"Letting You Get on With It" in Breath of the Wild
I don’t usually get along with games that people praise for “not holding your hand”. I understand the preference for exploratory, trial-and-error gameplay, rather than being explicitly directed. I also find the phrase can be broadly applied, to praise obtuse or arbitrarily difficult gameplay, simply because it’s not the alternative.
I’ve been enjoying Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild recently. It garners the same praise, for letting you loose in The Great Plateau and just… letting you get on with it. While it has its obtuse moments (cooking? what is cooking?), I encountered a neat environmental puzzle that helps me explore my thoughts on how “letting you get on with it” isn’t as surface level as it seems.
Great Hyrule Forest has an entrance with spooky mist that turns you around. In order to not get lost, you need to follow the direction of the wind. Landmark fires dotted about show the way, with sparks blowing off in the right direction. When the fires run out, you need to use the sparks coming off your own torch for guidance.
I ended up accidentally brute forcing the first part, by only moving to the next landmark fire. This triggered a checkpoint shortly before the moment where it expected me to set off alone. Without having learnt what I needed, however, I repeatedly wandered into the mist and got sent back. After a few failed attempts, the game kicked me back to the beginning of the forest entirely, away from the checkpoint I’d mistakenly earned. Then I noticed the movement of the sparks.
When we talk about games that “hold your hand” (or don’t), really we’re talking about how explicitly or otherwise the game directs you. Breath of the Wild works a lot with visual cues in its environments, but when it was apparent I’d missed them, it kicked me back. Look again. Otherwise I’d have been left to brute force the rest of my way through, bored and frustrated. If we want to praise games for letting players learn through trial-and-error, it matters that games still identify where player error is.
Oh, Also
Moving on from games released in 2017, Critical Distance did their roundup of 2020. It features some incredible works, and is itself an excellent piece of curation of 100 pieces of writing. Check it out.
Ruth Cassidy is a writer and self-described velcro cyborg who, when not writing about video games, is probably being emotional about musicals, mountains, or cats. Has had some bylines, in some places.
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