks are annoying as hell. Has this stopped me from collecting them? NO! It has not. As the little korok indicator goes up, I feel stupider, but I don’t stop. Will I get 900? NO! I will die first! But I will never say no to extra weapon slots, so if I come across one and can reasonably catch it, I do. Well played, Nintendo, as usual. I am stripped of my meager dignity once again.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild IV - Hotlink

If I could send a .png back in time to myself, I would send this one to 1998 with the caption, “Don’t give up. This is what the future holds for you.”

Before I was kinda eyerolling how all the NPCs kept going on and on about how hot Link is, but whatever. Fine! I yield.

After Mount Doom set me on fire and summarily ejected me from its volcanic bosom I conflated heat protection with fire protection and went into the desert to track down heat-resistant armor. I originally discovered the Yiga hideout when I first left the Plateau but it was locked because a quest item is here and Nintendo doesn’t want you wrecking their storyflow. I now returned and the whole Yiga thing–the masks, the bananas, the way they stalk bananas–is my favorite thing ever, and their leader Kohga is my favorite Zelda character ever. Move over, Tingle. It’s Kohga time.

I returned to Mount Doom with my tits out and promptly got ejected. Again. Because heat =! fire. I now know I need to collect fire lizards and skewer them to make what will be my IDK third attempt to trevass (not a word? it should be!) the fiery wastes. What makes it doubly sad is I’ve actually been through this area before on a previous playthrough but for some reason I couldn’t remember heat =! fire and here we are.

I didn’t look, because I don’t want to spoil it, but I will be really disappointed if Yiga armor isn’t something I can add to my collection.

Things That Do Not Cause Brainrot

I’m recently (as of yesterday) back on this. Last time, I spent a lot of energy trying to reach Mount Doom the hard way (climbing steep cliffs, being set on fire, falling and dying). This time, I ate my shittiest fire potion (8 minutes) and took the freaking path and made it there with time to spare. I have no idea why I’m like this. But I have the fire-resistant armor now, and I’ve been poking around the area looking for shrines. I still have zero desire to mess with the divine beasts or do anything that has to do with the story. I have no idea if this will change. Taking pictures of birds is still very enjoyable.