Breath of the Wild - Chat & Review, Pt. I

Hey! Listen, friends!

I hope you are all doing well during these tough, weird and pressing but hopeful times we live in, safely evading the grasp of the virus. That goes doubly for my pals here at the blog, Olli and Ville.

Hi there! Are you doing alright?

Ville:
Hello, Janne! Things are going surprisingly well here. I've been in a fortunate position where I feel like I'm half on a vacation and half at work. I used to feel that being an introvert is always a disadvantage in the modern society. Now I've learned that being forced to cut down social contacts is actually helping me recharge mentally. It works well for me, but I don't want to brag too much about that because I know many others are not really benefitting from the current global situation.

What comes to games, I've been spending time with a city builder game called Surviving Mars. It's developed by my favourite Bulgarian developer, Haemimont Games. Their previous work includes three Tropico games of which I have played the delightfully humorous fifth installment. Surviving Mars is like Sim City but has more feeling of exploration and discovery, and hits a nerve in the part of my brain that loves to analyse and arrange. That's a free tip for you! ;-)

Janne:
Really glad to hear that. And thanks for the tip - the release trailer did get me excited. It's not long ago since I read the harsh but rather beautiful Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, so populating Mars does sound like a jolly fine adventure.

I've been doing rather well as well - and particularly well in some respects. There have been relatively few things that I've had to leave out, and in that sense I'm happy with where I am. Something as simple as going to a supermarket does require serious planning, for example, so nothing's really the way as it used to be. But then! If we choose to look at it in a positive light, even there we can find some fun and games. I mean, navigating aisles with people not wearing their masks or minding their safe distances? It's like Pac-Man all over again! Without the big power pellets, alas.

Believe me, I can echo your sentiments about the good things that have come with the situation. After getting a pause from the hustle and bustle of the ordinary work days at the office, I've had the chance to reorganise my days and I feel more rested than in a long, long time. When we get back to a more normal time, it would be good to take what we learn now and make use of it, somehow.

But funnily enough, there was one thing - a completely new thing - that helped me feel almost as if my daily environment was expanding, not getting smaller. And that was the eye-wateringly windy wilderness and fingertip-tingling warmth of the new Hyrule, would you believe it!

I hope that we - together, the three of us - can not only distract you for a moment or two from the peculiar reality (and almost alien isolation), but to propel you into your own little adventures within the Breath of the Wild! In practice, it means that we're doing this 99,42% free of spoilers. The screenshots are from the very first area of the game, and I will maybe reveal something about the first few minutes or so, but otherwise do feel safe to carry on. Here we go!

So, there it was, a tiny hand-held pocket console with a measly screen, but what a beautiful world opened up from that small window! It had breadth and depth in a way that I found it difficult to describe to myself. What it did resemble was - and forgive me for getting sappy so early on in the review - the naive expectations and the crazy, dreamy-eyed ideas and hopes from experiencing the early adventure games for the first time, way back. I'm talking about classics like Infiltrator II for C64, the Lord or the Rings Vol. 1, Elite and Betrayal at Krondor for PC. Our lack of skills and English vocabulary prevented us from reaching far - and yes, of course, the games were indeed rather restricted after all - but they implied so much! You started to wander beyond anything that the games could ever hope to give you.

In this new Hyrule I found that the vast expanse didn't seem to be merely implied and suggested at, nor teased. It seemed like the land was going in all the directions at once, alive, chirping, rustling, howling, crumbling, galloping, tweeting, whether I was looking or not. If I went in that direction, I'd see something new and interesting, or if I went the other way, there would be something odd and exciting. Game-days just whizzed by just by spectating the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets or tuning into to the calming nightly sounds of the nature.

And when I would close the console, I would somehow feel as if the world continued turning, only with Link having a bit of rest. Hyperbole or not, it just might be so that I haven't experienced that before.

I'm sorry if I'm making you repeat yourself (because in fear of spoilers I've only partly read your reviews - I know you will forgive me), but I'd like to know, did you find the new Hyrule to be, err, alive? Are there other open-world masterpieces that achieve the same that I simply haven't seen? Am I gushing over nothing? (On a potentially related and, shockingly, informational note, Horizon Zero Dawn for PC is confirmed for Summer 2020. Now, who needs the real outdoors, anymore?)

Ville:
To me, the great success of Breath of the Wild is in its ability to embed gameplay into the wilderness of Hyrule. You as a player don't rely on map markers and quest lists nearly as much as in other open-world games. Instead, you explore! What catches your eye in the horizon or on the map screen might be something valuable or interesting, a discovery waiting to be found.

