Learning the Art of Play with ‘Breath of the Wild’

I’m doing something a little different this week. This is a cross-post from my blog as it directly relates to what I’ve been playing and thinking about recently. Enjoy!

As I recently logged in this newsletter, I hit credits on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This marked the end to a seven-year journey with the critically acclaimed game wherein I ended up purchasing, selling, and rebuying it and the Nintendo Switch multiple times. I never wrote the game off as being bad in any shape or form - there was no denying the massive amounts of praise heaped onto the game throughout the years since its release. I had just assumed that a game of its ilk wasn’t for me - that some part of my brain didn’t gel with the fundamental design elements. And I was right, at least for the first six and a half years of my time with it, but in the last six months I was finally ready to embrace what the game had been asking me to do the entire time. Play.

First some context that may be helpful: I am an oldest child and a child of divorce i.e I’ve historically been over-fixated on being responsible and in control of myself or a situation. In the day-to-day this typically manifests itself as being Type-A and task-oriented. The kind of thing that gets you pats on the back in the workforce. It also meshes well with most video games I’ve played where progression is reinforced by new cutscenes or abilities that are consistently doled out, but Breath of the Wild has very little interest in any of that.

For those who haven’t played it, you awake from a century-long slumber and are tasked with one mission - defeat Calamity Ganon. Technically, you are able to head straight to Hyrule Castle with ill-fitting clothes and a stick, but you won’t find much success. Instead the game nudges you to seek out the Champions of Hyrule, each spread to their own corner of the land.

Getting in contact with these Champions is its own test as you have to learn how to brave the elements without much direction. This structure rewards you for taking the time to explore, discovering the various tools and resources scattered just off the main path.

I’ve heard it said many times that Breath of the Wild is the perfect successor to the original The Legend of Zelda on NES. The original game was inspired by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s boyhood adventures exploring the nature around his home. Breath of the Wild is designed with that same sense of curiosity in mind. You see a mountain off in the distance and want to know what’s at the top? Well, go find out. That’s how the game wants you to play - learning from those diversions - but for a person like me that never clicked. How do I know that I’m making progress, that I’m getting better, that I’m doing the right thing? It was that last question that clued me into the fact that I wasn’t operating on the same wavelength as the game’s designers.

When I did give into the whims of the game I often left my session with a sense of guilt. If I played for an hour and only climbed a peak and/or found a new berry or bug then I would feel like I had wasted my time or I wasn’t doing something correctly regardless of how much fun I had in the moment. In more linear games there’s a “proper” way to play them. You complete the campaign, the game is over, you win. But in trying to follow that methodology in Breath of the Wild I was missing the point. My own rigidity was holding me back.

Six months ago, around when I was starting my fifth attempt with the game, it was my wife who noticed my adherence to structure and productivity was slowly draining my battery. I needed to allow myself more freedom to let my mind wander, so I started to embrace the aimlessness of my sessions in Hyrule. I would grab my Switch any chance I got. 10 minutes, 90 minutes, it didn’t matter - any amount of time was open for exploring.

Eventually I found a groove and a place where the game fit in my life. It was rarely my sole focus during this mindset shift. I completed a handful of other games across that six month time frame. But I would always return to Breath of the Wild. I eventually got to a point where I had a rolling collection of side quests - middle tier objectives that could give me a little more focus if I needed it. These would often act as the launching pad for exploration when I needed a little push. The game’s optional memories slotted nicely here as well as I became more familiar with the landscape. If I needed to go to a specific location to unlock a new memory, I’d just ride my horse or even walk there leading to numerous “distractions” that I was free to embrace. I found that what I had given over to the game was granted back two fold.

Eventually, I could feel my time with the game naturally coming to an end. The one mental goal I had set for myself was to attain the iconic Master Sword before heading to the final confrontation with Ganon. When I came face to hilt with the weapon I hadn’t anticipated I would need to pass a test of sorts - a certain number of hearts were required to be able to pull the sword from its resting place.

The animation sequence begins, Link grabs the sword and pulls as the hearts in the top left corner start to fade out. I feel the tension mounting as my hearts quickly dwindle down and the camera zooms in, but the sword wiggles loose with one heart to spare.

And with that I found myself tearing up.

It felt as if the game was telling me I was ready, my journey complete. I had naturally achieved a goal without necessitating it be my center of gravity. I typically demand of myself laser-focus, sometimes over-stress in the effort to accomplish a task, but Breath of the Wild reinforced that certain goals can just come over time. That me existing and playing as I am was exactly what I needed to do. That idea struck a chord.

There’s a wonderful line Zelda says to the player as they get ready to take on the final form of Ganon: “Courage need not be remembered, for it is never forgotten.” This isn’t directly germane to the situation, but replace “courage” with “play” and you get my idea. As I’ve aged and taken on new responsibilities, the concept of play may have been put into a box and shoved into a closet, but it’s never left the house. It’s not something I’ve lost or forgotten how to do - I just had to say yes to that adventure. We all do.