At the eastern fringes of the Gerudo Desert, just south of that hidden shrine with the shadow and the snowball, there is a tall rock formation in the rough shape of a pillar. At the very top of it, if you look, there is a single rusty spear, embedded point down, waiting for you to find it. I looked at that spear for a long time. I imagined a young Gerudo woman hiding from the nearby Guardians on the rocky plain below, climbing with cramped and sweaty fingers to the other side of the pillar, staying out of their laser sights like I did at the Central Tower in Hyrule Field. Taking uneasy refuge at the peak. Or perhaps one day an enterprising Gerudo decided to test her mettle, climbing a pillar out in the middle of nowhere. Either way, somebody out there, a long time ago, had stood in the exact same place as I, in this impossible location in the outskirts of nowhere, and planted their spear in the rock, as if to say “I was here, I was alive, I made it; I am proud of you, too.” I think that’s very in keeping with the story of the game.
i love this, genuinely. anytime i would pick up a weapon i found, scattered in the fields or abandoned in hyrule castle, i would remind myself that it was once wielded by someone else. that before me, someone fought a losing battle with this weapon. it made finally defeating calamity ganon with the weapons the past provided all that more satisfying, and i can’t think of how many soldiers and innocent people were avenged through it.
It's similar to how I feel about all the traveler weapons sticking out of the ground in one place. It's been a long time for me, but I at least remember that it was where Link made his last stand and that anyone passing through would leave their blade in honor of him.
Say what you will about the voice acting of BotW, that line "What's wrong with me?" is delivered so perfectly and breaks my heart. The memory of them running through the forest and collapsing is done so well too. I know a lot of people apparently think it's poorly done because her crying isn't dramatic enough or something, but I think the actress does an excellent job of portraying Zelda as not just mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted, but defeated. At this point she's given up and has lost her will to run, her fear for her own life, because at that moment she believes that there's nothing left. Her life has no purpose anymore, because she failed at the one purpose her life had.
I’ve suspected that one major reason Zelda couldn’t access her Holy Magic is that she was kept self-conscious by her father and duties. Every Zelda IS Hylia, so by treating her as a completely separate entity rather than as something inside herself, THIS Zelda ironically became more internally divided. People who are selfless and sensitive can often, counterintuitively, become self-absorbed when they compare their actual selves to the person they think they should be. Also counterintuitively, genuinely connecting with others can help you make peace with yourself because it takes the focus off of yourself. One’s feelings for one’s loved ones are sometimes less complicated than they are for one’s self. Zelda might have a lot of complicated feelings about whether she could/should survive the calamity, but she has ZERO questions about whether she wants Link to live. Forgetting herself, forgetting everything but “you will NOT take him too” was enough.
oh, hey, I had the same thought about Zelda's confidence, and posted this under another thread. "of course, we all realize that King Rhoam was unnecessarily harsh. I think, though, his criticism might have been the singlest biggest reason she couldn't develop her power. because Zelda is the representative of wisdom. which means *she has to have confidence in her own judgment*, and her confidence had been undermined her whole life by her father. genuinely, the one thing I want as much as playable Zelda is a King who believes her. even Rauru kinda..... eh, doesn't take her warning seriously enough."
@@Mari_Izu All Zeldas are reincarnations of Hylia according to Hyrule Historia. The entire Royal Family has the "Blood of the Goddess" but only the Zeldas are ever shown using Hylia's full powers of Light and Time. This was even pointed out in Tears of the Kingdom by Queen Sonia (who is a member of the family but not a Zelda).
@@Mari_Izu The Zelda in SS is also an incarnation, I mean she didn’t even know she was connected to Hylia till she had her awakening with the help of Impa
I’ve never thought about that. And the true reason she was never able to awaken her power. Some people theorize it was love but I like this idea better
My own village experienced something very similar to the settlements in Breath of the Wild hundreds of years ago. It was ravaged by nearly two thousand soldiers during the 30 years war in the 17th century. When the smoke cleared, most buildings had been burned to the ground and less than 50 inhabitants remained out of a previous population of several hundreds. Sometimes I wonder how life must have been for the people who experienced it all and for those who survived and had to live through the aftermath. I think about how hard it must have been for these people to swallow their tears and find the strength to keep on living and rebuild their home after what they had been through when it could have been much easier to abandon the ruined village and flee to another town , but when I look at my hometown nowadays I smile because their efforts and perseverance were worth it.
Yours may be just a thought, but the value it has it's bigger than many may think. Until there will be people who will remember the struggles, the strenght of the remaining villagers will never be vane and life will have a true meaning for the generations to come. Thank you for remembering
The thing is: I don’t think ‘The Age of Burning Fields’ was entirely referring to the devastating aftershocks of the Calamity. The old lady that talked about it said that the fields around Hateno Village were infertile and not suitable for farming. There is a technique called ‘slash and burn,’ where people cut up the vegetation in an area and burn it, and the ashes left therein would be used to prepare the soil for planting, to fertilize it. The Age of Burning Fields, harrowing as it may sound, might actually refer to a period of time when the people of Hateno Village were using Slash and Burn to become a farming community, when they were preparing the fields for the planting of the first seeds. This period of time is an era of renewal, when the seeds of a new community, or perhaps a new Hyrule, were taking root. It’s perhaps a bit small and weak, but it is still THERE.
Could that not still be described as an aftershock of the Calamity? Perhaps not as devastating as Brett's interpretation, but nevertheless a consequence that the people of Hateno Village were pushed so far out onto the frontier at some point in the past, ostensibly during the Calamity or sometime soon after, that they had to resort to the slash-and-burn technique in order to make the land fertile enough to farm.
Every time I look at a malice possessed enemy, be it the Divine Beasts or Guardians, I remember it’s not just a mindless killing robot, but Ganon’s eye staring right back at you. He really is everywhere in this game, in his own way.
That's why I'm so excited for rehydrated Ganondorf. He already has such a huge influence over the world without even being remotely humanoid and conscious (he was in a cocoon until you fight him). Now that he's conscious? He's capable of so much more. We've seen him change LYNELS in the trailers. FUCKING LYNELS.
Yeah I especially get that feeling when looking at one of the malice eyes. Sometimes I just stare at them for a second, knowing I'm feeding Ganon info and he now knows where I am
@@runo4155 His eyes are in all of the new scourges of the temples across Hyrule. They're definitely their own creatures, but Ganondorf's magic is clearly showing its influence
Remember black, silver, and gold enemies are also malice possessed. The curse marks on their body just like the barbarian armor. I think it's less to do with the Zonai and more to do with infusing power into one's being through magic, or in the monsters case, malice.
My favorite moment in botw was finding a shallow little brook running through two cliffs very close together. There were no monsters around, no Koroks, i just slowly walked through it. It instantly brought me back to being a kid and exploring the woods. Like full on Ratatouille moment. No other game has done that for me.
One thing that stood out to my first play through of breath of the wild and it’s a little thing, it’s Link laughing. At the point in my play through I had conquered three Devine beasts and was stocking up and messing around. At Zora’s Domain I had Link sleep in a water bed and hearing Link laugh it occurred to me that this seventeen year old has lost all his friends and family and at this moment in time is very alone, yet was able to have a good time, to enjoy the moment. I do wish the story had been more involved at times in Breath of the Wild, to illustrate Link being alone and likely dealing with a lot of pain from that loss. Furthermore I wish in the late game the environment had been a bit more hostile as though Ganon knew you’d reclaimed the Devine beasts and was trying desperately to stop you and free himself.
Technically, the land is more hostile as you progress, but many don't explicitly notice. There's a hidden xp leveling system in BOTW that decides the color and weapons of the enemies you encounter. You level up by taking out enemies, divine beats etc. So, in that sense, Gannon is trying harder to stop you as you progress
@@momzwrite While true, by this time you will have upgraded your armor and with stronger enemies comes stronger weapons to loot. So while the game does scale in difficulty, the powerlevel of the player usually scales faster.
Although one point to keep in mind in this is that Link does have amnesia when he wakes up. He doesn't really have the pain of the loss since he doesn't remember the loss. He doesn't remember anything from the fall. So in a way, Link might actually be the most free of all the people in Hyrule at the time, the least burdened.
I was thinking about that, too, in my playthrough. The only time you really see Link happy and animated is when he's cooking, which seemed kinda funny to me at the time, but then I thought about it a bit more. Maybe cooking, to him, is one of life's greatest escapes, or something. He isn't actively thinking about his duty and everything that entails, he isn't necessarily doing it to prepare for said duty, and it's something he could experiment and have some fun with. Knowing the entire fate of the kingdom rests on your shoulders and, not only that, but not even being able to remember exactly why you're the one who must save it or who you're saving or who you even are must be tough. Cooking is fun and not so confusing.
After playing "BotW" for a while, I realized how well it depicted a post-apocalyptic event: Nature was reclaiming the land, peoples' lives moved on. All of this made the Tarrey Town quest the very best in the game.
So I'm in Vet School and one thing that caught my attentions as an animal lover was the destruction to the ecosystem in Breath of the Wild. So I'll preface what I'm about to say with this: their are 76 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates in the game Breath of the Wild (From IGN's list, minus repeats of similar species or magical monsters). While the most likely answer is that the developers can only program and model so much into the game, I looked more into that and found it almost deliberate. Across an entire continent there is only 76 species of animals, ecologically speaking that would only match some Islands in our world. While I can't compare Hyrule's list of animal species compared to other continents or places in universe, I think it is almost safe to say that Hyrule underwent an extinction event due to the Calamity. 76 animal species spread out amongst the waters, fields, forests, taiga, tundra, islands, and mountains. Many of those species can be found in multiple locations around Hyrule, almost as if niches in the ecosystem opened up, or these animals are more generalist and able to survive harsher conditions. Some animals specialize to fill specific niches in nature, like the Hellbender, a large salamander that only lives in fresh, cold, clean running rivers in the United States. The hellbender cannot survive in a polluted river, which is driving this amphibian to extinction. As you mentioned in the video, the Calamity may have poisoned the water. So if Hyrule had an animal similar to the Hellbender, which thrived in clean flowing water, it may have went extinct. Many of the animals in Hyrule have real world counter parts, and while this may have been a simple choice to pick popular animals, many of these animals are more along the "generalist" route of adaptation. Boars, deer, bear, crows, wild pigeon, bass, etc. which are all capable of adapting and filling broad niches in an ecosystem. Imagine in Hyrule their was once a flower that only a single species of butterfly is able to grow on (much like the monarch and the milkweed). If that flower went extinct due to the calamity then that butterfly would be lost forever. I can imagine a scenario like this happened all over Hyrule, an animal adapted to a specific niche in an ecosystem was lost due to the calamity. It's not even just small animals that seem lost, but Breath of the Wild's food web seems almost too simple. In Breath of the Wild there are, at best, only a handful of top predators in any ecosystem. Those being the species of wild dogs, and the bears. While some bird of prey, and foxes exist the food webs in Breath of the Wild show that Hyrule must have lost a lot of predators and prey. What makes this extinction even sadder is it seems monsters have come to take the place of many of the predators they killed off. Lizalfos stalk the waters like sharks, while Bokoblins hunt prey in the fields and forests. But like you said in your video, the world is healing. The calamity is over, and many of the wildlife that survived the Calamity are thriving. What's even more interesting are the completely unique species to Hyrule, like the Sand Seal, Eldin Ostrich, or Great Horned Rhinoceros. It almost makes me wonder what other animals where lost to the Calamity.