Janne:
Yes, I think that was what I was most surprised about - no mission markers on the map or a compass that would tell you which way to go. The game has a really clever and simple way of making you find your own way and progress (and I'm not referring to the mysterious proximity-sensor-type thingie). That's actually been one of my favourite mechanics, since it also neatly subverts the issue that I griped about in a recent article: ho-hum filler fluff side missions unrelated to the main quest. Here we have much stronger focus on making some sort of progress on the main quest. Brilliant!

Ville:
Talking about quests, Breath of the Wild took a bold move in not forcing tutorials on the player about all the basic things you can do with your items. I don't want to spoil anything in particular, but I think it's safe to mention that I discovered some pretty basic and helpful mechanics only after actually completing the game. I can't exactly recall how much the game tried to nudge me into that particular direction. I have a feeling that I may have dismissed some evident clues early in the game and just went off to wander in the wilderness instead of staying to listen what certain NPCs could have taught me. On one hand, it's delightful that I was able to play the game "my way" without use of that particular thing. On the other hand, I was a bit bummed by missing out on a thing that could have made my time in Hyrule a little bit more rewarding.

In general, I'd like games to take these bold moves. It gets very dull when you notice that a game is built to make you experience it to the max, as if you and the game were nothing but two pieces of a machine that is tuned to hit high marks in a number of corporate-dictated performance characteristics. Breath of the Wild is not such a machine but a more organic creature.

Janne:
I get the same feeling. It's as if the game is less forced in its mechanics and structure than many, many of its rivals. Things happen if they are to happen, but not much is lost if they don't.

I've actually many times wondered what the magic was in open world games. What exactly is the joy in having an open world, when in practice it so often ends up being a binary choice of A) go here, in this direction, if you want to advance the plot or B) search for points of interest to find unrelated side quests? And I agree with your criticism, Ville, of the 'Lunar Rover' mechanic, that there really isn't many meaningful moment-to-moment decisions to be made after choosing the next destination in a traditional open world. It is, largely, about avoiding the waters and vertical cliffs.

Ville:
Thinking back to Horizon Zero Dawn, I didn't quite so much feel that its world was open for exploration like Hyrule is. Horizon seemed to me much more like a list of checkboxes. Here's a corrupted zone, here's a bandit camp, here's a main plotline advancement trigger. It felt so openly mechanical and only thinly veiled in gameplay functions like traversal and combat.

Janne:
--- Wait, noo! Must ... hold on to the dreams. I've hoped for so much from Horizon... ---

Ville:
Breath of the Wild is centered around the wilderness and how Link travels through it. The rest of the game springs out from this framework. A big part of why this seems to work so well must be the interconnectedness of the different gameplay features; how various items transform when they get exposed to damage, fire, or lightning; how monsters react to various situations; and in a specially big way the various modes of moving across the landscape.

Olli:
I have not played any massive open world PC, XBOX or PS games in many years so my knowledge about those is quite limited. However, back in the good days, there was GTA (the first one) which I enjoyed much. One of the best open world games that I have played. Time has passed though and I would have to play it again to see if it really was a masterpiece. Many games that I thought were good have turned out to be bad when I have tried those again.

Janne:
I know the feeling, Olli. Inspired by the recollection of Infiltrator II, I recently watched a Let's Play video on Youtube. The experience left me, a bit surprisingly, totally and utterly satisfied with only having seen a short video. I was not hungry for more, to put it mildly!

Expectations can be fickle friends. But I think with Breath of the Wild they worked firmly in my favour.

I originally approached the game with high enough hopes, knowing the standards for past Zelda games. I thought I would be getting a storyline, mission arches, puzzle mechanics and a Hyrule that create that feel of a traditional Zelda game. You know the Zelda script, right? It goes like this - and, mind, I say this with all the warmth and love for the series and its creators:

1. Pleasantly disorienting "surprise" beginning, where you get your bearings.
2. Tutorial, where you learn the new mechanics and other basics.
3. When you've proven that you're ready, the big quest and the familiar challenge structure to complete it is laid out in front of you.
4. And then the comfortable romp itself settles in, occasionally twisting.

And? What happened?

Sure enough, I did get my surprising introduction. But it wasn't at all like I was expecting. What was this? I'm an adult already? I'm called for some mysterious mission? Is that Navi's voice? Maybe it wasn't, or maybe it was. In any case, I'm not ready yet, for any sort of responsibility! This is not how these stories normally begin... I was just as confused as Link seemed to be.

