I was travelling to one of the stables on horseback. It wasn’t until this play session that I realised every stable had a shrine nearby to make it easier to access the sidequests and services on offer. As I was travelling back towards these stables from Rito Village the two shrines next to the two stables stuck out like sore thumbs. It was on the way to the second stable when I saw a pillar of blue light on a nearby mountain. As I was travelling on a road, I let my horse keep moving as I panned the camera towards the hill in question, observing a gentle incline that looked easily ridable. I continued riding towards the stable and continued playing the game, but that lone hill with its glowing blue marker kept invading my thoughts. Finally a couple play sessions later, I decided to go off on a little adventure. I took off from the stable at the crack of dawn, enjoying my leisurely stroll on horseback towards the mountain, easily riding up its incline. What I found at the end of that gentle slope and around a bend on the hill was a small pond, a small pond surrounded by cherry blossoms. It was such a serene and lovely little part of the world tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Further exploration found a few Korok seeds, a shrine, and then a cooking pot surrounded by skeletons as it was no longer light out (isn’t it amazing how much time can pass when you're in a shrine). At this point the adventure felt completed so I climbed upon my horse and headed back towards the stable I had departed from the previous morning. I spent over 50 hours with Breath of the Wild, and while I had many other such adventures, this one sticks out as my favourite moment of the entire game. It's odd right? Sure there were Korok seeds, and a shrine, but it's the pond itself, surrounded by cherry blossoms that sticks out most firmly in my mind. That pond was the reward for exploring what was on that hill.
Is the world better than the game?
When I think back on Breath of the Wild, what I loved the most were those small moments of connecting with the world. The serenity of running through the grass as the wind blows through it. The way sunsets reflect off the surface of a pool of water, or how the dirt and rocks gain a glossy reflective texture when it rains. The title Breath of the Wild is appropriate because the care that has gone into making this world feel alive and beautiful is without question. The first time I saw a dragon flying in the distance I was awestruck. When I entered Rito Village for the first time, how exiting the canyon allows the village to be framed in such a way to be wowed at the sheer verticality of it, or heck, let's go simple. Often the most reflective moments are riding on horseback through the expansive fields of Hyrule, listening to the sparse piano hint at something greater and more bombastic, but never delivering. Thematically appropriate considering how I regard the rest of the game.
Ok, that’s being a bit cheeky, but it's not ridiculous to say that any time I wasn't traversing the land on my own terms, riding, climbing, or gliding around, enjoying the scenery and the weather, I wasn't really enjoying myself. I think the phrase "on my own terms" is important here. Early on, on the Great Plateau, I keyed into the idea that if you were storming an enemy camp or fighting enemies face to face, you had failed in some way. This feeling was given some credence listening to the game’s GDC talk. How when designing each encounter, there was indeed a "correct solution", but the developers didn't want the players to search for it. The point of the physics and chemistry systems, of the runes, and the way all the effects of the world work in tandem allows experimentation and ingenuity on the part of the player. This strengthens that feeling I had that if you find yourself in a face to face fight with a foe, you have somehow failed. I mean yes, minibosses and the Ganon fights are an exception, but are they? Even these fights seem to delight in the idea of the player thinking up fun ways to break the encounter or make it trivial, or the player should be so adept at the tools available that they have fun showcasing their mastery.
Sadly I don't have much experimentation or ingenuity in me. As for mastery of the tools available, ha! I really want to blame the controls too. I was using the joy cons hooked together in puppy dog mode, and even in the final fight with Calamity Ganon, instead of running in the direction I wanted Link to go in, he would crouch, and this would result in damage. I never felt like I knew when or how to trigger a flurry rush, but watching a lot of critique videos after I had finished the game let me know I'm not alone there. The window and trigger for the rush seems arbitrary, which is regrettable for such a useful combat tool. To say something positive, gyro aiming for the bow is the best thing ever, especially when combined with bullet time in the air. I just wish bows didn't break so easily, or at all. And since I mentioned bows breaking, I guess now is a good a time as any to inject my opinions on weapon durability into the discourse.
