New Zelda, I Can’t Quit You
I’m still lost in Hyrule
Like an endless buffet that I just can’t quit, Zelda: Breath of the Wild keeps calling me back for one more helping.
I have other video games to play. I have other things to do. At work I hear the whisper, “Zellllllda…” On line at the post office I hear the call, “Linnnnnk…” Despite a growing pile of both adult responsibilities and other interactive experiences to try (and possibly write about), I’m lost in Hyrule, and I don’t know if I want to find my way back out.
In this new Zelda you can begin, get through the tutorial-region, and run to the Big Boss, Gannon, in under and hour. Many devoted speed-runners are doing just that with quite a bit of style. As I already wrote about at length when I began Breath of the Wild about a month ago, the game can also be played at a far more leisurely pace, and that is indeed how I have continued my adventure. At around the halfway mark, 70-ish hours in, I still have little desire to find Gannon and wrap the crusade up.
This particular iteration of Zelda is a bit funny when compared to previous entries in that there is so little to accomplish in terms of the Big Quest. Once you’ve unlocked the basic goal of defeating Gannon, there are four major sub-quests to try your hand at, the so-called Divine Beasts (or Animal Robot Friends Gone Wild, as I call them). But I’m sort of avoiding them. Despite so little of a main course, the various appetizers are endless. And aren’t the appetizers always the best part?
So what have I been doing for 70 hours if I’m not en route to beat the Big Boss at all costs? So many things!
Dress up time
There’s the armor. Or should I say, “Link’s fabulous dress up time”? First, all of the armor is stylish, jumping from sleek ninja to rowdy steampunk, but with a unifying aesthetic that blends perfectly with the beautiful and diverse setting. In general, it exists in three parts: helmet, chest piece, and the ever-popular leggings. Sometimes all three are available in a specific regional shop, but even then, they ain’t cheap (I’m off to the mines to get enough ore for my ninja mask, Ma!).
And just as often, fancy armor sets are scattered piecemeal about the sprawling map. They can be found anywhere, and should you get all three pieces of any set, you are often given a bonus, like BECOMING FIREPROOF. Then there are the bodacious fairies who will upgrade your armor at wildly specific costs, such as three glowing stones and five purple monster guts. Which usher still-other set-specific bonuses, like FAST NIGHT RUNNING (it’s cooler than it sounds).
Needless to say, the search for all of the pretty pieces (and all of their requisite upgrades) is a bit distracting. On top of that, you can bring the pieces to a specialty shop that colors them to your liking by dipping you in a vat of dye. Each armor in Zelda is a pleasure to find, complete, improve, and then customize like you’re dressing up your favorite doll in the toy box, and part of me never wants to find them all. But I will.
Cartography school
And then there’s the map. In theory, you can go anywhere on the giant mass of Hyrule as soon as you complete the tutorial region. But in order to fill in all of its monuments and cartographic details, you need to find a given area’s requisite giant Sheikah tower, climb the thing, and stick your corresponding Sheikah slate into a magic glow podium in order to unveil a given section’s specific landmarks and terrain. Fwoosh, you’ve replaced the indistinct blue grid with rich satisfying mappy bits, and the process is oddly satisfying. You can generally spot towers from very far away (incomplete ones glow red), which creates the distorted sense that you can definitely reach that thing, no problem, only to realize two hours later that there’s a swamp and a mountain range and a bunch of mean wizards between you and it before you can even try to climb it. Better hope it doesn’t rain.
Once you’ve unlocked a piece of the map, there’s more sight-seeing to do. If you don’t notice a shrine to conquer or some ruins to explore and exploit while standing on high above the majestic rolling fields, you’re sure to spot something unusual on the zoom-able map. Drop a point, go and see. Probably run into a stable along the way, get distracted by a side-quest, finally find some new armor, or else a magical robot who makes ancient swords. Rinse and repeat.