I love this idea, it makes sense considering there are talks of animals coming back to the world. For example when you first reach dualing peaks stable the guy tells you that wild horses are starting to come back around. I think nature was healing itself but it could never regain what it truly had almost like a burn scar over a forest
The saddest and perhaps even bittersweet part of BotW is the overwhelming theme of impermanence, that is, all things come to an end. There are many subtle cues that hint towards letting go and accepting that what has happened cannot be changed, ToTK I feel will be the next stage of healing Hyrule, where BotW is letting go- ToTK is rebuilding.
Totk is rebuilding for sure, to me it almost feels like the point in life where you've reached the top and now you slowly descend and reflect on yourself. Idk thats me tho, great game
If we take Zelda as a reincarnation of Hylia, then the absence of the goddess' power is a failure of the King rather than her. He listened to the rumor mongerers over his own daughter . Really his own lack of faith in his own daughter is what doomed Hyrule. There's a reason you meet him first and the first thing he does is train you as an apology to her. If you read his journal in the library he is absolutely aware of this. Also look at Zelda "playing scholar" in Tears of the Kingdom. Within a few short years she's gotten rid of all the guardians and basically consolidated a new era of Hyrule. Foolish old man indeed.
@@axx012I’m not sure we get a definitive answer as to how and when, but it’s made pretty clear in BoTW that he died before the game since he was literally a spirit in it.
you know, I had the thought recently..... of course, we all realize that King Rhoam was unnecessarily harsh. I think, though, his criticism might have been the singlest biggest reason she couldn't develop her power. because Zelda is the representative of wisdom. which means *she has to have confidence in her own judgment*, and her confidence had been undermined her whole life by her father. genuinely, the one thing I want as much as playable Zelda is a King who believes her. even Rauru kinda..... eh, doesn't take her warning seriously enough.
@@PanEtRosa Rauru is far more understandable with not taking her words seriously because by all standards she sounds a bit crazy with claims on coming from a future and talking about a threat that was not foreseen during the time, from his pov, but her father by all accounts knows Ganon and the threat he possessed. Yes Ganadorf existed during Raurus time but he was no different than any other threat they may have come across in their life to them most likely.
@@eeg-rh7jvwell the player takes part in discovering the memories with Link in whatever order which makes them personal to the player. I guess they could have made the memories playable but I wouldn't like that as much because the memories should feel vivid and objective. And you can get invested in a story without being involved, that's what movies are.
@@eeg-rh7jvTry this: assume that every time you get a spirit orb and exit a shrine, Link forgets everything he'd learned (except for the memories you've collected) before entering. Pretend everytime Link emerges into the overworld, he's discovering the Calamity all over again, but a different way depending on your locale. This is how it's done. The stories you narrate this way, are limitless.
I feel like the Silent Princess, on the brink of extinction and doing a come back, covering the fields in the very last shot of the game, was the metaphor of the themes of the game: The resiliance of life, hope in adversity. Great video, really enjoyed it! (Hopefully you'll consider doing a full separate video for all those thoughts on Tarrey town, I would love to hear those too =P )
The music while you explore the castle, particularly the interior also gives off the sense of loss and hopelessness because it’s a very melancholy cover of the LOZ theme with the sounds of soldiers marching layered over it. It was a kingdom full of prosperity and life with an ungodly amount of lives lost to protect it. But despite that, they all failed
I love this video so much already. Ik a lot of people dislike the way the story of BOTW is told and i kinda understand why; it can feel kinda weird seeing it out of order. But the full picture is truely amazing to witness, especially seeing how everyone grows to trust and care for eachother, only for it to not be enough and all die in the end. Pretty subversive ngl.
Think about how someone with amnesia would feel remembering these disjointed memories. It would be disorienting no? That's the whole point. Link has amnesia and regaining memories isn't straightforward in real life. You aren't guarenteed to remember events in chronological order or even in reverse. Each person handles it differently and memories come back sometimes all at once or bits over time. The box art between the US and Europe are perfect examples of botw's duality. Europe's is bright and colorful and even has Link looking toward the camera. This is link before he regains the memories. The one who doesn't remember the tragedy he barely survived and everything he lost. He is just himself and doesn't have the weight of expectations crushing him, just having fun rediscovering things all over again. The sheikah slate acting as a journal and tracking what he needs to do. The US box art is link _after_ he regains his memories. The land of hyrule is much darker, and subdued. He knows the truth. All you can see is his back since he faces toward the castle, sword drawn; his heart and eyes on the mission.
One interesting thing about Tarrey town I noticed recently is that in the rivers that surround it has ruins, so an entire town got flooded there during the Akkala attacks.
Poor Zelda. Even if she couldn’t use the power until after it happened it’s not really her fault. None of them could have ever predicted Ganon would corrupt everything. Even then, she can’t be everywhere at once and I don’t think any of them knew he’d emerge right beneath them. A lot of death and destruction could have happened even if she had her power of sealing. Hell it’s possible she’d have been caught off guard and killed if she’d been at the castle when it happened.
I don't think anyone is to blame for it. If anyone was to blame it would have been the king for treating Zelda coldly, putting too much pressure on her and only seeing her failures. But it's hard to blame him too because as far as he knew, the world was about to end any minute and only Zelda awakening her power could potentially save it. Especially if you find his hidden diary in Hyrule castle it's clear that he wanted to be a good father and only wanted the best for her, he was just just as overwhelmed with the situation as everyone else was. As the king everyone was looking at him for a solution, his treatment of Zelda was him crumbling under the pressure just as much as Zelda not awakening her powers earlier was her crumbling under the pressure.
@@EskChan19 the king who betrayed the shiekah is to blame, he was scared of their power and shunned them, thus not only creating the yiga, but he was ignorant enough to not tell his descendants to keep the story about calamity ganon alive and how to fight it... I mean during rhoams time, they didn't even know how to activate guardians or where the towers containing them are... They didn't know if calamity ganon was real or not... That first king who shunned the shiekah is to blame.
I like the implication that, if Zelda had been permitted to study the Guardians like she was clearly passionate about doing, then she might have realised that Ganon could possess them like he did, and found a way to stop it.
Two games got me through 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild. I lost my father, brother, and childhood home the same day. Later that year my wife had surgery to remove cancer. Nearly seven years later, I endured much and healed what I could, but the scars remain.
Scaling a massive cliffside and finally reaching the peak after sliding down or running out of stamina time and time again, the feeling of standing at that clifftop looking down at where I started, I truly began to appreciate the game design of Breath of the Wild
I think that for breath of the wild the emotional impact of the story and the impact of Calamity hits even worse emotionally because it wasn't just a cataclysmic scenario that no one in Hyrule had anticipated or had no idea when or if it would occur. The real tragedy is that _Everyone_ was aware of it, and everyone was preparing for it- excavating for ancient super powerful weapons to utilize against it as the kingdoms legends directly told about in the 10k years prior. And every race in the kingdom had its own uniquely powerdul living champion specially recognized by Zelda herself to train to pilot each regions own super weapons (the divine beasts) - everyone in the kingdom believed so hard in themselves that they would succeed.. But in the end all of that national preparation and awarness meant nothing at all, because in an instant Ganon springs to action and his very first move is to instantly infect every piece of technology available that the sheikahs left behind with his corrupt malice- learning from his own past mistake and preventing it from working on him again at all. And because Zelda was unable to awaken her sealing power, there was no possible way to counter it as every other measure was lost- turned from the enemy on the kingdom in an instant.
I think another thing to note is how much the damage affected the Hylians compared to every other race. Their towns were destroyed, their people slaughtered. But with the other races, it is not nearly as bad. The closest reaction is that of the Zora, where the loss of Mipha is still felt by the time of the games events. Other than that, the other races were not nearly as affected. For the other races, the most notable loss is that of one person. Probably some of those who were in central Hyrule, but nothing compared to the decimation of the Hylians. Their towns were leveled, hundreds, probably thousands killed. But the same sentiment is not felt by the other races.
I would think it’s because of the average Zora life expectancy. The elders were adults when the calamity happened, the adults were children. None of the Rito, Gorons or Gerudo you meet actually knew the champions; they had only heard of them in legends and stories. The Zora are more affected because they’re the same Zora who lived through the Calamity. While the kids don’t know much, the elders react angrily to seeing Link again and the adults fondly remember childhood memories with him.
Yeah, you don't really see guardians out in the territories of other races, there's none in Gerudo desert for example, only the highlands and steppes. Their culture, their civilization, they're all largely intact and as they were 100 years ago, it seems.
I do feel like a Japanese video game developer creating a game reveling in the rebirth of a world after a calamity that no one could have imagined,one that leaves permanent scars both on the environment and it’s people has clear parallels to the impacts of nuclear weapons used in WW2. I know that several studio ghibli’s films have also have that undercurrent as well.
But people need to remember that Japan was an Axis power. It was single-handedly responsible for inflicting suffering and devastation many folds of that of the nuclear weapon throughout East and Southeast Asia. The Japanese never owned up to their mistake the way the Germans did. That was partly because the US needed Japan--an American ally in the Cold War--to appear as the good guy. If we map the Legend of Zelda onto real history, Japanese imperialism would be Calamity Ganon, not the heros of Hyrule.
@deleted01 Germany was also responsible for inflicting a lot of suffering and deaths, but I don't remember America dropping 2 nukes on them. Why is it that every time someone brings up Japanese civilian deaths in WWII, there's always some apologist in the comments implying that those civilians somehow "deserved it," or killing hundreds of thousands of women and children is somehow justified as a means to an end because their nation's military was evil? You'd change your tune real quick if some other country dropped a nuke on your town, or a city your loved ones lived in, because it was in the blast radius of a military base. And if we're going that route, America's own military has done some horrific things as well; do we deserve to have a nuke dropped on us as too?
Well, that's one aspect of it. Japan is however a country marked by a long history of natural disasters and tragedies. Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, etc. Japanese culture has been heavily shaped by these types of disasters, including the nuclear bombs from WW2, so it is not suprising that the story of BotW reflects so much of the struggles of actual Japan throughout the ages.
