2 Years Later, 100 Years Late - Breath of the Wild Retrospective

Hey all!

I was playing this game (as I am usually found doing) and all the wonder, all the excitement, all the pure elation of Zelda games just came flooding over me. This was my first Zelda game, but not my introduction to the whole series. After becoming obsessed with the characters, the story, and generally becoming more enthusiastic about Nintendo and gaming itself, I found that Breath of the Wild was going to be my ultimatum. Video games is an expensive hobby, and albeit that's what gradually slowed down my momentum after childhood utopia in GameCube, Wii and DS Lite. Throw in online games and here I am reminiscing on all the hours I spent on Webkinz, Club Penguin, Poptropica, Neopets, Moshi Monsters, my absolute devastation when I found out Shining Stars was not going to be updating their movie making mini game, because they went bankrupt.

I digress, the point is, here I was, contemplating what my next move was in the world of entertainment. We all have something we do to entertain us, hobbies and passions that get us through the long school days, and to look forward to days in the future where things will be a bit better.

It was at this time where I was also determining what exactly I liked about games. As a kid, they were extremely appealing - colourful, fun, taught lessons, had similar concepts and just felt like living, momentarily, in another world and trying to benefit the character that represented you within that would the best you could. Every trading table in Webkinz, every secret mission in Club Penguin, every new petpetpet, I did it for you ten-year old me. And all that WiiFit, Mario Party 7, Monkey Ball and make-belief, it was a wonderful way to spend time with my family and my siblings, to laugh and whine and win and lose. To pick favourites, pick detestables, and just play. But, as it turns out, we couldn't play forever. My parents got too busy to play Mario Party with me. So did my sister. The mini games were getting repetitive - we found every shortcut, every switch and lever. And with no one else to play with to provide a new perspective, make things interesting, it just got...boring.

I was thrown back into the world of video games when League of Legends got popular. Granted, I was still keeping up with new Poptropica Islands up until the end of middle school, but even that was getting tedious and the new developments into HD and sound effects gave my old, crusty-ass account a difficult transition period. Anyways, I remember the day when a guy came up to me in 8th grade and asked: "Do you play league?" I said no. "You should play it. You're Korean. You'd be good at it."

An oh BOI if someone thought I would be good at something I just HAD to try it out because I needed any excuse to jump up my slowly plummeting self-esteem.

I made it to the download page but I took one look at my slow, thicc, very old, bulky laptop and just knew: yeah, this isn't gonna happen. I always figured that one day, I'd try again but I don't know, looking at it now, I just feel like it wouldn't be my kind of game. Granted, I never did try it, but maybe that's OK. I don't need to get all the references my classmates made, I didn't need to play the games that everyone else did just so that I felt better about myself and was able to hang out with the people that I wanted to get to know better.

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie: it was totally about being more popular with the boys.

But I didn't fall into that trap. That's all that matters.

Anyways, discovering the games that my classmates were into, I started to see more of what games were, what they had become. Because it wasn't just Club Penguin and Mario Kart Double Dash anymore, it was a whole world of RPGs, MMOs, I still don't really know what those mean, and the leisurely smart phone games: Flappy Bird, Battle Cats, Neko Atsume, completely different concepts that I never knew could have existed before. I found that I absolutely adored rhythm games and would cycle through them to save space on my tablet. Man, getting Piano Tiles for the first time was and experience I remember working my way to triple crowning every single song (there's literally too many now though). I was actually a legend in my class, believe it or not, button mashing my way to first place on the leaderboards. Frankly, I've lost my touch now, but the laurels were great while they lasted. (damn, sorry this is so all over the place, but there's just so much to contemplate now that I have the luxury of hindsight).

Bottom line is - I saw that there was so much more to games. To gaming, as an industry, as a hobby. It wasn't a stereotypical teenage boy in his basement button mashing to kill some zombies in a dark room anymore - it was a whole variety of genres, of diverse and innovative gameplay and styles, it was terrific new ideas and technologies, and now look! Virtual Reality is here and although I've never been through one of those mall "hey check this out!" booths I hear it's actually so amazing and a worthwhile investment. Maybe someday.

Just like the books I struggled to find what I enjoyed and would leave unfinished, finding a game to love and cherish was an unforgettable feeling. I wondered if I would be able to find something like Rhythm Heaven, or The Legendary Starfy, games I loved until the fateful day my lovely DS decided it couldn't handle it no more.

