In the big picture, you’re making your way through a dungeon, or you’re running through a field heading to the next dungeon, or you’re passing through a town completing a side-quest. You are always doing something in Zelda, or going somewhere in order to do something - both in a micro and macro sense. Zelda is a series governed by a strict flow and adherence to action-based design. Unfortunately for Wander, he lives in a world of consequences - if Wander broke a pot, by Ueda’s ideology, his actions would be punished by a contemptuous God.īefore the release of Breath of the Wild, it would be preposterous to suggest that Hyrule would be dominated by empty space. There is nothing noble about your journey. It is a Zelda game, inverted: you are given an expansive open world, but this time it is utterly empty and pointless to explore you are in a fantasy world, not unlike Hyrule, but here it is dull, and broken, and lifeless you fight epic battles against intimidating foes, but, unlike Link, you’re not quite sure if you’re doing the right thing - Link’s victories against bosses are punctuated with a triumphant jingle, while the Colossi fall to a dirge most tragic.
You are a boy, the boy has a horse, and there is a princess the boy must save, and to save her the boy must conquer dungeons - albeit this time the dungeons are living and breathing.
It’s ironic that borrowing from Ueda’s work was what ended up saving Zelda, considering the core design principles of the former - Shadow of the Colossus is an exercise in taking a pre-established work and flipping it on its head.
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