“The Space Between Points”
In Ian Bogosts’s book, How To Do Things With Videogames, he discuss the modern travel experience, specifically how it changed with the advent of the railroad and then with the airplane. Because of these advances in technology we have ceased to really journey. Our experience of the space that we pass through, even while we drive, is truncated. He goes on to say that it is now videogames which can provide us with the joy of a journey.
Even with the modern day advent of “fast travel” in videogames, a mechanic which usually allows you to quickly teleport to an area you’ve been to previously, you must generally arrive at the location by foot first. Some games, however, manage to incentivize exploration even after fast travel has been unlocked. This is exactly the case in Nintendo’s latest entry in the Zelda franchise, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The journeying that Bogost talks about is one of the things that makes Breath of the Wild so enjoyable. The game does its best to incentivize exploration, and there is a ton of content to be found out in the wild (heh).
This content ranges from miniature dungeons which when completed can allow the player to increase their health or stamina, while often containing useful items to boot, to small collectibles called “korok seeds” which allow the player to expand their inventory.
Shrines and seeds fill out the collectible aspect of the game, something objective based for the player to do while they are out exploring the game’s world. But there is more to find besides these. Powerful mini-bosses also roam the world, and while there is a side quest to defeat them all the player will not be aware of this at the start of the game, and even when they are can choose how much or how little to engage with it.
From the end of the prologue, in which the player must glide off of a plateau into the game’s primary playable area (although this plateau is just as much a part of the map itself, only sectioned off initially by the player’s lack of a sailcloth) you are given the means and ability to explore nearly all of the game’s map. While some areas may prove dangerous, or may require you to find one piece of equipment or another to easily traverse, the game does very little to limit you, most of the time.
In addition, the games boasts a feature which will some took issue with, I thought was ingenious for encouraging the player to explore.
This nifty little device, known as the “Sheikah Sensor” will beep and pulsate whenever the player is in the vicinity of a shrine. While I did have some friends tell me that either the beeping was annoying, or that it hurt their sense of discovery, for me it was the opposite. Every time I heard this beeping it was a signal that there was something interesting to be found. A shrine, obviously, but generally that shrine was not in plain sight. Between me and that shrine there was probably a lot that was worth wandering into. While the primary function of the sensor is to locate shrines, I think the more important function was to signal to the player that here is a good place to wander off the beaten path, whether you intend to beeline for where the shrine might be or not.
While this game, like many others, does allow for fast travel to shrines previously discovered oftentimes I found myself not using it unless I felt I’d exhausted the options for exploration in a given area. And I did not feel that very often. In my time with the game, it seemed like there was always something to do over the horizon. While the core game experience is worth the player’s attention alone, for me it was more fun to simply go out into the wild and wander — to enjoy the “space between points.”