Honestly, my sister starting to get into gaming was really what kind of launched me back into this world. I kind of jumped into it WAY deeper than she did, and she did have an external influence pushing her to do so. I but I still remember both of our frenzied excitement the day we sat cross-legged on our couch and played Super Smash Bros for the first time. Because Super Smash Flash had been so popular in my class at the time, I had spent a lot of time honing my skills on my computer screen, in the hopes that one day a friend would challenge me while on the computers at school and I would be able to thrash them and win the day. Alas, the keyboard didn't translate so well to the Wii remote and my first games were absolute sadness. I'm still a sucky player and I have friends who managed to get ahead of me because they ended up buying it for themselves and getting a lot more practice because my copy is scratched up and unreliable. If they are reading this, I showed you this world I hope you're grateful.

But back to Breath of the Wild. I actually remember hearing about Zelda for the first time. I knew she was a princess but my ignorant little child brain was like "she couldn't possible be as cool as Peach and Daisy." oof. big oof. She is so much cooler. I think I was intimidated by the darker tones of the Zelda series because it was around the time Twilight Princess was sort of the primary face of the series. In my imagination I sort of threw Zelda into my imaginations whenever I needed an extra princess in the mix.

WHICH REMINDS ME. I WOULD FREAKIN' LUCID DREAM ABOUT THE MARIO CHARACTERS WHEN I WAS YOUNGER. LIKE ACTUALLY. I THINK I HAD A PROBLEM.

But sleeping on Zelda, oof, that was like the biggest mistake of my life. Because now this series has consumed my life. Be careful who you call ugly in middle school amiright? Not even though, the Legend of Zelda was always a masterpiece I was just unabletoidentifytalent.exe.

When I saw the Breath of the Wild trailer, something just clicked. I watched it and saw a world I had never seen in a video game before. A world I knew was to fantastic for anything I could have ever dreamed of in my entire life, but still felt like it had been somewhere in the corners of my mind all along, waiting to be realized. I was aware it was a new and very different story from past Zelda games, and from the talk I heard, it was big. Really big.

I just had to play it.

But I didn't want to go in blind, right? I borrowed a DS, I got through the intro of Ocarina of Time. When I had to return the DS, I borrowed the Zelda manga books my school library miraculously had on shelf. I read every one they had, Ocarina of Time, Oracle of Seasons and Ages, Twilight Princess, Four Swords. I tried to familiarize myself with all the game titles, I found the "Official Timeline" and confused the crap out of myself trying to understand it. I borrowed games from the library but never was able to get anywhere in them because someone always had it on freakin' hold before I got the chance to play it. But the eternal reincarnation of the Hero, the Princess and Ganon gave every story such possibility. It was the same world but never the same thing. You could never get tired of what you found, saw, and discovered.

I think the first big game I every really...finished(?) was Fire Emblem: Awakening. It took so long and I delayed it for months but beating it gave me the lightest feeling in the world. With so much time spent with the characters, really interacting with them, beating down the enemy armies and getting stronger each level up, reaching the end of the game was a sweet, sweet victory. Finally vanquishing the big threat, roll credits, stream the tears. That's why Awakening will always hold a special place in my heart (even if it was basically just a dating sim disguised as a turn-based strategy war game lol). It showed me what a game could be, it let me know just what kind of games I loved and adored.

YouTube gaming videos and channels also became a huge investment of my time. Discovering Game Theory was one of the most exciting moments of my life because MatPat and Steph are literally some of the chillest, coolest people I've heard of and I just love the theories - challenging the gaming community to look deeper and the lore, the characters, the easter eggs. To look too deeply into things and make stuff up. That's where I learned that a game, a book, a movie, it doesn't end when it reaches the us. That's where it starts to take a life of it's own. Art, theories, fanfictions, alternate realities, original characters, I found that what I'd been doing mindlessly since I was 5 and obsessed with Strawberry Shortcake - there were names to them and there was value to it. Value to loving something so much you had to just let the world know. Value to creating things based off something someone else had created. That it didn't have to be original to be appreciated. And with friends who introduced me to watching playthroughs if I couldn't afford games for myself, people who helped me navigate this crazy world because when I stepped into EB games for the first time I knew nothing. Discovering great Indie games like To the Moon and Rakuen, the Binding of Isaac and Undertale - golly there's just so much to say and not enough ways to say it.

But Breath of the Wild...man, Breath of the Wild took my breath away.

Stepping out of the Shrine of Resurrection, jumping for the first time on command. Letting the cut scene spill onto the screen as Link steps over to the top of that hill and gazes out at an unexplored world waiting for its secrets to be discovered - a world entirely to myself - it was magical. I couldn't stop smiling.