@@deleted01 Two wrongs don't make a right. The USA could have shown their superiority by dropping one bomb. The second wasn't necesarry. They could have bombed military footholds, they decided to nuke civilians instead. Noone is innocent here. But this whole point wasn't about throwing blame, it's extremely tasteless of you to try to spin a story about survival through hardships into "well they were probably evil anyway"
@@deleted01 okay and? That doesn’t mean that the innocent civilians living there and only acting at the behest of a controlling and oppressive regime aren’t also traumatized and ravaged, which is presumably what the commenter above wanted to get across. Talking about full countries as though they are their own sentient life forms and not conglomerates and arbitrary lines drawn in the sand at the behest of the powerful is dangerous and inaccurate. Dehumanizing the people but humanizing the politics. There is soooo much more nuance needed here. “Japan” might have been responsible for something awful, but all of those soldiers had their orders, and all of those soldiers AND civilians had both societal pressures and literal propaganda keeping them in the belief that what they were doing was right.
Ironic how teh bearer of wisdom was not free to explore her gift. i suspect that's the root of her struggle. Look at the moment she gets her powers. The wisdom to know what is right, the courage to do it, and the strength of will to see it through. In that moment the gods granted her her birthright, for she was finally ready.
This video and its writing is insanely good. I never understood the tragedy and horror of the calamity as deeply as now, and also didn't completely appreciate the wonder of the continuing civilization. I love this story even more now than I think I ever had before.
The section about the toll of failure . . . That hit deep. Been grappling with that on a personal level. Hearing someone else acknowledge that bitter cost, the emotional damage; it's appreciated. Especially when so many people seem to talk about failure as some blessing, some great lesson on the road to success. But for them it's in the rear-view. It can just feel like you're suffocating, just praying for something to work out, after life just keeps beating you down. All that to say, you got my sub.
BotW has to be easily one of the most tragic games out there, one of the most tragic pieces of media. Star Wars, while a good IP, doesn't do all that good of a job of humanizing the tragedy of conflict. It's hard to humanize any character, no matter how minor when scores of troops are being cut down and slaughtered like it's just another Tuesday. They show up in the shot, they're killed, move on, repeat. But in BotW, the world makes you stop and think about the lives lost. Not faceless goons, but lives. It strips away the bombastic, high-flying nature of large-scale conflicts that other IPs fall victim to with large wars, and slaps you in the face with 'Many people died here, these were where they lived, these places are where they started on their hopes and dreams, now they're gone.'
The contrast between Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity is great; with a warning of the when and where Ganon will appear they could evacuate. It shows how they would respond to having the ability to predict the time and location. They would naturally evacuate the residents of Castle Town and put the Divine Beasts in a position where they could have a clear shot at the castle. The only reason they didn't do that in the timeline of Breath of the Wild is because they had no way of knowing. They would also have the champions only move to take control of the Divine Beasts after Link helped get them back. That's why hindsight is always 20/20, you are looking at the past and seeing what you could have done better then.
This video was absolutely fantastic and deserves millions of views. The best explanation of this story on RUclips, and perfect timing with this coming out a day before Tears of the Kingdom. BotW’s story is so much like the opening season of attack on titan. Devastation and brutality. Learning how to keep moving forward in the deep dark mists of that devastation and brutality. Thriving after that devastation and brutality. BotW’s story is about hope, hope for a better future. The Nintendo team really put together a fantastic story that really went under the radar due to how it was told. This is why I wish AoC was about the canonical story that took place before BotW.
I know he’s not typically the most expressive in memories but I do wish sometimes that when Zelda has her moments of despair & blames herself for everything that Link would at least shake his head no or put his hand on her shoulder for comfort
During the despair memory, he actually does but she’s already crying into his arms so she doesn’t see it. No, it’s not too noticeable, but this scene is probably one of the few scenes that Link shows more emotions than shock and anger. When it shows him looking at Zelda, it’s with sadness. His eyebrows are still slightly knit together but that’s just how they are. But as she falls into his arms, there’s a moment where his face is basically like “Woah! But… it’s not [your fault].” Then, for the first time in the memories, as he comforts her, his eyebrows are no long knit together like they always have been. He looks at Zelda with sympathy. He genuinely looks sad, broken, and unsure of what to do or say to help her. But all that he can do at this moment is just hold her as she cries.
Outside of the cutscenes, one of the most powerful moments in this game was going through the ruins of lon lon ranch. After beating the monsters, I took a moment to look at everything and realize just how much was lost. Thinking about the calm, peaceful lives that were here and likely were destroyed without any real resistance. Lives that, in another game, surely had names we knew. Thinking about that young, redheaded girl looking up as a guardian stares down at her, _moments_ before the end, no time to even understand what's going on. It changes the way you look at the game.
This hits hard. I have experienced first hand what it feels like to build up something new out of shattered pieces. It can be hard, but I thank the Lord for giving lif to this once-barren earth. Sure, the world isn't perfect, but that is what makes it unique. You experience pain and suffering, joy and laughter. What amazes me is how humans pick up the shattered pieces. We are a resilent species. We have a unique ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I call that hope. Even if logically it won't get better, we have faith that it will. After a while, we learn how to enjoy the quiet moments in life.
That awkward moment when you realize you can relate to Ganon’s trauma of raging against a changing world and the need to mask your weakness with power. It’s a fundamentally human trauma to be so drenched in fear and powerlessness that you then become consumed with anger and a need to conquer everything. All just to fill a void. I wonder what Ganon’s void is…
It's like the other half of the coin from AoT. Instead of humanity's nature for conflict and how we forget the mistakes of the past just to make them again and bring new disasters, BotW is about our nature for survival and building up from the past to make a new, maybe better world for the future, and hope as something beyond Kenny's cynical description of being "drunk on something just to get by."
I love seeing the ruins of what used to be, imagining how it all used to be. Thousands of people enjoying life and being carefree, the next moment the peace is broken. I do wish some homes are more intact and see normal items, old toys on the ground reminding us the guardians spared no one. I want to explore old secret rooms or find neat objects.
i feel absolutely awful for link, honestly. imagine waking up in a world ravaged by war and not knowing who or where you are. the only thing driving you at first is instinctual courage, and then suddenly you’re saddled with ensuring the fate of not only hyrule, but the entire world. and the entire time, as you remember yourself more and more, you silently bear it all. someone NEEDS to take that boy to therapy.
A nice little thing they did with the horses is if you are on a path they will follow the path on their own. Letting you just do nothing and enjoy the ride.
I have to say that I got breath of the wild at launch, still love playing it today. While I certainly do wish there were more villagers or villages, and more of a "dynamic world" I still find new things I've never seen before. It's an absolute joy, and I can't wait to fall in love with tears of the kingdom. ❤
If you look beyond the cutscenes for the moment, and you look into the games diaries.. Zelda had no chance to awaken her powers until she healed her own heart.. losing her mother left some deep wounds, then all tho her father was right there living and breathing, she lost him too.. all that was left was the King.. It was at the moment when Link finally won her over that her heart started to heal.. and when Link finally fell.. her heart swelled..
The world being such a peaceful place to traverse with only the occasional interruption by enemy encounters with the threat of Calamity Gannon is a constant reminder of what you and the people of Hyrule could lose if your not successful in the quest. Turning toward Hyrule Castle in game, a landmark that's always there, instantly knocks the player out of the lackadaisical mindset the game puts them in by sheer contrast. The castle in this way becomes a reminder that the world can't truly heal from the disaster that struck it until the final dregs of Gannon are wiped out for good. Everything might be peaceful but the scars from the calamity are still festering.
My awe for Botw grows with every little bit I learn about it. So many videos watched, still more to see, more to grasp more to appreciate. The first time I saw the sight of the last battle ingame I stopped, having fought and struggled only vs broken guardians before. To think, to know somewhere deep down that heroes had faced them before in their full glory, all at once... I still lack the words for that sort of feeling.
"How long can you fail at something until you must give up?" When this kind of demand is applied externally, it is _ruinous._ As someone whose parental abuse was centered on what my disability makes me unable to do, Zelda's story is _exactly and completely real_ to me, up to and including being forbidden from doing anything that I actually wanted to do because it "distracted" me. I had to walk away and take a long break after some of these cutscenes. I stopped trying in middle school. I am now on multiple antidepressants because that absolute definitional failure runs so deep that I am otherwise unable to try or want to do anything at all, not even for myself.
This video has made up my mind on something I’ve been thinking about lately: BOTW’s story is so much better than Initially gave it credit for. Great analysis on the themes of the game.
i think i was at my happiest when i tamed the giant horse and named him blueberry, and after that, i felt bad for him because he was cooped up in that small area with little food, so i promised to show him all of hyrule. so far we have been to every town exept for gerudo since its imposible.
It should also be noted how old the only people who will talk to you about the calamity are. Next to no one actually remembers it. And those who do remember are very old so they don't move very far from their homes. This game is in several ways about the generation after the one that experienced the trauma of the calamity as well. They're affected by it, but also disconnected from it.
You have got to be one of the most talented writers/story tellers I've ever heard! I LOVE BOTW, but the story of its tragic world has never felt as alive as you have presented it in this video! Bravo sir!
You really can't escape the evidence of the tragedy. Everywhere you go, there are ruins of some sort rising from the dirt or stranded on a hill or mountain side. Broken wagons, abandoned to rot and rust like the guardians. Throughout the history of Hyrule it's been destroyed and rebuilt and you can see reminders of even that in the remains of the more ancient buildings... now inhabited by monsters. Despite the mass destruction, this game has the most villages. Its still less empty compared to the other games. Hylians are resilient and seemingly doubled down on survival through the ages. Even with the constant threat of renewed evil returning, they didn't give up.
13:59 I like how you say "Since we are already there," and it means both from an analysis perspective and from a gameplay perspective, as in "We have started by talking about this place." and "Our character was already there." Don't know if it was on purpose but it was a neat little touch I think.
I’m thinking of writing my own post-apocalyptic comic (it started as my cousin’s idea, I’m working on it for her). With what I have, I use environmental storytelling to speak of an enigmatic apocalypse that happened three thousand years before the events of the story. For example, while the first two episodes take place in a bustling desert town, there are the ruins of a castle in the background. That stokes audience curiosity until episode three goes into the castle, and we get a lore dump that’s not too spoiler-riddled, in order to get the audience even more invested than before. I also introduce a character who was alive before and during the apocalypse, having survived to the present day by magical means. I also establish that everybody in that world (Oracles of Odroia) has some sort of magical ability, and that they vary greatly from person to person. And that the major character that is from the distant past has amnesia, so we can’t immediately learn what happened, we need to follow the other characters on their quest to help her regain her memories. Even when she starts to regain her memories by the end of her debut episode, we don’t learn what she now remembers, in order to keep the mystery. I plan on weekly releases, so that there’s a constant flow of new content, while giving fans breathing room to guess.
I think I finally found something that puts my thoughts towards and how I feel about breath of the wilds story. This was a very refreshing video to watch. Thanks for elucidating why breath of wild still needs so much to me.
I absoliutely love this take on the game! I feel the same way :) I hope we get to learn more about how Link personally perceived and copes with the world around him. I know he is silent because of his position of a knight, but I wonder if he ever feels out of place or lost.
I love this guy. “Understanding all the joy even after so much tragedy and traumatic events. But before I get into this very grueling trauma, let me talk to this old lady a little more.” Beautiful.