My opinions on weapon durability and degradation
Even late in my playthrough, I never felt that my weapons were as powerful as they needed to be. It did make me feel better about my difficulties dodging attacks and activating Flurry Rush, because what use is masterful play when your weapons are doing jack all to an enemy's health? There is enemy scaling as one plays through the game which increases the weapons you can obtain from downed foes, but the joy of having a strong weapon makes little difference when it's going to break after a few hits. I've mentioned in other vidoes how I love power scaling in RPGs. The arc of starting out weak, and by the end of the game being able to tackle any challenge the thrown your way due to experience. Of course in most games this experience is numerical. You level up enough, or your gear is strong enough that nothing poses a challenge anymore. Your health and strength overwhelm any encounter you come across, and I love that. The slow climb is sweet, because you’re the one who climbed that mountain. You're at the summit now, and you deserve this feeling of mastery.
Now as I said, there is power scaling in Breath of the Wild. Stronger enemies drop stronger gear, and more dangerous areas of the map hide greater rewards. There's also improving armour at the fairy shrines, and gaining more heart pieces and stamina as the player collects more spirit orbs, but even at the end I felt very similar to how I felt at the start. Like I had to use everything at my disposal to get through a combat encounter, and if I was fighting one on one, I had somehow failed. I think the durability system is the reason behind this. If the player was able to keep an arsenal of increasingly powerful weapons and shields as they made their way through the game, earlier encounters would feel trivial. Those red bokoblins and base-level Moblins require very little effort, but they're usually mixed with the tougher variants. Would those tougher variants be as imposing if I didn't have to worry about "wasting weapons"? Cause even with late-game weapons, that they break makes me not want to use them, and this is counter to how I felt about the durability system during my time on the Great Plateau.
The Great Plateau versus the open world
The Great Plateau nails the idea of power scaling because you start with nothing. Seeing the area is meant to teach how the game works to the player, every discovery is monumental as you piece together just what Breath of the Wild can do. Every new weapon, shield, and bow picked up is a triumph. Every enemy camp cleared a milestone. You acquire the tools of your trade (the runes in the shrines) and the game keeps opening up with possibilities. Before this playthrough I attempted playing Breath of the Wild 2 times, and on this third attempt my pathway through the Great Plateau was vastly different to the other two, and just as enjoyable. Joseph Anderson said in his critique that the Great Plateau is a miniaturized version of the entire game. I disagree. I think it's the best part of the game. That's not only because of the aforementioned power scaling with each new discovery, but the discoveries themselves. Once the player leaves The Great Plateau, it's not that their experience plateaus (after all, the story I told earlier about my favourite part of the game was hours later), but the enjoyability of the power scaling sure does. It's because as a tutorial section, everything in the Great Plateau is as handcrafted as the rest of the vast world on offer, but all its secrets and its beauty is manageable. The game is able to guide the player's experience due to the Plateau's lack of scope.
And isn't that the problem with all open world games? They're too fucking big and they’re not worth exploring? Despite its size, I think Breath of the Wild succeeds in having a world worth exploring. How even if it's a Korok seed, there's something to discover in every nook and cranny on the map. How getting to these places is often more exciting than the reward itself, reinforcing the idea that it’s the exploration and traversal that truly lie at the heart of the game. As delightful as I found the townspeople of Hyrule, I only completed a handful of their sidequests because the rewards were often so poor, and I felt the time investment was not worth it. Shrine quests are a different story because a spirit orb feels like a worthwhile reward for the trial presented, but ok let me give a stronger example for how I felt the sidequests were wasting my time, Terry Town. I love the idea. Creating a new village in the middle of Akkala which is a fairly tumultuous and dangerous part of the world. After I found the Goron and they opened up shop, I looked at the prospect of spending 10-15 minutes chopping down trees (as well as having to find other axes since of course my axe wouldn't last the entire time.), and I just went and did something else, leaving Terry Town unfinished for the rest of my playthrough.