I beat Breath of the Wild the July of 2018 (I was soo slow I know, agh). I had gotten all the Divine Beasts, I had unlocked all the memories. I just didn't want this magnificent experience to end. Fighting Ganon was the biggest boss battle I had every faced in my LIFE and I had brought my Wii U downstairs too so it was on the big HD screen. It was spectacular. The number of times I had to eat my way back to health and just spam buttons and hope they hit was...too many to feel proud of myself because it took virtually zero skill with my great my "strategies" were going. But it felt so good. Coming off the Great Plateau and seeing my first moblin was like "oh no I've made a mistake." But getting stronger, getting more comfortable with the controls, finally being able to deflect the goddamn guardian lasers, that was utter BLISS. Now I can cruise into the ruins of Castle Town and come out virtually unscathed. Finding crazy stupid ways out of crazy stupid situations is what I live for and there are so many hilarious people I've found who make terrific videos really pulling all the strings Breath of the Wild had left dangling in front of us for us to wonder what they do. The greatest part about finally beating it was watching all the Youtube videos. Holy CRAP there was so much to unpack! I could finally watch all the theories, all the fail compilations, freakin' If Link Could Talk which is an absolute GOLDMINE (thank you, thank you for existing, Erickson Gaming). All the music, the OSTs I could officially listen to and reminisce on. The remixes and original songs. BRINGING A CUCCO TO GANONDORF. I remember the night after I beat the game, falling asleep to the 4-hour stream of GameChamp3000 trying to see if it was possible to beat Breath of the Wild without the climbing mechanic. When I came to after dozing off for a bit HE WAS STILL IN THE SHRINE OF RESURRECTION. Just everything about the community, it completely sucked me in. There was no going back now. I was sold.

It's crazy the course your life can take, innit?

I hope to be around to see this new age of gaming and technology flourish. Games are...amazing. Finding games that I love and will remember forever is amazing. What's in store, I can't even begin to imagine but I know that these stories, they'll live on. I can't wait or believe that someday, decades and decades from now, someone is going to be picking up this game for the first time and experience all the wonder and beauty I did. And while we inevitably grow up, I hope more than anything that I will be good at being an adult - that I will be able to calculate my taxes; that I'll be able to prepare and cook good food and that I'll make enough money to sustain myself and live in relative comfort; I hope that I'll be independent and learn to deal with shitty life stuff and difficult days; I hope that one day, that horrible, horrible voice that tells me I'm a worthless, unwanted, ungrateful, twisted person finally shuts up and I can stand up tall and finally declare who I really am, faults and all, and still find a reason to smile. And I hope that even when I am old, older, and have already made it past most of my life, I hope that I'll always, always remember what it is like

to dream

to imagine

to adventure

to create

to play.

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PHEW that was really long and the most emotion I've poured into a piece of writing in a long time. Holy heck, that's a lot of reminiscing! And words. Too many words. OK, OK, here are some great Zelda videos to watch after that eyesore!

Deathly Lonliness Attacks is a MINDBLOWING PV that really nails it. It really delves into Link's character and makes him more real, thinking about him and what he's been through, the people he's left behind, the people he's let down. The life of a fate-chosen Hero. Really catchy song too, and stellar animation!

As for channels that deliver that sweet sweet Zelda content, some really good channels are:

- Zeltik (theories, news, lore, the whole shebang. So in depth and well executed, I love)

- NintendoBlackCrisis (theories and commentary on Breath of the Wild)

- Austin John Plays (great tips, hacks, as well as an ongoing series about different BotW mods!)

- dannydinosaur (has a great ongoing BotW playthrough on his channel)

- 8-bit Music Theory (has w 4-part series on the music of Breath of the Wild and really gives insight into how astonishing of a score it truly gives)

- PeanutButterGamer (the guy literally started Zelda month (November) and has a pretty stellar BotW rap tribute song. I haven't checked out too much of his stuff to be honest, but I'm sure he's worth looking into!)

- NateWantsToBattle - Give Heart Records (he literally made a whole album with songs based off the story of Ocarina of Time go listen to it)

Here a playlist of some ot my favourite Zelda related videos, from music to theories to animations, if you get the chance give it a look! I spend too much time on YouTube and I know it: Legend of Zelda On Repeat

That's all for now, I hope you have an awesome day! It is almost 4 in the morning and I haven't slept send help thanks byeeee!!!

#LegendofZelda #alittlebitofrandom #storytime #TBT