How Breath of the Wild Brought Zelda to the Masses

Suppose that 21st century culture gravitates towards forms which best fit the attention span of the broadest demographic, and that this movement escalated mid 2016 onwards—taking place around the time The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild came out. Whereas games designed for greater mainstreaming tend to operate with broader strokes, Zelda’s narratives are intricate, giving the franchise illustrious value to those with an eye for it. Its sharp flavour comes from a weirdness unique to the common perspective; with this is a darkness and mysticism cutting with tangibility beyond any realm of the mundane; but most importantly, Zelda is home to a religiosity for aesthetic goodness, maintaining an encapsulated safe haven from modernities weaker recreational displays—For this sin it had to be subdued.

There’s always been a sort of ratio between aesthetic and freedom in Zelda games: Zelda I can be considered one of the first open world games, but within a bland and desolate 8-bit atmosphere; Ocarina of Time on the other hand didn’t have the biggest overworld, but it did have heart in a way which other games didn’t. It's as if quantity diminishes a capacity to generate spirit—which is really what makes a Zelda game a Zelda game. There's always going to be a game with a bigger world to explore, but generating soul means something else entirely. Spirit is something most cannot appreciate or comprehend, and it's only natural that the average consumer be invested in quantity of content. As gaming began to mainstream, extending its reach beyond a minority of western geeks, Nintendo must have realised that the demographic enticed by graphics, game size and other forms of quantity generally outnumbered those in tune with the franchise’s defining spirit; thus the first proper open world Zelda game would be born. It was a cultural sensation penetrating new peaks of mainstream notoriety, mainly in praise of its open world. BOTW brought Zelda to the masses: gone are the days of IGN reporters reminding people that Zelda is a girl; now it's open to be enjoyed along side the latest Overwatch clone or Youtuber sponsoring mobile MMO. BOTW made its home on the switch, a format closer to a phone than what more vintage fans of the franchise are familiar with. Even I have a sense of preservation for memories of booting up a Wii stuffed with protruding cables hooked up to a television set to play Zelda. Such a tedious ritual seemed appropriate for a game of such gravity. With the portable Switch, anyone can click open their Sheikah Slate for a few hours while listening to Zelda songs raped into lofi hip hop.

I was on vacation once and I met this fat British kid with a football shirt and a Switch. I asked him what games he had, he said: “FIFA and Zelda”. Prior to BOTW they would have been the last clique of person you’d expect to have any possible connection to the sort of culture Zelda came from—or at least used to (We had a cerebral and grimy culture too bad the weebs fucked all that shit up) It begs the question: why was this meathead playing a nerdy looking game based on peter pan? The thing is, anything you push on the masses will land eventually provided it meet a few bottom line standards. These were the standards Zelda had to metamorphasize to meet before becoming fit for broader mainstreaming. Changes had to be implemented, not just in terms of gameplay but primarily spirit.

BOTW is visually painful: everything is garish and shiny, which is weird because the game was spun as something to chill out to. Between the lines of searing colors and static visuals it gives off this deliriously floaty vibe like getting fatigued in hot weather.

    

Zelda is renowned for it’s weird atmospheric and to a potential, deeply emotional soundtracks. BOTW replaced it with generic Studio Ghibli piano music, the type Redditors like to call wholesome to feel better about themselves after masturbating to loli; it doesn’t matter that it lacks flavour or creativity; as long as its positive vibes it's viable to saturate the entire franchise’s mood. Whatever you think of the game's appearance it has to be understood that its developers sacrificed atmosphere for the quantity of a broader overworld.

The game’s dungeons are replaced with copy and paste trial rooms. Of the Zelda formula you perceive every area to be integrated within the game's narrative; It's hard to do so when every dungeon looks like something from Portal. Instead of an earthy mediaeval setting villages in BOTW consist of these utilitarian Playmobil pods looking like the sort of architecture which crops up in fluffy areas of the West.

Zelda has a history of interesting character design; it’s only recently that the franchise's aesthetic has too become enveloped as part of an encroaching design trend within Japanese media—designs so intricate that they stand unfit for a realistic environment, however at the same time too material to be considered ethereal or divine. Characters wear clothes which look like they'd fall off if you actually tried to walk around in them.

Zelda’s vibe is now another Genshin Fudgepact, something which the weeb already had a prolific selection of games to satisfy. The game's characters adhere to this tendency which modern media has to exaggerate attributes to one end or another. Compared to a lot of western media, Link's design is effeminate, however neutral within the game aesthetic he's home to; making him more like a youth warrior akin to Siegfried from the germanic mythos as opposed to another Duke Nukem.

 BOTW fails to understand this, rounding Link down to an effeminate interpretation giving him the proportions of a toddler with wide hips and a pudgy face. 

This would have made more sense had the rest of the game's characters adopted the style, but all of the Gerudo still have these eerily realistic physiques. In effect Link doesn’t manifest the proportions of a cartoon, he just looks like a midget next to these Tumblr art style lesbians. 

A common theme within the aesthetics of Mass is infantilism symbolising a return to the womb; everything made to appeal to people in modern culture can be reduced in essence to Duplo blocks: if we apply this theory to BOTW, you play as a character which looks like a child interacting with matriarchal figures within a soft world covered in houses resembling toys. I remember beck when people would grill Twilight Princess for being too dark: I had no idea it was this shit they wanted.

BOTW opens with link running up a hill to overlook the vast landscape laid before him; you can pretty much already see what the world has in store for you from that initial look out. The accessibility lets you navigate link practically from a drone’s view, over every canopy and every landmark—the fact that you can chop trees down while running doesn’t help either. It makes traversing a community garden what was once an archaic dark forest. BOTW is far larger than say Ocarina, but it lacks the same gravity of aura. In BOTW you can go anywhere within a vast landscape—this was the game's selling point, but is any of that scale worth anything if all it amounts to is a plain of Genshit glow? 

Compare BOTW to an earlier game in the franchise: Majora's mask. Forged deep within the early 2000s, and far from any remote locality to millennial conventionalism, MM seems to be the quintessential antithesis of a newly arisen breed of Zelda. It contrasts expansive freedom not just with a severely limited overworld, but confines the player to act within three in game days before the moon crashes into the face of the fucking earth. Needless to say, there's no will to conventional comfort as there is BOTW, but a knack for the weird, and a default to darkness. Newer Zelda's feature more expensiveness than has ever been flexed before by the franchise, but despite its limitations, can anybody who appreciates Majora's Mask honestly say that BOTW had more of an effect on them?

BOTW isn’t just a game, it’s a standard template for everything to come, as it’s identically ensuing sequel can attest too. This is how Mass subdued the soul of Zelda, something which had managed to avoid flattening for what’s hopefully the majority of its lifespan. It was a good run but they got it in the end. Whatever happens, the imprints of its abandoned spirit remain in preservation to be followed and taken from.