When I was young (like pre k) I lived in germany on an airforce base not long from a field like that. We used to have picnics in the craters and play on the hills and such. But then yeah my mom told me where it came from and it's always been one of those weird things that nobody back in rural oklahoma really believes me about
Can we appreciate the amazing piece of work this video is? It helped me to much better understand why this game has been so important to me, the story beats of tragedy, drama, failure and overcoming those despite everything. Thanks for your narration, analysis and attention to detail with this video :)
Tbh during my first playthrough I thought the story was kinda flat. Tragic. Yes. But flat. Just a bunch of memories that you even can find in the wrong order. Didn't quite like that. But I guess now I know that the main story really lies in the environment and not the cutscenes. During the the whole exploring and adventure side of BotW I never thought about the mostly horrific backstorys of the sights I was scavenging. So this essay really put it in perspective for me. I'm thankful for that. ^^
“We reach Hateno and find what all those heroes at the fort sacrificed their lives for; it’s life.” This really spoke to me and caused me to cry for a few minutes over the sacrifice of not just the soldiers in the game but those who sacrificed and fought for any of us throughout time, even when they didn’t know what they died to protect. Thank you for such a great video! 18:06
This video gets it so well. Several years ago, during a period of turmoil in my own life, I wrote a full novel-length adaptation of Breath of the Wild. I explored many, if not all of these themes throughout the story, from failure to finding hope after failure, learning to accept weakness and seek help, and so forth. It's always driven me crazy when people talk about the poor story in BOTW. While the explicit story is limited, that's true, when one reads between the lines and explores the deeper lore and themes, it really is a beautiful story of finding one's way through loss to find hope. I love it so much. Bravo for you for this awesome video. I appreciate that you put so much effort into this rather than just hand-waving the story as too bare bones or "bad."
While I may still not "get" BotW's story, finding the game repetitive and boring, I still believe you hit its appeal right on the head. Despite my personal gripes with BotW, however, I've been finding myself thoroughly enjoying Tears of the Kingdom. I hope you make a follow up in the future discussing the game and how it is different. The best way I can put it without spoilers or too much thought is that BotW is a quiet world at peace despite the scars it bares, while TotK is a living, breathing world confidently moving forward and thriving, in spite of the evils in its past and present
I think the core of Princess Zelda’s character is a rift between a life of a scholastic she wants to be vs being expected a life of a monastic. My hope in Tears of the kingdom is we get to see some character development as well as her growth after suppressing Calamity Ganon’s power for 100 years.
Although I'm not a massive fan of breath of the wild's main story. It's very scattershot and a little too mysterious for me, but man the story is told so interestingly that it took me so long to understand. Telling a story through locations and ruins is so interesting and I can not think of a game like it
Brett been killing the content game lately. Hope he isn't burning himself out, I enjoy his content. I would hate to see him drop off because he burnt out. Amazing video as always
Learning of the Battle of Blatchery Plain always brings a bit of a tear to my eyes. Ordinary soldiers, ordinary people continuing to do their duty in the face of hopeless odds is always inspirational for me.
I love that it's implied this is Link's hometown. Meaning at some point, when all was lost, Link fought to protect his ancestral home. Why else would he have been there? And Zelda went with him...
This is genuinely one of the best BotW videos I've ever watched. The Verdun comparison hit hard - a family member of mine was wounded there back in the day - and you pointed out a lot of details that I never paid as much attention to. I plan to replay BotW once I'm done with TotK and I can already tell it'll be a different experience, with all the insight you provided. Thank you
One of my favorite things about the game is it's post-apocalyptic setting. As you pointed out everywhere you look you see the signs of where life thrived pre-Calamity where there were villages, town, and people and all of it was destroyed in a matter of days to weeks with thousands dead. Now here we are a century later and life has moved on for all of Hyrule with the Calamity and it's sheer devastation being relegated to nothing more than something that happened before most everyone was born. Life goes on in Hateno and Lurelin much as it must have been before the Calamity and the Rito, Gerudo, Zora, and Gorons were pretty well unaffected, but the one thing I love most about it is that we see that the Hylians adapted and are already in the process of rebuilding. We already see plenty of people just wandering the roads inspite of the Monsters and still active Guardians, the Stables everywhere make sure you can always find somewhere to stop and rest safely, and you even help with the construction of a brand new village out in Akkala. Hyrule may have been destroyed but even before the game begins the children of the survivors are already rebuilding the Kingdom inspite of all the hardship.
keep them coming guy, you keep posting banger video after banger video. Not only do you have a fantastic voice for this kind of commentary but your explanations are superb!
this video made me so emotional i almost cried, i had so much fun playing the game, and was obviously awed at the devastation but really diving into the stories of the people and the kingdom in their final moments with this analysis just broke me, wow
Your videos are so well thought out and put together. I’d love to see your take on the Witcher 3. I think you’d have a field day with it and it’s dynamic characters.
One of my favorite things in this game was scaling Hyrule Castle. There was me, armed with the Master Sword, several shields and bows, and a pitiful amount of ancient weaponry as I never really figured out how to kill ancient guardians without considerable losses to my own inventory and/or dying in the attempt. I went in still feeling woefully under prepared, ready to fight an uphill battle and win this time around. I remember planning my entry strategically, gliding across the moat on the side rather than risking a frontal assault, climbing up the walls, dodging and running away from guardians at every turn, while keeping an eye out for that oh so precious final memory. And then, in one room, I found Zelda's diary. It adds to what was established in the memories from Zelda's perspective, as well as marks the evolution of her relationship with Link leading up the Calamity. It's probably my favorite artifact you can find in the entire game.
This was so beautifully well done, thank you for this. Hearing it all the way you told it and putting toghrter the story of the world and zelda helped me understand it so much more and the heart behind it all. It made me cry ❤ nintendo is really making some masterpieces with their zelda series
Hi there. I'm not sure if you'll see this comment, but I just wanted to thank you for writing and putting out this video. Everything you describe about your experiences with this game, what you enjoyed - enjoying climbing a little hill, enjoying exploring a shaded wood, enjoying coming across ruins and imagining the lives of those who once lived there - everything is exactly what I have felt and cherished about this game. You put it to words so perfectly. Thank you for conveying that experience.
Warning: Dehumanization I like to think Link is a hidden foil to Zelda. What if Link didn't want to be a knight, and had that choice taken from him when he defeated that Lynel? It'd parallel well with Zelda's father treating her more like an unfinished weapon on crunch time than a person, especially considering Link is the only one who can properly wield the Master Sword. It could also explain why he likes food so much; it's a small reminder that he's still a person. And in Tears of the Kingdom, just like Zelda was sent into an unfamiliar world, what if Link lost some memories again, specifically the ones between the end of BotW and the start of Tears of the Kingdom? Just like Zelda, Link would've found himself in an unfamiliar world, even after the Great Sky Island.
Beautiful video, thank you for explaining the story and the themes so eloquently. It was exactly my same personal experience with Breath of the Wild, so much beauty in the world, but tinged with sadness and grief. The power of the story is that despite what happened, there is hope in the future. Thank you and you earned a sub from me!!
Dude, I've been watching your videos the whole day, your narrative and points of view are awesome, and your humor and storytelling are delightful. Keep up the good work!
I just wish some people started to dig deeper with these types of stories, if the first "layer" is not good or clear enough they'll give it up. Basically, people are too used on the text and context . I can understand that we are all different, to each their own. But there is such a beauty to find these true stories by analyzing and digging for it (aka the subtext), is such a great feeling tbh. I gotta say, Besides Majora's Mask, this is one of the most deep Zelda game ever. And is also the Zelda game where Link feels so much "clearer" and real. That cinematic in particular that always made me a lil eye watery, was when Zelda was praying to Hylia and questioning when she'll get her powers (which you showed) while the others were successful, and she wasn't. And then there was Link, turning his head and *listening* to her anguish. The simple fact that he turned his head to *listen*, his simplistic expression if you look close enough, hits *hard* imo. Same with the scene of them in the forest, him looking at Zelda's eyes and listening. Details like these give so much emotional depth. BOTW's Link is the definition of action speak louder than words, and this Zelda is the most relatable Princess Zelda ever. Now I have yet to play more Zelda games, but from the many things I have seen in these games at the moment, this Link is the best imo. Oh and the music in this game? very underappreciated. I legit become speechless when people say this game doesn't have good music like the old games and lost that..."simplicity". There is a LOT of subtext in this game, I just hope Tears of the Kingdom adds even more to this story and its characters including NPCs. Like in Majora's Mask. Great video man, you've earned a new subscriber, I am glad there is people that see the true meaning of this game. Only two days left!!!
“Zelda has been holding back ganon for 100 years what’s a couple more”
-Link probably as he searches for all the koraks
You need those extra slots man
At the eastern fringes of the Gerudo Desert, just south of that hidden shrine with the shadow and the snowball, there is a tall rock formation in the rough shape of a pillar.
At the very top of it, if you look, there is a single rusty spear, embedded point down, waiting for you to find it.
I looked at that spear for a long time.
I imagined a young Gerudo woman hiding from the nearby Guardians on the rocky plain below, climbing with cramped and sweaty fingers to the other side of the pillar, staying out of their laser sights like I did at the Central Tower in Hyrule Field. Taking uneasy refuge at the peak.
Or perhaps one day an enterprising Gerudo decided to test her mettle, climbing a pillar out in the middle of nowhere.
Either way, somebody out there, a long time ago, had stood in the exact same place as I, in this impossible location in the outskirts of nowhere, and planted their spear in the rock, as if to say “I was here, I was alive, I made it; I am proud of you, too.”
I think that’s very in keeping with the story of the game.
i love this, genuinely. anytime i would pick up a weapon i found, scattered in the fields or abandoned in hyrule castle, i would remind myself that it was once wielded by someone else. that before me, someone fought a losing battle with this weapon. it made finally defeating calamity ganon with the weapons the past provided all that more satisfying, and i can’t think of how many soldiers and innocent people were avenged through it.
It's similar to how I feel about all the traveler weapons sticking out of the ground in one place. It's been a long time for me, but I at least remember that it was where Link made his last stand and that anyone passing through would leave their blade in honor of him.
@@excalibur493 the circle of claymores in blatchery plains? Yeah. I got that vibe too.
Say what you will about the voice acting of BotW, that line "What's wrong with me?" is delivered so perfectly and breaks my heart. The memory of them running through the forest and collapsing is done so well too. I know a lot of people apparently think it's poorly done because her crying isn't dramatic enough or something, but I think the actress does an excellent job of portraying Zelda as not just mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted, but defeated. At this point she's given up and has lost her will to run, her fear for her own life, because at that moment she believes that there's nothing left. Her life has no purpose anymore, because she failed at the one purpose her life had.