Extrinsically intrinsic motivation
So now it's that time in the critique where we discuss intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Every gaming video's got to have it! A primer on how I understand the terms is that extrinsic motivation is when the reward we get for doing something is why we do it. Intrinsic motivation is when the act itself is the reward regardless of what happens at the end. Breath of the Wild shines when the player is intrinsically motivated. When I finished The Great Plateau, I followed the game’s extrinsic motivation. I went to Kakariko Village and met Impa, I went to Hateno and visited the lab, and then I spent many hours tracking down and freeing the four Divine Beasts. It was only then that intrinsic motivation took over my playthrough. I wanted to activate every tower, and explore the roads of every uncovered zone. I knew the Lost Woods and Master Sword existed, so I wanted to find them, and I wanted to uncover all of Link's lost memories. During this time I found shrines, met people, uncovered fairy fountains, and generally had a fun time unveiling the vastness of the land before me, but even then it wasn't too long after accomplishing these goals that I felt that it was time to fight Ganon and end my playthrough. So what happened?
I can't speak for everyone, but I think I need both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation when playing a game. When uncovering the towers and exploring these new areas I often stopped to go on little adventures, like when I reached the stable in Faron and the people there talked about something magical at the top of the waterfalls. Well, I decided to climb those waterfalls. It was rough because of all the lightning and the enemies every step of the way. When I got to the top, all I found was 3 Durian trees, but that was ok, because like the cherry blossom pond, it was the adventure itself that was the important part, even if the adventure happened because I wanted to reach a specific destination for a specific reason.
So the things I wanted to do in the game eventually ran dry. I've already spoken of most of the sidequests not seeming worth my time, and eventually the only prospect I had remaining was to search out more shrines and korok seeds. I mean part of me wanted to make sure I had at least one row of hearts in order to take on Calamity Ganon, but then the prospect of uncovering all those shrines just bummed me out. Heck, the most interesting shrine I came across, Eventide island ended up being a disappointment because the Hinox killed me and it sent me back to the stable I had taken off from at the start of that particular adventure. And while I would have liked to find the final Great Fairy Fountain, or purchase the ancient armour and weapons from the Akkala Lab, the amount of adventuring needed to procure the cash and materials needed for these flights of fancy made me balk at the prospect of spending more time aimlessly wandering this game world that I felt I had uncovered enough of. Basically by this point, my intrinsic motivation was tapped dry, so there was only one final goal to complete, Defeat Ganon.
Mark Brown over at Game Maker's Toolkit says that everything you do in Breath of the Wild is to prepare you for your fight with Ganon. That's why I defeated all the Divine Beasts. It's why I searched out the Master Sword. It's why I made sure to buy as many Ancient arrows as I could, and it's why I climbed the waterfalls of Hyrule Castle, as I didn't want to waste any of my weapons, bows, or shields making my way to this final encounter. And while the fight got pretty thorny in sections, I was adequately prepared. I beat the fucker! And just like that, my time with Breath of the Wild was over. The game ended with Link and Zelda being able to travel the lands together again, and I felt happy to have my preparation for the Ganon fight pay off, but saddened to have to leave behind this world with so much unexplored and so much unaccomplished.
Conclusion
Maybe the intrinsic motivation to explore this version of Hyrule wasn't extinguished after all, it just took completing the game for the flame to rekindle. That seems to be what I consider a great game these days, that when it's finished I want to play it again immediately. I think it's because I wonder how much different the game would be if I ignored the Divine Beasts and just started exploring the world after leaving the Great Plateau. If a 4th playthrough of The Great Plateau would be different than the previous 3, and if left to my own devices the game would share more of its secrets, but most importantly more of its majesty and beauty. That's what I'm left thinking about most of all after the game is done, how great it is to just exist in this world. The strength of Breath of the Wild is its sense of solitude and its picturesque moments. The combat, and the game's systems I find to be detriments rather than positives, which is weird to say. The game part of the game is the part that is the problem, but I think existing in this open world more than makes up for it. That's what's pulling me back in. This is going to sound super corny, but when I decide to replay this game, it will be to experience the breath of the wild. Thanks for watching.
