Adventures from the safety of home
Emma Dear shares the comfort and joy that can be had in gaming, enjoying adventures in the safety of your own home...
For two years, I had been trying to decide whether to get Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild. The hefty price and the fact I’d never played a Legend of Zelda game before stopped me from buying it, until I got it for Christmas. After playing the game I’m definitely glad I did.
Breath of the Wild is an open world game, which means simply that players can freely journey across the large map and complete the story in any way they want, sometimes leading to humorous results. This freedom and the beautiful scenery in Breath of the Wild combined makes for a stunning and calming experience.
You play as Link, the main protagonist in all of the Zelda games, and are woken up from a 100-year slumber without any memory of the past, only to meet a mysterious old man. To journey beyond the tutorial area, named “The Great Plateau” you need a paraglider. To collect the paraglider, you need to complete quests called “Shrines.”
After this we learn that the main antagonist is called Calamity Ganon who is taking over Hyrule, (The Legend of Zelda’s kingdom.) However, it’s not until after the Great Plateau that the game really begins to shine.
After finding their way off the Great Plateau, the player is free to do whatever they choose, whether that be freeing the four legendary Champions of Hyrule and collecting memories scattered across the map to try and make more sense of the game’s past and lore, or head directly to Ganon himself. You can even choose to ignore the main quest entirely and just explore the map or engage inside quests such as building a town or finding a royal horse. The game effectively gives the players the rein to lead their own adventure, and that’s what makes it so special.
The game is challenging to say the least, as the Shrines include challenges that are called things like “A major test of strength,” or “Timing is critical.” The vast array of quests to do would make even the most devout completionist flinch, with a total of 120 shrines, a whopping 900 “Koroks” (little tree people) to collect and 118 Side and Shrine Quests, and that’s ignoring the main story.
The freedom that the player has in this game means that there are usually multiple ways to complete an objective. This makes a victory all the more satisfying when you overcome a challenge in an intuitive way that even the developers might not have thought of.
The diverse landscapes in this game are vast, from a barren desert to a freezing snow land, to a volcanic city inhabited by living talking rocks or a mountainous district run by birds. The game is vivid and its quirkiness only adds to it.
The landscapes are so beautiful you can’t help but wish you were there in real life, even with a monstrous enemy threatening it all. It’s an escape from reality into a picturesque environment that, even with all its challenges, is calming and relaxing.
The game’s ending could border on disappointing if you put in a lot of hours into the game. It seems very short and you can’t help but think, “That’s it?” It’s the game’s way of reminding you that the real adventure was on the journey, not the the destination. And what an adventure it is.
Emma Dear, Y10
For two years, I had been trying to decide whether to get Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild. The hefty price and the fact I’d never played a Legend of Zelda game before stopped me from buying it, until I got it for Christmas. After playing the game I’m definitely glad I did.
Breath of the Wild is an open world game, which means simply that players can freely journey across the large map and complete the story in any way they want, sometimes leading to humorous results. This freedom and the beautiful scenery in Breath of the Wild combined makes for a stunning and calming experience.
You play as Link, the main protagonist in all of the Zelda games, and are woken up from a 100-year slumber without any memory of the past, only to meet a mysterious old man. To journey beyond the tutorial area, named “The Great Plateau” you need a paraglider. To collect the paraglider, you need to complete quests called “Shrines.”
After this we learn that the main antagonist is called Calamity Ganon who is taking over Hyrule, (The Legend of Zelda’s kingdom.) However, it’s not until after the Great Plateau that the game really begins to shine.
After finding their way off the Great Plateau, the player is free to do whatever they choose, whether that be freeing the four legendary Champions of Hyrule and collecting memories scattered across the map to try and make more sense of the game’s past and lore, or head directly to Ganon himself. You can even choose to ignore the main quest entirely and just explore the map or engage inside quests such as building a town or finding a royal horse. The game effectively gives the players the rein to lead their own adventure, and that’s what makes it so special.
The game is challenging to say the least, as the Shrines include challenges that are called things like “A major test of strength,” or “Timing is critical.” The vast array of quests to do would make even the most devout completionist flinch, with a total of 120 shrines, a whopping 900 “Koroks” (little tree people) to collect and 118 Side and Shrine Quests, and that’s ignoring the main story.
The freedom that the player has in this game means that there are usually multiple ways to complete an objective. This makes a victory all the more satisfying when you overcome a challenge in an intuitive way that even the developers might not have thought of.
The diverse landscapes in this game are vast, from a barren desert to a freezing snow land, to a volcanic city inhabited by living talking rocks or a mountainous district run by birds. The game is vivid and its quirkiness only adds to it.
The landscapes are so beautiful you can’t help but wish you were there in real life, even with a monstrous enemy threatening it all. It’s an escape from reality into a picturesque environment that, even with all its challenges, is calming and relaxing.
The game’s ending could border on disappointing if you put in a lot of hours into the game. It seems very short and you can’t help but think, “That’s it?” It’s the game’s way of reminding you that the real adventure was on the journey, not the the destination. And what an adventure it is.
Emma Dear, Y10