I loved her crying. Crying is raw and can look and sound ugly, I liked that they didn't have her doing an artful "movie cry" if that makes sense lol
I’ve suspected that one major reason Zelda couldn’t access her Holy Magic is that she was kept self-conscious by her father and duties. Every Zelda IS Hylia, so by treating her as a completely separate entity rather than as something inside herself, THIS Zelda ironically became more internally divided. People who are selfless and sensitive can often, counterintuitively, become self-absorbed when they compare their actual selves to the person they think they should be.
Also counterintuitively, genuinely connecting with others can help you make peace with yourself because it takes the focus off of yourself. One’s feelings for one’s loved ones are sometimes less complicated than they are for one’s self. Zelda might have a lot of complicated feelings about whether she could/should survive the calamity, but she has ZERO questions about whether she wants Link to live. Forgetting herself, forgetting everything but “you will NOT take him too” was enough.
Only SS Zelda was Hylia, the others only inherited her powers by blood.
We literally have Hylia as an separated entity in BotW.
oh, hey, I had the same thought about Zelda's confidence, and posted this under another thread.
"of course, we all realize that King Rhoam was unnecessarily harsh. I think, though, his criticism might have been the singlest biggest reason she couldn't develop her power. because Zelda is the representative of wisdom. which means *she has to have confidence in her own judgment*, and her confidence had been undermined her whole life by her father.
genuinely, the one thing I want as much as playable Zelda is a King who believes her. even Rauru kinda..... eh, doesn't take her warning seriously enough."
@@Mari_Izu All Zeldas are reincarnations of Hylia according to Hyrule Historia. The entire Royal Family has the "Blood of the Goddess" but only the Zeldas are ever shown using Hylia's full powers of Light and Time.
This was even pointed out in Tears of the Kingdom by Queen Sonia (who is a member of the family but not a Zelda).
@@Mari_Izu The Zelda in SS is also an incarnation, I mean she didn’t even know she was connected to Hylia till she had her awakening with the help of Impa
I’ve never thought about that. And the true reason she was never able to awaken her power. Some people theorize it was love but I like this idea better
My own village experienced something very similar to the settlements in Breath of the Wild hundreds of years ago. It was ravaged by nearly two thousand soldiers during the 30 years war in the 17th century. When the smoke cleared, most buildings had been burned to the ground and less than 50 inhabitants remained out of a previous population of several hundreds. Sometimes I wonder how life must have been for the people who experienced it all and for those who survived and had to live through the aftermath. I think about how hard it must have been for these people to swallow their tears and find the strength to keep on living and rebuild their home after what they had been through when it could have been much easier to abandon the ruined village and flee to another town , but when I look at my hometown nowadays I smile because their efforts and perseverance were worth it.
Yours may be just a thought, but the value it has it's bigger than many may think. Until there will be people who will remember the struggles, the strenght of the remaining villagers will never be vane and life will have a true meaning for the generations to come. Thank you for remembering
how many people live there nowadays?
@@bli2z4rd A little over a thousand
@@troncdenadal2816 that's really amazing
You can ask them when you get there
The thing is: I don’t think ‘The Age of Burning Fields’ was entirely referring to the devastating aftershocks of the Calamity. The old lady that talked about it said that the fields around Hateno Village were infertile and not suitable for farming. There is a technique called ‘slash and burn,’ where people cut up the vegetation in an area and burn it, and the ashes left therein would be used to prepare the soil for planting, to fertilize it.
The Age of Burning Fields, harrowing as it may sound, might actually refer to a period of time when the people of Hateno Village were using Slash and Burn to become a farming community, when they were preparing the fields for the planting of the first seeds. This period of time is an era of renewal, when the seeds of a new community, or perhaps a new Hyrule, were taking root. It’s perhaps a bit small and weak, but it is still THERE.
I have seen this theory somewhere else and I really like it, it makes total sense!
i love this interpretation
the age of burning fields sounds like an awesome zelda spin off game idea taking place in that period
Somebody saw that interesting characters video lol
Could that not still be described as an aftershock of the Calamity? Perhaps not as devastating as Brett's interpretation, but nevertheless a consequence that the people of Hateno Village were pushed so far out onto the frontier at some point in the past, ostensibly during the Calamity or sometime soon after, that they had to resort to the slash-and-burn technique in order to make the land fertile enough to farm.
@@azzypoo i never thought i needed a Zelda farming sim.
Every time I look at a malice possessed enemy, be it the Divine Beasts or Guardians, I remember it’s not just a mindless killing robot, but Ganon’s eye staring right back at you. He really is everywhere in this game, in his own way.
That's why I'm so excited for rehydrated Ganondorf. He already has such a huge influence over the world without even being remotely humanoid and conscious (he was in a cocoon until you fight him). Now that he's conscious? He's capable of so much more. We've seen him change LYNELS in the trailers. FUCKING LYNELS.
Yeah I especially get that feeling when looking at one of the malice eyes. Sometimes I just stare at them for a second, knowing I'm feeding Ganon info and he now knows where I am
@@Saben.C-Spoon Zelda can see you through those too.
@@runo4155 His eyes are in all of the new scourges of the temples across Hyrule. They're definitely their own creatures, but Ganondorf's magic is clearly showing its influence
Remember black, silver, and gold enemies are also malice possessed.
The curse marks on their body just like the barbarian armor.
I think it's less to do with the Zonai and more to do with infusing power into one's being through magic, or in the monsters case, malice.
My favorite moment in botw was finding a shallow little brook running through two cliffs very close together. There were no monsters around, no Koroks, i just slowly walked through it. It instantly brought me back to being a kid and exploring the woods. Like full on Ratatouille moment. No other game has done that for me.
Ooo I love these little spots in the game, can you remember where it is?? Would love to visit
One thing that stood out to my first play through of breath of the wild and it’s a little thing, it’s Link laughing. At the point in my play through I had conquered three Devine beasts and was stocking up and messing around.
At Zora’s Domain I had Link sleep in a water bed and hearing Link laugh it occurred to me that this seventeen year old has lost all his friends and family and at this moment in time is very alone, yet was able to have a good time, to enjoy the moment.
I do wish the story had been more involved at times in Breath of the Wild, to illustrate Link being alone and likely dealing with a lot of pain from that loss. Furthermore I wish in the late game the environment had been a bit more hostile as though Ganon knew you’d reclaimed the Devine beasts and was trying desperately to stop you and free himself.
Technically, the land is more hostile as you progress, but many don't explicitly notice. There's a hidden xp leveling system in BOTW that decides the color and weapons of the enemies you encounter. You level up by taking out enemies, divine beats etc. So, in that sense, Gannon is trying harder to stop you as you progress
@@momzwrite While true, by this time you will have upgraded your armor and with stronger enemies comes stronger weapons to loot. So while the game does scale in difficulty, the powerlevel of the player usually scales faster.
Although one point to keep in mind in this is that Link does have amnesia when he wakes up. He doesn't really have the pain of the loss since he doesn't remember the loss. He doesn't remember anything from the fall. So in a way, Link might actually be the most free of all the people in Hyrule at the time, the least burdened.
I was thinking about that, too, in my playthrough. The only time you really see Link happy and animated is when he's cooking, which seemed kinda funny to me at the time, but then I thought about it a bit more. Maybe cooking, to him, is one of life's greatest escapes, or something. He isn't actively thinking about his duty and everything that entails, he isn't necessarily doing it to prepare for said duty, and it's something he could experiment and have some fun with. Knowing the entire fate of the kingdom rests on your shoulders and, not only that, but not even being able to remember exactly why you're the one who must save it or who you're saving or who you even are must be tough. Cooking is fun and not so confusing.
After playing "BotW" for a while, I realized how well it depicted a post-apocalyptic event: Nature was reclaiming the land, peoples' lives moved on. All of this made the Tarrey Town quest the very best in the game.
So I'm in Vet School and one thing that caught my attentions as an animal lover was the destruction to the ecosystem in Breath of the Wild. So I'll preface what I'm about to say with this: their are 76 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates in the game Breath of the Wild (From IGN's list, minus repeats of similar species or magical monsters). While the most likely answer is that the developers can only program and model so much into the game, I looked more into that and found it almost deliberate.
Across an entire continent there is only 76 species of animals, ecologically speaking that would only match some Islands in our world. While I can't compare Hyrule's list of animal species compared to other continents or places in universe, I think it is almost safe to say that Hyrule underwent an extinction event due to the Calamity. 76 animal species spread out amongst the waters, fields, forests, taiga, tundra, islands, and mountains. Many of those species can be found in multiple locations around Hyrule, almost as if niches in the ecosystem opened up, or these animals are more generalist and able to survive harsher conditions. Some animals specialize to fill specific niches in nature, like the Hellbender, a large salamander that only lives in fresh, cold, clean running rivers in the United States. The hellbender cannot survive in a polluted river, which is driving this amphibian to extinction. As you mentioned in the video, the Calamity may have poisoned the water. So if Hyrule had an animal similar to the Hellbender, which thrived in clean flowing water, it may have went extinct.
Many of the animals in Hyrule have real world counter parts, and while this may have been a simple choice to pick popular animals, many of these animals are more along the "generalist" route of adaptation. Boars, deer, bear, crows, wild pigeon, bass, etc. which are all capable of adapting and filling broad niches in an ecosystem. Imagine in Hyrule their was once a flower that only a single species of butterfly is able to grow on (much like the monarch and the milkweed). If that flower went extinct due to the calamity then that butterfly would be lost forever. I can imagine a scenario like this happened all over Hyrule, an animal adapted to a specific niche in an ecosystem was lost due to the calamity. It's not even just small animals that seem lost, but Breath of the Wild's food web seems almost too simple. In Breath of the Wild there are, at best, only a handful of top predators in any ecosystem. Those being the species of wild dogs, and the bears. While some bird of prey, and foxes exist the food webs in Breath of the Wild show that Hyrule must have lost a lot of predators and prey.
What makes this extinction even sadder is it seems monsters have come to take the place of many of the predators they killed off. Lizalfos stalk the waters like sharks, while Bokoblins hunt prey in the fields and forests. But like you said in your video, the world is healing. The calamity is over, and many of the wildlife that survived the Calamity are thriving. What's even more interesting are the completely unique species to Hyrule, like the Sand Seal, Eldin Ostrich, or Great Horned Rhinoceros. It almost makes me wonder what other animals where lost to the Calamity.
The loss of life, both people and animals, during the Calamity must have been truly horrific in scope.
Think of the new species in the sequel, tears of the kingdom, proof it’s healing
It's not that deep lol
@@highdefinition450 probably, but it's not the end of the world
I love this idea, it makes sense considering there are talks of animals coming back to the world. For example when you first reach dualing peaks stable the guy tells you that wild horses are starting to come back around. I think nature was healing itself but it could never regain what it truly had almost like a burn scar over a forest
The saddest and perhaps even bittersweet part of BotW is the overwhelming theme of impermanence, that is, all things come to an end. There are many subtle cues that hint towards letting go and accepting that what has happened cannot be changed, ToTK I feel will be the next stage of healing Hyrule, where BotW is letting go- ToTK is rebuilding.
checkin in, how ya feeling on totk as a whole
Totk is rebuilding for sure, to me it almost feels like the point in life where you've reached the top and now you slowly descend and reflect on yourself. Idk thats me tho, great game
It sucked
Man seeing Zelda being dismissed by her dad and being crushed by failure, was way too relatable.
