#the windwaker

Been making a lot of House MD posts recently, but I'm finally close to finishing up Tears of the Kingdom, and I wanted to talk about one of my favorite parts of the game (and most of the Zelda games I've played): its dedication to immersing you in its natural world.

For the purpose of this, I'm gonna pretty exclusively discuss Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom because that's where this is most obvious and observable, but I might bring up some earlier games as well.

First, fauna.

One of the most defining features of both games is the sheer scope of its biological diversity. TOTK has a somewhat expanded list of species, but BOTW also did this very well. Some of these species don't even add much of anything to the plot or gameplay in and of itself. Take, for example, birds. There are six different species of sparrows alone: the common sparrow, the red sparrow, the blue sparrow, the rainbow sparrow, the sand sparrow, and the golden sparrow. None of these sparrows have any purpose for the story and none have unique drops (all of them drop a chickaloo tree nut if killed). There's also five different kinds of pigeons. While the other birds in the game don't have many variations (such as the Islander Hawk, Mountain Crow, or Bright-Crested Duck), they still exist without much obvious purpose.

Tears of the Kingdom, because it introduced two completely different ecosystems - the Sky Islands and the Depths - also gave us an incredible range of new flora.

Wide variations of plants, herbs, fruits, and vegetables does serve the purpose of giving the player certain status effects, so there is a much greater list of flora in TOTK than there is fauna, but even still, the sheer diversity in the game's natural world is pretty astounding. If you include flowers and fungi that are not edible, the list is pretty exhaustive.

Most, if not all, of these plants only grow in specific locations or regions - some in more specific places than others. For example, you can find Splash Fruit in most of Zorana, parts of Akkala, and the Lanayru Wetlands, but Dazzlefruit is a little trickier to locate, usually only growing in the Sky Islands and around fallen rocks. Plants like the Bomb Flower and Muddlebuds exclusively grow in the Depths, and while they are plentiful, they can be a little hard to find for players who haven't unlocked the Depths' entire map because of the general lack of light. All of the natural life also gets its own entry in the Hyrule Compendium, which can tell players where to find the plant or animal they're looking for, but also give a synopsis on the adaptations of those plants and animals. For example, the compendium tells you that the Hearty Salmon only lives in cold waters and has much more fat tissue than most other fish in order to survive in frigid climates. Some entries even tell you the general temperament of the animals you've encountered, such as whether they're likely to run away or attack if approached.

"So what?" you may be asking. "Why does this matter? If the biological diversity in Zelda doesn't add to the plot or gameplay, what does any of this matter?"

Something I love about Zelda is that, despite the circumstances, nothing about it feels urgent. Anyone who has ever played BOTW or TOTK knows that it's a pretty apocalyptic scenario, and the game makes an effort to convey the mortal peril that looms over every character, regardless of where they live or their personal circumstance. But when you're just wandering through a grove in the Depths in a peaceful part of the map, or walking down a trail in Faron, it's easy to forget that. There are still parts of this place that feel as if they've stayed untouched by malice, undisturbed by the incomprehensible threat that's stolen the castle straight from the ground. More than that, while animals do have a respawn cycle, many of them don't exist solely for the player's convenience. Why take the time or effort to kill, for example, a Red-Tusked Boar, when you could kill a Water Buffalo and get more meat from it? Why bother to kill Snowcoat Fox when you could find a pack of Cold-Footed Wolves and take out a few of them instead? You often have to hunt in this game, whether simply to feed yourself or to complete certain quests. But the game includes several animals that it takes more effort to kill than you receive in drops, and some animals drop nothing at all. Those six different kinds of sparrows I mentioned? None of them have different drops. They all drop one tree nut if killed. Sometimes, they don't drop anything at all.

The purpose of Zelda's ecological diversity is a form of environmental storytelling. Hyrule, during the events of BOTW, is a fallen civilization. Characters recount stories of villages and towns reduced to ashes by Ganon, droves of people killed in the aftermath, and swaths of farmland rendered barren. If you explore the Hyrule Castle Town ruins, this is only confirmed, and it's pretty chilling. The ruins of houses, broken and charred wagons, sitting unused, dried-up stone fountains crumbling into dust. In BOTW, it's emphasized that the only reason towns like Hateno and Lurelin were spared was because they were too far away from the castle to be so harshly affected. In TOTK, we know Zelda and Link were attempting to restore Hyrule to its former glory, but TOTK takes place just 5 years after BOTW, and with Hyrule being so huge, it doesn't seem that they got close to their goal. There's also a pretty sparse number of NPCs milling about, and it makes the world feel lonely. Sometimes, in Hyrule's most desolate places, you feel like the only person still alive.

So what is left, if most of Hyrule's people are gone? The animals.

In old town ruins, sometimes deer and boar are poking around in the grass. In BOTW, in the valley full of old, ruined Guardian robots, sometimes a ram can be found grazing. In TOTK, in the most barren parts of Death Mountain's foothills, sometimes you still see Eldin Ostriches trotting about. In a world where the civilization you knew is dying, the animals live on. There's the sense that this is their world. You also get the idea, as the player, that you're supposed to respect the natural world. You're supposed to find beauty in the empty forests in Akkala. You're supposed to hold in awe the shining Necluda Sea, free of fishing boats and teeming with fish, now that there's few people left to hunt them. You're supposed to roam freely in the snowy fields of Hebra without causing disruption, just as the Tabantha Moose does as well. Even though things are terrible, and your objective is to solve the problem that is killing the people of Hyrule, there's the sense that, in some ways, this is the way the world is supposed to be, and it is your duty to leave nature just as you found it, as much as it is to save nature from the peril that Ganondorf threatens it.

The cover for a W.I.P. fanfic based on The Windwaker, cause I’m just over the moon for that game and the world has so much potential to be expanded upon. Actually quite proud of this cover, which is getting me thinking about making it a webcomic?? Thoughts?

Day 5

Adventure Pouch