Game website: https://www.zelda.com/breath-of-the-wild/

Following the tradition of “The Legend of Zelda” series, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” (BOTW) also provides little instructions to players and they can explore, collect items, kill monsters, solve puzzles and side quests. Except for this time, the adventure of our protagonist Link takes place in an open-world version of the Hyrule Kingdom. The main plot is simple, Link woke up from a century of hibernation, realized that the supreme evil named Calamity Ganon had come back and he must seek helps from 4 divine beasts to defeat the Ganon.

Lens 9: The Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics

Since BOTW is an open-world action-adventure game, the mechanics related to “open-world” and “action-adventure” are of critical importance.

Open-world mechanisms:

• Physics engine: BOTW’s objects fall and interact with each other in a natural way.
• Terrain and weather: BOTW has various terrains and weather
• Transportation: Players can walk, run, jump, swim, climb, teleport, ride horses, glide in the sky.
• Food: There are fruits, herbs, fish, meat(with an inbuilt hunting system), and condiment, using which players can cook meals or make potions that will enhance their abilities
• Elemental system(fire, lightning, ice), take fire as an example: it can function as a source of light, increase the temperature of the surroundings, barbeque food (e.g. apple and meat), melt ice, and light flammable objects (e.g. grass and wooden objects).

Action mechanisms:

• basic actions: fight with a sword, shoot with arrows, block with a shield, dodge attacks, charged attacks, attack from the midair
• strategic actions: stealth and sneak attack, use the elemental system to attack weakness, and many special abilities (e.g. bomb, Magnesis to move metallic objects)

Story

BOTW’s story is a perfect example of balancing catering for old players and welcoming new players. While bringing in familiar settings, characters, and music, BOTW also tells the story from Link’s perspective, who lost his memory. Hence, Link is as confused as players. Although the main story is rather simple (fighting the evil Ganon), as Link reclaim his memory piece by piece, one will discover that the settings and character building are not shallow at all.

Aesthetics

• Visuals: BOTW opts for an anime-like visual style that is vibrant and vivid. This anime-like visual style enables stunning graphics that are within the capability of the Switch. Additionally, since Link has various transportation means, players can view this gorgeous world from different perspectives (e.g. from the sky)
• Music: BOTW has beautiful background music featuring piano as the main instrument (with a change in tempo at different times of day). Moreover, Nintendo made the environment more immersive by adding ambient sound (e.g. sounds of birds and owls) and foley(e.g. footsteps)
• Haptic feedback: BOTW provides haptic feedback wherever needed (e.g. during battle).

Technology

The mobile game console Switch itself is a giant leap forward in game technology. Since Switch is a mobile console, players can play BOTW anytime, anywhere. While providing usual functionalities that a console/controller should have such as joystick and vibration, Switch also sets a great example of balancing graphics and computing resources.

Lens 8: Problem Solving

BOTW comes with a wide variety of problems solving activities. Nintendo has carefully designed the quantity and the completion time of these problems based on their difficulties. These problems usually fall under one of the following three categories:

Puzzles (with various difficulties):

• Korox seed (1 min), Shrines (5-20 mins), Big maze (40 mins), Dungeon (100 mins)

Quests:

• Many side quests require players’ innovative thinking.

Exploration and adventure:

• Sheikah Towers: once players reach the top of a Sheikah Tower in one region the previously invisible map of the region will become visible.
• Cooking recipe: players don’t know any recipe at first, have to experiment with ingredients to find out the best combination.
• Hidden problems: For instance, “how to get across a mountain covered in snow and not avoid freezing to death”.
• Battle resources (e.g. sword): Bows and swords will break in BOTW. Hence players must carefully manage the battle resources and try out different approaches to defeat enemies such as using special abilities like bombs

For the above-mentioned problems, Nintendo encourages out-of-box solutions and usually offers more than one way to solve the problem (e.g. use special power to lift a heavy metallic object and crush enemies with it).

Moreover, depending on the difficulties, solving the problems above will give players corresponding rewards with endogenous value. For instance, one can solve puzzles in Shrines to gain health/stamina, and activating Sheikah Tower will give players a clear map that can facilitate their adventure. These valuable rewards are one of the main stimulation that keeps players going.

Lens 39, 40: Meaningful Choices & Triangularity

Players have to make numerous choices during their adventures. For most choices, players can choose a risky move and potentially get more reward or play safe and only get less reward. Here are a few examples of meaningful choices in BOTW:

• Go defeat small bosses and free 4 divine beasts vs directly confront the Ganon
• perfect dodge (dodge right before enemies hit the player) vs safely defend with shield

• Spend time to climb the mountain to avoid monsters vs take the simpler path and fight them
• Aim for a small weak region vs aim for a large normal region that can be easily hit

As mentioned above, to encourage players to step out of their comfort zone, BOTW offers high rewards for risky moves that succeeded. These rewards not only immediate benefits (e.g. after perfect dodge, the time will slow down for a while, where Link can attack enemies freely), but also satisfying feedback such as ping sound when enemies weaknesses are hit.

Lens 32, 81: Goals & Indirect Control

To avoid the problem of too many objectives on the map, Nintendo made a wise decision to let players themselves decide their goals. Meanwhile, to provide guidance and indirect control, Nintendo introduced a concept called “Gravity”, which states that different landmarks or objects will attract players in different ways (e.g. Sheikah Tower is an extremely tall glowing building, which attracts players greatly).

And this “Gravity” will change accordingly depending on factors like the time in the game (e.g. shrines and stable will emit light at night time, making it more attractive to players), the player’s focus (e.g. exploring vs increasing the ability).

Additionally, Nintendo strategically placed those attraction points such that whenever players reach a point that attracts them, other interesting landmarks or objects are placed nearby so that the player immediately gets another goal.

However, if those towers and shrines are placed on a flat surface, the process of going from one attraction point to another will become extremely linear and players will know that this has been deliberately designed, which will impact the player’s sense of freedom. This brings us to the next point: curiosity and indirect control.

Lens 6, 81: Curiosity & Indirect Control

To make the indirect control less obvious, Nintendo brings in many triangle shapes (mountain, hills, boulders, stable, etc.) to hide what’s behind. Players will be curious about the unknown behind those triangles, which propels them to move forward. Using triangle shapes, Nintendo introduced more variables and unknowns in the process of going from one attraction point to another, which can further spark players’ curiosity and makes the indirect control less obvious.

With “Gravity” and triangle-shaped objects, players are not overwhelmed with goals and quests, and they deem that the choices of their goals are made by themselves, unaware of the indirect control cleverly inserted by Nintendo.

Conclusion

Overall, all four tetrad elements interrelate with each other harmoniously in BOTW. Nintendo hides many details of this splendid world. They won’t brag about their hard work and achievements in the game. Instead, Nintendo lets players decide their goals and their ways of uncovering secrets of this world. Perhaps that’s the reason why the BOTW community remains active and there are still new secrets about BOTW being discovered in 2022, 5 years from BOTW’s release date. Needless to say, BOTW excels at all four aspects of the tetrad, making it a true masterpiece.