If we take Zelda as a reincarnation of Hylia, then the absence of the goddess' power is a failure of the King rather than her.
He listened to the rumor mongerers over his own daughter .
Really his own lack of faith in his own daughter is what doomed Hyrule.
There's a reason you meet him first and the first thing he does is train you as an apology to her.
If you read his journal in the library he is absolutely aware of this.
Also look at Zelda "playing scholar" in Tears of the Kingdom.
Within a few short years she's gotten rid of all the guardians and basically consolidated a new era of Hyrule.
Foolish old man indeed.
@@DeadpoolX9is her father still alive or did he die in the first game?
@@axx012I’m not sure we get a definitive answer as to how and when, but it’s made pretty clear in BoTW that he died before the game since he was literally a spirit in it.
you know, I had the thought recently..... of course, we all realize that King Rhoam was unnecessarily harsh. I think, though, his criticism might have been the singlest biggest reason she couldn't develop her power. because Zelda is the representative of wisdom. which means *she has to have confidence in her own judgment*, and her confidence had been undermined her whole life by her father.
genuinely, the one thing I want as much as playable Zelda is a King who believes her. even Rauru kinda..... eh, doesn't take her warning seriously enough.
@@PanEtRosa Rauru is far more understandable with not taking her words seriously because by all standards she sounds a bit crazy with claims on coming from a future and talking about a threat that was not foreseen during the time, from his pov, but her father by all accounts knows Ganon and the threat he possessed. Yes Ganadorf existed during Raurus time but he was no different than any other threat they may have come across in their life to them most likely.
Finally, someone who understands BotW method of storytelling.
Just because people don't like it doesn't mean they don't understand it lol
It's a bad method. How can you get invested in a story you don't take part of as player
@@eeg-rh7jvwell the player takes part in discovering the memories with Link in whatever order which makes them personal to the player. I guess they could have made the memories playable but I wouldn't like that as much because the memories should feel vivid and objective. And you can get invested in a story without being involved, that's what movies are.
@@eeg-rh7jvTry this: assume that every time you get a spirit orb and exit a shrine, Link forgets everything he'd learned (except for the memories you've collected) before entering.
Pretend everytime Link emerges into the overworld, he's discovering the Calamity all over again, but a different way depending on your locale.
This is how it's done.
The stories you narrate this way, are limitless.
@@eeg-rh7jvit’s no different than watching a tv show.
I feel like the Silent Princess, on the brink of extinction and doing a come back, covering the fields in the very last shot of the game, was the metaphor of the themes of the game: The resiliance of life, hope in adversity. Great video, really enjoyed it! (Hopefully you'll consider doing a full separate video for all those thoughts on Tarrey town, I would love to hear those too =P )
The music while you explore the castle, particularly the interior also gives off the sense of loss and hopelessness because it’s a very melancholy cover of the LOZ theme with the sounds of soldiers marching layered over it.
It was a kingdom full of prosperity and life with an ungodly amount of lives lost to protect it. But despite that, they all failed
I love this video so much already. Ik a lot of people dislike the way the story of BOTW is told and i kinda understand why; it can feel kinda weird seeing it out of order. But the full picture is truely amazing to witness, especially seeing how everyone grows to trust and care for eachother, only for it to not be enough and all die in the end. Pretty subversive ngl.
True
Think about how someone with amnesia would feel remembering these disjointed memories. It would be disorienting no? That's the whole point. Link has amnesia and regaining memories isn't straightforward in real life. You aren't guarenteed to remember events in chronological order or even in reverse. Each person handles it differently and memories come back sometimes all at once or bits over time.
The box art between the US and Europe are perfect examples of botw's duality. Europe's is bright and colorful and even has Link looking toward the camera. This is link before he regains the memories. The one who doesn't remember the tragedy he barely survived and everything he lost. He is just himself and doesn't have the weight of expectations crushing him, just having fun rediscovering things all over again. The sheikah slate acting as a journal and tracking what he needs to do. The US box art is link _after_ he regains his memories. The land of hyrule is much darker, and subdued. He knows the truth. All you can see is his back since he faces toward the castle, sword drawn; his heart and eyes on the mission.
@ShadowSkyX whoaaaa that is a cool analysis on some boxart.
One interesting thing about Tarrey town I noticed recently is that in the rivers that surround it has ruins, so an entire town got flooded there during the Akkala attacks.
Poor Zelda. Even if she couldn’t use the power until after it happened it’s not really her fault. None of them could have ever predicted Ganon would corrupt everything. Even then, she can’t be everywhere at once and I don’t think any of them knew he’d emerge right beneath them. A lot of death and destruction could have happened even if she had her power of sealing.
Hell it’s possible she’d have been caught off guard and killed if she’d been at the castle when it happened.
I don't think anyone is to blame for it. If anyone was to blame it would have been the king for treating Zelda coldly, putting too much pressure on her and only seeing her failures. But it's hard to blame him too because as far as he knew, the world was about to end any minute and only Zelda awakening her power could potentially save it. Especially if you find his hidden diary in Hyrule castle it's clear that he wanted to be a good father and only wanted the best for her, he was just just as overwhelmed with the situation as everyone else was. As the king everyone was looking at him for a solution, his treatment of Zelda was him crumbling under the pressure just as much as Zelda not awakening her powers earlier was her crumbling under the pressure.
@@EskChan19 the king who betrayed the shiekah is to blame, he was scared of their power and shunned them, thus not only creating the yiga, but he was ignorant enough to not tell his descendants to keep the story about calamity ganon alive and how to fight it... I mean during rhoams time, they didn't even know how to activate guardians or where the towers containing them are... They didn't know if calamity ganon was real or not...
That first king who shunned the shiekah is to blame.
I like the implication that, if Zelda had been permitted to study the Guardians like she was clearly passionate about doing, then she might have realised that Ganon could possess them like he did, and found a way to stop it.
Two games got me through 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild. I lost my father, brother, and childhood home the same day. Later that year my wife had surgery to remove cancer. Nearly seven years later, I endured much and healed what I could, but the scars remain.
Scaling a massive cliffside and finally reaching the peak after sliding down or running out of stamina time and time again, the feeling of standing at that clifftop looking down at where I started, I truly began to appreciate the game design of Breath of the Wild
I think that for breath of the wild the emotional impact of the story and the impact of Calamity hits even worse emotionally because it wasn't just a cataclysmic scenario that no one in Hyrule had anticipated or had no idea when or if it would occur. The real tragedy is that _Everyone_ was aware of it, and everyone was preparing for it- excavating for ancient super powerful weapons to utilize against it as the kingdoms legends directly told about in the 10k years prior. And every race in the kingdom had its own uniquely powerdul living champion specially recognized by Zelda herself to train to pilot each regions own super weapons (the divine beasts) - everyone in the kingdom believed so hard in themselves that they would succeed.. But in the end all of that national preparation and awarness meant nothing at all, because in an instant Ganon springs to action and his very first move is to instantly infect every piece of technology available that the sheikahs left behind with his corrupt malice- learning from his own past mistake and preventing it from working on him again at all.
And because Zelda was unable to awaken her sealing power, there was no possible way to counter it as every other measure was lost- turned from the enemy on the kingdom in an instant.
I think another thing to note is how much the damage affected the Hylians compared to every other race. Their towns were destroyed, their people slaughtered. But with the other races, it is not nearly as bad. The closest reaction is that of the Zora, where the loss of Mipha is still felt by the time of the games events. Other than that, the other races were not nearly as affected. For the other races, the most notable loss is that of one person. Probably some of those who were in central Hyrule, but nothing compared to the decimation of the Hylians. Their towns were leveled, hundreds, probably thousands killed. But the same sentiment is not felt by the other races.
I would think it’s because of the average Zora life expectancy. The elders were adults when the calamity happened, the adults were children. None of the Rito, Gorons or Gerudo you meet actually knew the champions; they had only heard of them in legends and stories. The Zora are more affected because they’re the same Zora who lived through the Calamity. While the kids don’t know much, the elders react angrily to seeing Link again and the adults fondly remember childhood memories with him.
Yeah, you don't really see guardians out in the territories of other races, there's none in Gerudo desert for example, only the highlands and steppes. Their culture, their civilization, they're all largely intact and as they were 100 years ago, it seems.
32:00
Zelda refers to Ganon as "it," as if Ganon isn't a person but a natural disaster. A calamity.
I do feel like a Japanese video game developer creating a game reveling in the rebirth of a world after a calamity that no one could have imagined,one that leaves permanent scars both on the environment and it’s people has clear parallels to the impacts of nuclear weapons used in WW2.
I know that several studio ghibli’s films have also have that undercurrent as well.
But people need to remember that Japan was an Axis power. It was single-handedly responsible for inflicting suffering and devastation many folds of that of the nuclear weapon throughout East and Southeast Asia. The Japanese never owned up to their mistake the way the Germans did. That was partly because the US needed Japan--an American ally in the Cold War--to appear as the good guy. If we map the Legend of Zelda onto real history, Japanese imperialism would be Calamity Ganon, not the heros of Hyrule.
@deleted01 Germany was also responsible for inflicting a lot of suffering and deaths, but I don't remember America dropping 2 nukes on them.
Why is it that every time someone brings up Japanese civilian deaths in WWII, there's always some apologist in the comments implying that those civilians somehow "deserved it," or killing hundreds of thousands of women and children is somehow justified as a means to an end because their nation's military was evil? You'd change your tune real quick if some other country dropped a nuke on your town, or a city your loved ones lived in, because it was in the blast radius of a military base. And if we're going that route, America's own military has done some horrific things as well; do we deserve to have a nuke dropped on us as too?
Well, that's one aspect of it. Japan is however a country marked by a long history of natural disasters and tragedies. Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, etc. Japanese culture has been heavily shaped by these types of disasters, including the nuclear bombs from WW2, so it is not suprising that the story of BotW reflects so much of the struggles of actual Japan throughout the ages.
@@deleted01 Two wrongs don't make a right. The USA could have shown their superiority by dropping one bomb. The second wasn't necesarry. They could have bombed military footholds, they decided to nuke civilians instead. Noone is innocent here. But this whole point wasn't about throwing blame, it's extremely tasteless of you to try to spin a story about survival through hardships into "well they were probably evil anyway"
@@deleted01 okay and? That doesn’t mean that the innocent civilians living there and only acting at the behest of a controlling and oppressive regime aren’t also traumatized and ravaged, which is presumably what the commenter above wanted to get across. Talking about full countries as though they are their own sentient life forms and not conglomerates and arbitrary lines drawn in the sand at the behest of the powerful is dangerous and inaccurate. Dehumanizing the people but humanizing the politics. There is soooo much more nuance needed here. “Japan” might have been responsible for something awful, but all of those soldiers had their orders, and all of those soldiers AND civilians had both societal pressures and literal propaganda keeping them in the belief that what they were doing was right.