Ville:
For me, the beginning was more like a standard open world introduction phase. First you walk though some narrow corridor and listen to introductory narrative. Then you proceed to a limited, relatively safe area to practice basic gameplay mechanics. And finally you are let free to experience the full game. I see this phase as compulsory to get the player to attach to the mechanics and the feel of the game. Things need to be introduced a little at a time. But even the introduction was more "open" than in many other similar games. For me the first hint was an apple tree. I could climb it and pick up an apple that was too high to reach from the ground. Experiencing the possibility of that relatively innocuous series of actions was a big sign to me that the game has a lot to offer on the mechanics side. I can see two things that impressed me there.

First, I didn't have to pick up the apple. The game didn't tell me to do so, nor was there any apparent need to hoard apples either. But picking up that apple did have gameplay implications. The UI revealed to me that apples can be eaten to recover health. This made me feel that there are meaningful nuances that are not just laid out in front of me but that I can discover by taking the long road.

Second, climbing the tree and picking up the apple were done seamlessly with the very same controls that you use to move Link around Hyrule and interact with objects. Yet, these basic controls allowed me to do something so different than just traversal or mashing a button at a UI prompt to confirm an action that the game decided to offer me. To me it added an extra layer of detail into the game world. A tree is not just an obstacle (usually represented by simple cylinders in program code) but a detailed object that can be navigated. It was almost like traveling in space and discovering a worm hole that gave you a peek into a new dimension.

Janne:
Really nice way of putting it! As a general rule in Breath of the Wild, yes, many things in the world can be interacted with in many different and quite natural ways. And finding those ways either by way of a happy accident or a random, curious trial was always a nice moment. You know what else likes apples?

Mechanically, these instances felt seamless and natural, not at all abrupt. But to me, personally, they were important in that they gave me the ability to think as if I'm a habitant of the world - to think "okay, I'm in this kind of situation, what should I do" as a habitant of the world - not a player.

You pick up on things as you go along and see the world, of course, see the characters and learn about the surroundings. But perhaps it felt so different to me because some of the fabric of Zelda games had been swapped out for something different. That fabric was pulled under my feet and I felt unstable and vulnerable. The world feeling alive around me only strengthened that feeling of having to be alert and pay attention.

Maybe it's precisely the solid, time-tested and accepted conventions in Zelda games that make even the smallest deviations feel so powerful?

What would you say, did you have any strong expectations for the game? Maybe the mission structure compared to earlier Zeldas? Did you feel like the sacred Zelda tropes had been shaken up and turned on their heads? Ville, do I remember correctly that you didn't have much background in Zelda games? Were you familiar with the basic structures or recurring storylines and the lore?

Ville:
I had played a couple of Zeldas before, mostly on Nintendo DS. I was familiar with the central characters and the concept of the game series, but I was never so much a fan. I grew up with the Commodore 64, and Nintendo was a whole different world that I only experienced from the side, mostly when visiting friends who all seemed to be able to play their 8-bit Nintendo games from start to finish in an afternoon without breaking sweat.

I actually wrote down some initial expectations before starting to play Breath of the Wild. I wrote down things like "I'm skeptical that the game will impress me a lot" and "Eventually I'll learn that various gameplay mechanics have strict limits and that they don't interact with each other but in tightly controller narrow ways." In retrospect, I was being pessimistic. Now, after completing it, I do consider Breath of the Wild a very compelling game that excels in its original gameplay and delightfully breaks away from the tropes of the common open-world games.

Janne:
Yes, I remember reading that, and I was really happy to learn that Breath of the Wild sidestepped those worries for you. Actually, it was your review that made me pay attention to the new Zelda's "mechanical" strengths. I needed that extra convincing because I originally never planned to become a Nintendo Switch player, so there was a sizeable threshold. I could always trust in a Zelda game to bring the history and charm, but I was unsure if the gameplay could give me much new to discover.

Olli:
I had very strong expectations for the game. It had been delayed many times to make it a Switch launch title and developers had lots of time to polish it. I followed news around it quite actively, so I kind of expected that they were going to change things more this time. I think they were able to break the basic structures quite nicely so that this still feels like a genuine Zelda game.

Janne:
Yes, it does have an air of a Zelda game even when so much has changed. I've no idea how they've managed to do that, and I suspect that simply leaning on a few familiar names and faces doesn't even begin to answer the question. It didn't remind me of any particular earlier installment of the series, but still there was a sense that this was a part of the continuum, only a part that I hadn't known about before.

And I'm already anxious to see the rest. You see, I had to put a stop halfway through. I was going through the game with such an appetite that I knew it was best to save some for a later time. So, the Switch and the game was shipped halfway across the country to my brother's care, where I know it will be equally appreciated.

There's still lots and lots to talk about, so we'll be making another episode of Breath of the Wild "chat & review" in the near future.

Thanks, Olli and Ville, and everybody! See you next time!