And the actual…you know…quest…
The main plot points, the Divine Beasts, are, to me at least, oddly one of the least exciting aspects of the journey. Having made my way through two of them, it seems that each Divine Beast is that age-old tale of a giant robot animal weapon intended for good but turned against the cause. Like The Revolutionary War, but with giant robot animals. To make it worse, each big robot was originally piloted by one of your old friends from 100 years ago each of whom is definitely a ghost at this point (because you were asleep for 100 years), an even bigger bummer because one of them is your foxy fish ex-girlfriend. Standard stuff.
The Divine Beasts are big lumbering robots that you eventually climb into and hopefully conquer via messing about with their guts. They look like they were designed by outer space Aztecs on acid, which is no bad thing. But I have a dark confession: completing the Divine Beast Quests feels like a bit of a chore. Once you’re inside the Beasts, they resemble an expanded take on the puzzle-based shrines that are so merrily dotted across the map of Hyrule. In general, the individual shrines work wonderfully because they are, for the most part, concise. At their best, they function like a well-executed puzzle from Portal or The Witness. At their worst, they’re briefly annoying and you still get a reward. The Divine Beasts interiors try hard to stand in for actual Zelda-type dungeons, but they overstay their welcome a bit. The beast-dungeons add a little twist to the shrine formula in that you can move the big robo-animal around to solve some puzzles (pointing a giant elephant trunk to extinguish a fire and the like), and there’s a mini-boss at the end. But mostly while I’m in them, I just can’t wait to get back outside.
The good news is that the rogue robots tend to be surrounded by a new unique village in a new and specific climate, and each new locale is brimming with a requisite pile of indigenous people and fun new ingredients and gear to uncover. All of that is reason enough to keep finding the Big Beasts and embarking on their quests. It isn’t as if any of this is awful, it’s simply the least fun thing in a game filled with many of the most fun things ever. Plus finishing the local beast usually makes the requisite tribal leader very happy, too.
Messing about like a pro
And that’s all small potatoes because the best thing about the new Zelda is simply running around, finding anything, and messing about with it in whatever way I see fit. The buffet is truly endless.
I pause regularly to hunt giant dragons. I’ve run across a magical glow-beast at a midnight pool, snuck up on it, and ridden it (like a horse! Nothing weird here!) into the glowing night only to be struck down by lightning and kicked in the face by a hulking lizard skeleton (true story). I found a gigantic mysterious forest with a sacred sword inside, and discovered that I wasn’t cool enough to pull it out yet according to the enormous and friendly tree that spoke to me at length about the matter. I found a creepy little dude who sells monster masks, a monstrous labyrinth chilling out in the middle of the ocean, a lava-based roller-coaster in a volcano, and a bird who plays the accordion (that guy gets around). And if you don’t find something as cool as any of that, you pretty much always find a funny little forest dweller bearing a seed that will help you expand your inventory. They’re hiding freaking everywhere, you always need more inventory space, and they are always fun to drop a rock onto.
And don’t get me started on cooking.
Never gonna quit you
Really, there’s so much to do in this Hyrule that has so few goals, it’s staggering, but it’s not getting tedious. I never feel intimidated or overwhelmed by all the things, I feel inspired. Tasks and ideas fall before me naturally, and my individual quest and story evolves and changes as I play. There’s all of this stuff to do, I rack up hours and hours, but I’m not left with that icky feeling that so many other open world experiences leave me with, that stubborn desire to just finish the damn thing. I never get full at this buffet.
What’s really going on here is that I’m in the middle of one of the best games I’ve ever played. With well over thirty years sunk into the pursuit of video games, that’s no small statement. The craving for this particular version of Hyrule calls to me wherever I turn, and I don’t want to silence it. New Zelda, I can’t quit you, and I don’t want to.
As long-time series producer Eiji Aonuma said, “I still get the feeling that there are so many things left that we didn’t get a chance to achieve.” Damn straight, Eiji. I’m going back up to the buffet again.
This is Part 2 of 3 in my ongoing journey through Zelda: Breath of the Wild. See Part 1, ‘Hyrule Crossing,’ here. I’ll write Part three once I…gulp…finish the game…
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My name is Marty. I make all sorts of things: books, art, puppets, sandwiches, you name it.
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Originally published at www.martystuff.com.