Ironic how teh bearer of wisdom was not free to explore her gift. i suspect that's the root of her struggle. Look at the moment she gets her powers. The wisdom to know what is right, the courage to do it, and the strength of will to see it through. In that moment the gods granted her her birthright, for she was finally ready.
This video and its writing is insanely good. I never understood the tragedy and horror of the calamity as deeply as now, and also didn't completely appreciate the wonder of the continuing civilization. I love this story even more now than I think I ever had before.
The section about the toll of failure . . . That hit deep. Been grappling with that on a personal level. Hearing someone else acknowledge that bitter cost, the emotional damage; it's appreciated. Especially when so many people seem to talk about failure as some blessing, some great lesson on the road to success. But for them it's in the rear-view. It can just feel like you're suffocating, just praying for something to work out, after life just keeps beating you down.
All that to say, you got my sub.
Beautifully written, I completely agree:)
@@rika6767 Thank you
@@Keyatzin You're welcome! 💛
BotW has to be easily one of the most tragic games out there, one of the most tragic pieces of media. Star Wars, while a good IP, doesn't do all that good of a job of humanizing the tragedy of conflict. It's hard to humanize any character, no matter how minor when scores of troops are being cut down and slaughtered like it's just another Tuesday. They show up in the shot, they're killed, move on, repeat. But in BotW, the world makes you stop and think about the lives lost. Not faceless goons, but lives. It strips away the bombastic, high-flying nature of large-scale conflicts that other IPs fall victim to with large wars, and slaps you in the face with 'Many people died here, these were where they lived, these places are where they started on their hopes and dreams, now they're gone.'
The contrast between Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity is great; with a warning of the when and where Ganon will appear they could evacuate. It shows how they would respond to having the ability to predict the time and location. They would naturally evacuate the residents of Castle Town and put the Divine Beasts in a position where they could have a clear shot at the castle. The only reason they didn't do that in the timeline of Breath of the Wild is because they had no way of knowing. They would also have the champions only move to take control of the Divine Beasts after Link helped get them back. That's why hindsight is always 20/20, you are looking at the past and seeing what you could have done better then.
Even not being canon, AoC is a great way to show us how much we lost, as we can literally see villages and other settlements thriving with life.
@@Mari_Izu Yeah, it definite does, though I'm not sure it isn't canon. Guess can find out in TotK.
The environmental story telling on this game is beyond impressive. Arlo video about it is my favorite of his.
Do you remember it's name?
@@captainmega6310 I think it’s A Big Fat Review of BOTW
This video was absolutely fantastic and deserves millions of views. The best explanation of this story on RUclips, and perfect timing with this coming out a day before Tears of the Kingdom.
BotW’s story is so much like the opening season of attack on titan. Devastation and brutality. Learning how to keep moving forward in the deep dark mists of that devastation and brutality. Thriving after that devastation and brutality.
BotW’s story is about hope, hope for a better future.
The Nintendo team really put together a fantastic story that really went under the radar due to how it was told.
This is why I wish AoC was about the canonical story that took place before BotW.
Man id really really apperciate you taking a look at age of calamity because it mirrors A TON OF events in botw memories and its future.
I know he’s not typically the most expressive in memories but I do wish sometimes that when Zelda has her moments of despair & blames herself for everything that Link would at least shake his head no or put his hand on her shoulder for comfort
Would have been a nice detail. Dosent have to be blatant, he could just close his eyes and turn his head slightly towards her as he holds her.
During the despair memory, he actually does but she’s already crying into his arms so she doesn’t see it.
No, it’s not too noticeable, but this scene is probably one of the few scenes that Link shows more emotions than shock and anger. When it shows him looking at Zelda, it’s with sadness. His eyebrows are still slightly knit together but that’s just how they are. But as she falls into his arms, there’s a moment where his face is basically like “Woah! But… it’s not [your fault].” Then, for the first time in the memories, as he comforts her, his eyebrows are no long knit together like they always have been. He looks at Zelda with sympathy. He genuinely looks sad, broken, and unsure of what to do or say to help her. But all that he can do at this moment is just hold her as she cries.
Outside of the cutscenes, one of the most powerful moments in this game was going through the ruins of lon lon ranch. After beating the monsters, I took a moment to look at everything and realize just how much was lost. Thinking about the calm, peaceful lives that were here and likely were destroyed without any real resistance. Lives that, in another game, surely had names we knew. Thinking about that young, redheaded girl looking up as a guardian stares down at her, _moments_ before the end, no time to even understand what's going on.
It changes the way you look at the game.
Absolute masterclass of a video, especially on the Akkala Citadel’s part.
I teared up multiple times watching this beautiful recollection. What a masterful story and such a great analysis of that. I am amazed
This hits hard. I have experienced first hand what it feels like to build up something new out of shattered pieces. It can be hard, but I thank the Lord for giving lif to this once-barren earth. Sure, the world isn't perfect, but that is what makes it unique. You experience pain and suffering, joy and laughter. What amazes me is how humans pick up the shattered pieces. We are a resilent species. We have a unique ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I call that hope. Even if logically it won't get better, we have faith that it will. After a while, we learn how to enjoy the quiet moments in life.
That awkward moment when you realize you can relate to Ganon’s trauma of raging against a changing world and the need to mask your weakness with power.
It’s a fundamentally human trauma to be so drenched in fear and powerlessness that you then become consumed with anger and a need to conquer everything.
All just to fill a void.
I wonder what Ganon’s void is…
I like to tie the theme of attack on titan’s this one a lot. “The world is cruel, but also very beautiful.” It fits very nicely.
It's like the other half of the coin from AoT. Instead of humanity's nature for conflict and how we forget the mistakes of the past just to make them again and bring new disasters, BotW is about our nature for survival and building up from the past to make a new, maybe better world for the future, and hope as something beyond Kenny's cynical description of being "drunk on something just to get by."
I love seeing the ruins of what used to be, imagining how it all used to be. Thousands of people enjoying life and being carefree, the next moment the peace is broken.
I do wish some homes are more intact and see normal items, old toys on the ground reminding us the guardians spared no one. I want to explore old secret rooms or find neat objects.
i feel absolutely awful for link, honestly. imagine waking up in a world ravaged by war and not knowing who or where you are. the only thing driving you at first is instinctual courage, and then suddenly you’re saddled with ensuring the fate of not only hyrule, but the entire world. and the entire time, as you remember yourself more and more, you silently bear it all. someone NEEDS to take that boy to therapy.
A nice little thing they did with the horses is if you are on a path they will follow the path on their own. Letting you just do nothing and enjoy the ride.
I have to say that I got breath of the wild at launch, still love playing it today. While I certainly do wish there were more villagers or villages, and more of a "dynamic world" I still find new things I've never seen before. It's an absolute joy, and I can't wait to fall in love with tears of the kingdom. ❤
If you look beyond the cutscenes for the moment, and you look into the games diaries..
Zelda had no chance to awaken her powers until she healed her own heart.. losing her mother left some deep wounds, then all tho her father was right there living and breathing, she lost him too.. all that was left was the King..
It was at the moment when Link finally won her over that her heart started to heal.. and when Link finally fell.. her heart swelled..
The world being such a peaceful place to traverse with only the occasional interruption by enemy encounters with the threat of Calamity Gannon is a constant reminder of what you and the people of Hyrule could lose if your not successful in the quest. Turning toward Hyrule Castle in game, a landmark that's always there, instantly knocks the player out of the lackadaisical mindset the game puts them in by sheer contrast. The castle in this way becomes a reminder that the world can't truly heal from the disaster that struck it until the final dregs of Gannon are wiped out for good. Everything might be peaceful but the scars from the calamity are still festering.
My awe for Botw grows with every little bit I learn about it. So many videos watched, still more to see, more to grasp more to appreciate.
The first time I saw the sight of the last battle ingame I stopped, having fought and struggled only vs broken guardians before.
To think, to know somewhere deep down that heroes had faced them before in their full glory, all at once... I still lack the words for that sort of feeling.
"How long can you fail at something until you must give up?"
When this kind of demand is applied externally, it is _ruinous._ As someone whose parental abuse was centered on what my disability makes me unable to do, Zelda's story is _exactly and completely real_ to me, up to and including being forbidden from doing anything that I actually wanted to do because it "distracted" me. I had to walk away and take a long break after some of these cutscenes.
I stopped trying in middle school. I am now on multiple antidepressants because that absolute definitional failure runs so deep that I am otherwise unable to try or want to do anything at all, not even for myself.
This video has made up my mind on something I’ve been thinking about lately: BOTW’s story is so much better than Initially gave it credit for. Great analysis on the themes of the game.
i think i was at my happiest when i tamed the giant horse and named him blueberry, and after that, i felt bad for him because he was cooped up in that small area with little food, so i promised to show him all of hyrule. so far we have been to every town exept for gerudo since its imposible.
Dude I'm legit starting to fall in love with you and your channel. Absolutely beautiful writing and editing. Tremendous.
It should also be noted how old the only people who will talk to you about the calamity are. Next to no one actually remembers it. And those who do remember are very old so they don't move very far from their homes. This game is in several ways about the generation after the one that experienced the trauma of the calamity as well. They're affected by it, but also disconnected from it.
You have got to be one of the most talented writers/story tellers I've ever heard! I LOVE BOTW, but the story of its tragic world has never felt as alive as you have presented it in this video! Bravo sir!
The end cutscene talks about Divine beasts and how they're trying to give them again but they are not seen it all in tears of the kingdom.
I would love to hear Brett's take on Majora's mask
36:22 I love how this scene has Zelda’s Ocarina of Time theme. this game is such a love story to this lore and characters.
A Link to the Past actually.
You really can't escape the evidence of the tragedy. Everywhere you go, there are ruins of some sort rising from the dirt or stranded on a hill or mountain side.
Broken wagons, abandoned to rot and rust like the guardians.
Throughout the history of Hyrule it's been destroyed and rebuilt and you can see reminders of even that in the remains of the more ancient buildings... now inhabited by monsters.
Despite the mass destruction, this game has the most villages. Its still less empty compared to the other games. Hylians are resilient and seemingly doubled down on survival through the ages. Even with the constant threat of renewed evil returning, they didn't give up.
This is my favorite cooking sim of all time.
13:59 I like how you say "Since we are already there," and it means both from an analysis perspective and from a gameplay perspective, as in "We have started by talking about this place." and "Our character was already there." Don't know if it was on purpose but it was a neat little touch I think.
I’m thinking of writing my own post-apocalyptic comic (it started as my cousin’s idea, I’m working on it for her). With what I have, I use environmental storytelling to speak of an enigmatic apocalypse that happened three thousand years before the events of the story. For example, while the first two episodes take place in a bustling desert town, there are the ruins of a castle in the background. That stokes audience curiosity until episode three goes into the castle, and we get a lore dump that’s not too spoiler-riddled, in order to get the audience even more invested than before. I also introduce a character who was alive before and during the apocalypse, having survived to the present day by magical means.
