The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo EPD – Switch, Wii U
A blue-skinned bokoblin – a creature with big, floppy ears and an oversized snout – dozes next to a campfire under a clear night sky. Nearby, a couple of its friends gesticulate broadly as they tell each other amusing stories. Their laughter is the only sound to rise above the chirping crickets and gently whistling breeze.
One bokoblin is just about to deliver a punchline when the scene is interrupted by an arrow to its throat. Almost before its friend can even recognise what has happened, an axe cleaves its skull. The sleeping member of the party has no chance of seeing its own end coming.
The perpetrator is Link, the player character, and hero, of Breath of the Wild, the latest entry in the long-running Zelda series. Of course, this being a Nintendo game, things don’t play out exactly as I describe. The game’s bloodless violence is more comic than gruesome, and the bokoblins are really manifestations of a malevolent force, rather than jolly citizens of Hyrule, the game’s setting. I only use this scenario as an example of how just the act of playing the new Zelda can feel like an intrusion on its immaculately constructed and detailed world.
In what might seem like an incredible sop to modernity, this new version of Hyrule is not only totally open, with essentially no segmentation between its various (enormous) regions, but also post-apocalyptic. Set 100 years after a cataclysmic event caused by Ganon, the game’s villain, Breath of the Wild sees Link run, climb, glide, swim, gallop and battle his way through dilapidated towns or across plains and mountains. The expansive set of actions and interactions available to players feels like a synthesis of the last two decades of 3D game design, with the list of influences easily able to fill this entire page.
Rather than come across as a cynical attempt to appeal to everyone, though, the game is actually, well, a sincere attempt to appeal to everyone. It’s open not just in its structure, but its attitude, with players’ choices in how to tackle (or ignore) challenges endlessly accommodated. Most charming of all, though, is the way in which, despite taking place in a destroyed world, the small remaining population, from snails to scientists, remains lovingly drawn and utterly dignified. Yes, even the bokoblins.
Night in the Woods
Infinite Fall – PS4, Windows, Mac, Linux
As a game about dropping out of college and moving back to your sleepy home town, Night in the Woods fits well enough into the surprisingly fruitful earnest-‘em-up genre. But even as it headlines its sincerity and emotional honesty, the game also engages in some world-building that’s as impressive in its own way as Zelda’s sturdily simulated environment.
Players take on the role of Mae, an anthropomorphic cat who’s had a bad go of it at university and has decided to move back in with her parents in Possum Springs, a depressed former mining town barely holding to an identity. Without anything concrete to occupy her time, Mae’s routine involves wandering the streets each afternoon, chatting to the town’s inhabitants and catching up with some of her high school friends who stayed behind: Gregg, a pleasant, fidgety fox; Angus, a thoughtful bear; and Bea; a world-weary alligator. I’m not sure if the game is set in some speculative future where the animal kingdom has usurped humanity, but if so, they’ve definitely evolved our propensity for existential angst.
The melancholy elements are highlighted in a Twin Peaks-esque plotline about a dangerous, maybe-supernatural entity, but the meat of the experience is in Mae’s daily stroll about town, and her repeated encounters with her neighbours. Night in the Woods is one of the better examples of using the process-based nature of engagement with games to build an environment, rather than a narrative. There are character arcs and revelations, but rarely is a story so well grounded and contextualised as it is here. Possum Springs may be a bit of a shithole, but by the end of the game, you feel like it’s ‘your’ shithole.
Like a Boss
Miles Edgeworth – Phoenix Wright series
In a dystopian future where court cases are limited to a length of three days and the burden of proof is on the accused, the prosecuting attorney rules supreme. Even in this environment, Edgeworth is notably fearsome, churning out guilty verdicts with disturbing regularity. His only weakness is a solid but well-hidden sense of justice, and players need to draw this out to stand any chance of victory. A perfectly timed “Objection!” might knock a bit of judicial sense into him.
Words: Leo Devlin