I also establish that everybody in that world (Oracles of Odroia) has some sort of magical ability, and that they vary greatly from person to person. And that the major character that is from the distant past has amnesia, so we can’t immediately learn what happened, we need to follow the other characters on their quest to help her regain her memories. Even when she starts to regain her memories by the end of her debut episode, we don’t learn what she now remembers, in order to keep the mystery. I plan on weekly releases, so that there’s a constant flow of new content, while giving fans breathing room to guess.
Interesting
You're always pumping out the best content seriously
All these botw videos are really hurting my productivity. I love it.
Since watching your metroid prime videos i really enjoy your videos.
I think I finally found something that puts my thoughts towards and how I feel about breath of the wilds story. This was a very refreshing video to watch. Thanks for elucidating why breath of wild still needs so much to me.
I absoliutely love this take on the game! I feel the same way :) I hope we get to learn more about how Link personally perceived and copes with the world around him. I know he is silent because of his position of a knight, but I wonder if he ever feels out of place or lost.
I love this guy. “Understanding all the joy even after so much tragedy and traumatic events. But before I get into this very grueling trauma, let me talk to this old lady a little more.” Beautiful.
When I was young (like pre k) I lived in germany on an airforce base not long from a field like that. We used to have picnics in the craters and play on the hills and such. But then yeah my mom told me where it came from and it's always been one of those weird things that nobody back in rural oklahoma really believes me about
Age of Burning Fields = burning and slashing farming technique of eventually getting the ground fertile.
Can we appreciate the amazing piece of work this video is? It helped me to much better understand why this game has been so important to me, the story beats of tragedy, drama, failure and overcoming those despite everything. Thanks for your narration, analysis and attention to detail with this video :)
Tbh during my first playthrough I thought the story was kinda flat. Tragic. Yes. But flat. Just a bunch of memories that you even can find in the wrong order. Didn't quite like that. But I guess now I know that the main story really lies in the environment and not the cutscenes. During the the whole exploring and adventure side of BotW I never thought about the mostly horrific backstorys of the sights I was scavenging. So this essay really put it in perspective for me. I'm thankful for that. ^^
Skeletons in Castle Town would change the atmosphere from reflectively somber to depressively sobering.
“We reach Hateno and find what all those heroes at the fort sacrificed their lives for; it’s life.”
This really spoke to me and caused me to cry for a few minutes over the sacrifice of not just the soldiers in the game but those who sacrificed and fought for any of us throughout time, even when they didn’t know what they died to protect. Thank you for such a great video! 18:06
This video gets it so well. Several years ago, during a period of turmoil in my own life, I wrote a full novel-length adaptation of Breath of the Wild. I explored many, if not all of these themes throughout the story, from failure to finding hope after failure, learning to accept weakness and seek help, and so forth.
It's always driven me crazy when people talk about the poor story in BOTW. While the explicit story is limited, that's true, when one reads between the lines and explores the deeper lore and themes, it really is a beautiful story of finding one's way through loss to find hope. I love it so much.
Bravo for you for this awesome video. I appreciate that you put so much effort into this rather than just hand-waving the story as too bare bones or "bad."
Must this blessing shield you from the wrath of the Holy Ones & Zeros.
While I may still not "get" BotW's story, finding the game repetitive and boring, I still believe you hit its appeal right on the head.
Despite my personal gripes with BotW, however, I've been finding myself thoroughly enjoying Tears of the Kingdom. I hope you make a follow up in the future discussing the game and how it is different. The best way I can put it without spoilers or too much thought is that BotW is a quiet world at peace despite the scars it bares, while TotK is a living, breathing world confidently moving forward and thriving, in spite of the evils in its past and present
"Every landscape a painting"
Feels
I think the core of Princess Zelda’s character is a rift between a life of a scholastic she wants to be vs being expected a life of a monastic.
My hope in Tears of the kingdom is we get to see some character development as well as her growth after suppressing Calamity Ganon’s power for 100 years.
Yeah cus shes not in some sort of stasis like botw. Shes in a location where shes free to be animate.
Well prepare to be dissapointed 😔
@@HelloKolla haha 😢
This is like if goku was told he goes super sayain or everyone dies but from the start
Although I'm not a massive fan of breath of the wild's main story. It's very scattershot and a little too mysterious for me, but man the story is told so interestingly that it took me so long to understand. Telling a story through locations and ruins is so interesting and I can not think of a game like it
Brett been killing the content game lately. Hope he isn't burning himself out, I enjoy his content. I would hate to see him drop off because he burnt out.
Amazing video as always
Learning of the Battle of Blatchery Plain always brings a bit of a tear to my eyes. Ordinary soldiers, ordinary people continuing to do their duty in the face of hopeless odds is always inspirational for me.
I love that it's implied this is Link's hometown.
Meaning at some point, when all was lost, Link fought to protect his ancestral home.
Why else would he have been there?
And Zelda went with him...
This is genuinely one of the best BotW videos I've ever watched. The Verdun comparison hit hard - a family member of mine was wounded there back in the day - and you pointed out a lot of details that I never paid as much attention to. I plan to replay BotW once I'm done with TotK and I can already tell it'll be a different experience, with all the insight you provided. Thank you
One of my favorite things about the game is it's post-apocalyptic setting. As you pointed out everywhere you look you see the signs of where life thrived pre-Calamity where there were villages, town, and people and all of it was destroyed in a matter of days to weeks with thousands dead. Now here we are a century later and life has moved on for all of Hyrule with the Calamity and it's sheer devastation being relegated to nothing more than something that happened before most everyone was born. Life goes on in Hateno and Lurelin much as it must have been before the Calamity and the Rito, Gerudo, Zora, and Gorons were pretty well unaffected, but the one thing I love most about it is that we see that the Hylians adapted and are already in the process of rebuilding. We already see plenty of people just wandering the roads inspite of the Monsters and still active Guardians, the Stables everywhere make sure you can always find somewhere to stop and rest safely, and you even help with the construction of a brand new village out in Akkala. Hyrule may have been destroyed but even before the game begins the children of the survivors are already rebuilding the Kingdom inspite of all the hardship.
Was looking for cool videos about Zelda and found a gem of a channel!
Hateno wasn’t the only village unscathed. Lurelin village was unscathed as well
After Tears of The Kingdom I appreciate Breath of The Wild much more.
keep them coming guy, you keep posting banger video after banger video. Not only do you have a fantastic voice for this kind of commentary but your explanations are superb!
My God, your videos just don’t miss.
this video made me so emotional i almost cried, i had so much fun playing the game, and was obviously awed at the devastation but really diving into the stories of the people and the kingdom in their final moments with this analysis just broke me, wow
so what im getting at is that breath of the wild is the feeling of being 2 weeks away from an exam
Your videos are so well thought out and put together. I’d love to see your take on the Witcher 3. I think you’d have a field day with it and it’s dynamic characters.
One of my favorite things in this game was scaling Hyrule Castle. There was me, armed with the Master Sword, several shields and bows, and a pitiful amount of ancient weaponry as I never really figured out how to kill ancient guardians without considerable losses to my own inventory and/or dying in the attempt. I went in still feeling woefully under prepared, ready to fight an uphill battle and win this time around.
I remember planning my entry strategically, gliding across the moat on the side rather than risking a frontal assault, climbing up the walls, dodging and running away from guardians at every turn, while keeping an eye out for that oh so precious final memory. And then, in one room, I found Zelda's diary. It adds to what was established in the memories from Zelda's perspective, as well as marks the evolution of her relationship with Link leading up the Calamity. It's probably my favorite artifact you can find in the entire game.
This was so beautifully well done, thank you for this. Hearing it all the way you told it and putting toghrter the story of the world and zelda helped me understand it so much more and the heart behind it all. It made me cry ❤ nintendo is really making some masterpieces with their zelda series
Hi there. I'm not sure if you'll see this comment, but I just wanted to thank you for writing and putting out this video. Everything you describe about your experiences with this game, what you enjoyed - enjoying climbing a little hill, enjoying exploring a shaded wood, enjoying coming across ruins and imagining the lives of those who once lived there - everything is exactly what I have felt and cherished about this game. You put it to words so perfectly. Thank you for conveying that experience.
Warning: Dehumanization
I like to think Link is a hidden foil to Zelda. What if Link didn't want to be a knight, and had that choice taken from him when he defeated that Lynel? It'd parallel well with Zelda's father treating her more like an unfinished weapon on crunch time than a person, especially considering Link is the only one who can properly wield the Master Sword. It could also explain why he likes food so much; it's a small reminder that he's still a person.
And in Tears of the Kingdom, just like Zelda was sent into an unfamiliar world, what if Link lost some memories again, specifically the ones between the end of BotW and the start of Tears of the Kingdom? Just like Zelda, Link would've found himself in an unfamiliar world, even after the Great Sky Island.
Beautiful video, thank you for explaining the story and the themes so eloquently. It was exactly my same personal experience with Breath of the Wild, so much beauty in the world, but tinged with sadness and grief. The power of the story is that despite what happened, there is hope in the future. Thank you and you earned a sub from me!!
Dude, I've been watching your videos the whole day, your narrative and points of view are awesome, and your humor and storytelling are delightful. Keep up the good work!
I would like to seen a video on the Tarry Town side quest, (From the ground up)
It was my favorite side quest and embodies the hope of the kindom.
Finally someone gets it like I do. Great video.
YES!!!
I just wish some people started to dig deeper with these types of stories, if the first "layer" is not good or clear enough they'll give it up. Basically, people are too used on the text and context . I can understand that we are all different, to each their own. But there is such a beauty to find these true stories by analyzing and digging for it (aka the subtext), is such a great feeling tbh. I gotta say, Besides Majora's Mask, this is one of the most deep Zelda game ever. And is also the Zelda game where Link feels so much "clearer" and real.
That cinematic in particular that always made me a lil eye watery, was when Zelda was praying to Hylia and questioning when she'll get her powers (which you showed) while the others were successful, and she wasn't. And then there was Link, turning his head and *listening* to her anguish. The simple fact that he turned his head to *listen*, his simplistic expression if you look close enough, hits *hard* imo. Same with the scene of them in the forest, him looking at Zelda's eyes and listening. Details like these give so much emotional depth. BOTW's Link is the definition of action speak louder than words, and this Zelda is the most relatable Princess Zelda ever. Now I have yet to play more Zelda games, but from the many things I have seen in these games at the moment, this Link is the best imo. Oh and the music in this game? very underappreciated. I legit become speechless when people say this game doesn't have good music like the old games and lost that..."simplicity".
There is a LOT of subtext in this game, I just hope Tears of the Kingdom adds even more to this story and its characters including NPCs. Like in Majora's Mask. Great video man, you've earned a new subscriber, I am glad there is people that see the true meaning of this game.
Only two days left!!!