Made it almost a month since the last installment in this series. Took a raft of nights with terrible sleep on top of the continued erosion of the rights of people I care about and a whole bunch of work stress, which just goes to show the number 1 factor in making me feel helplessly miserable is sleeping like shit. Which is a bit of a facetious joke, since I’m sure that just sleeping poorly wouldn’t make me feel miserable in the way I do today. Still, it’s not difficult to notice the pattern when you’re looking for it, which brings me to my today’s topic: dungeon puzzles in Breath of the Wild! Because I wasn’t kidding anytime I’ve suggested I could write a book about this video game. And once I’ve mined this game for useful topics, I can always turn to Majora’s Mask for another book’s worth of posts.
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I’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 15
Things have been rough lately. I’ve made some personal gains, but it frequently feels like the world is crumbling around us as violence, hatred, and complicit indifference take center stage to the exclusion of mere decency and tolerance. I don’t have a quick answer to those problems, I don’t have the ability to make great change by myself, and I can barely get past my own anger and trauma enough to work on taking what are (in my opinion) the bare minimum steps a decent person can take in response to the world we find ourself in. What I can do, though, is provide a small escape. So today, when I’m tired and sad because of the world we find ourselves in, let’s talk about the power of the horizon in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 14
I know I rave about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a lot (and will until the day I die), but there’s just so much to find and experience in that game. Every time I think I’ve found everything, an alteration to the way I walk through an area, the turn of a camera I am usually not controlling right then, or even a coincidental bit of movement on the screen can show me something entirely new despite having walked through the area a few dozen times across my hundreds of hours playing the game. The best example I’ve found in my most recent play-through is tied to something I’ve largely ignored since my first time playing the game: traveling NPCs.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 13
Bet you didn’t see THIS coming after yesterday’s post! Or maybe you did, if you read my blog daily. I have pretty clear habits, I feel. A spate of thoughtful pieces, maybe some poetry, a few posts about mental health, and then one of these. Can’t be sad if I’m thinking about The Legend of Zelda! It’s a good mood corrector for me, honestly, even if the sentence before this one sounds like an unhealthy method for avoiding my problems. Also, I just want to take a moment to mourn my hopes that I’d be able to play Breath of the Wild 2 in 2022 (the year of the 2 as I’ve been calling it) since it was recently announced that the game’s release was delayed to Spring 2023. Which will be rough, since I’m gonna be in a wedding that’s probably happening sometime not too long after that. Decisions.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 12
One of my favorite techniques for wasting time, resources, and my enemies in Breath of the Wild is attaching things to Octo Ballons. If you get the right number of balloons for your object, you can cause it to float at about chest height, which puts it in the perfect position to blown wherever you like using a Korok Leaf. Since you’re not striking anything with the leaf, a single leaf can last you through a number of battles. Unfortunately, the balloons will pop after a short time, so you have to be precise, quick, and dilligent. Otherwise your carefully arranged maze of traps you’re going to blow onto the unsuspecting Bokoblins will fall at the wrong time and ruin the whole effect. After all, it’s only impressive if YOU set off the series of explosions that causes fire or shock or ice to rain upon your enemies.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 11
At one point into my first play-through of Breath of the Wild, probably at 1 or 2am on a night I had to be up early for work since that was pretty much the entire month following the release of the game, I discovered that I could hold items I’d been collecting in my hands. For whateve reason, it never occurred to me that this could serve any purpose other than to cook things over a fire. I’d, of course, discovered that you could interact with objects in the world before you picked them up, but it had never occurred to me that it might be useful to put them back into the world once I’d put them in my pockets.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 7
Once more, the events of my life have conspired to leave me emotionall drained, exhausted, and on the downswing of my depression wave (and I was doing so well over the last few days!), so let’s return to the one topic that will ALWAYS cheer me up: The Legend of Zelda. In Breath of the Wild, I’ve been doing a Master Mode play-through. The plan originally was to find all the koroks, do every quest, and absolutely 100% the shit out of the game this time. Just go all-in. Unfortunately, since this is my 5th full-play through (not counting two I started but never finished), I’m finding myself having a difficult time staying engaged.
Continue readingI’m Not Easily Distracted, Just So Organized I Seem Easily Distracted
I have been spoiled by Breath of the Wild. I can’t play a single game without thinking about BotW and making what are usually unfair comparisons. Nothing will ever be the same for me, after BotW, and every gaming experience I have will be in the context of this game. And I’m only being sorta overdramatic.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 5
I really ought to rename this entire series to reference Breath of the Wild since it’s the main game I’m going to be talking about. I considered it during the inception of the second “episode,” but I didn’t want to take any options off the table so early in this series. Maybe I’ll eventually write about the music of the franchise or the way that loss and self-sacrifice play a part in every iteration of this story. Or maybe I’ll just forever write about Breath of the Wild because there’s just so much to say about this huge game. Like the introduction of falling stars and the somewhat mystic mechanics that exist around them (at least until you look them up online, anyway).
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 4
This week’s episode, so soon after the last one, was brought on by a crown breaking. Again. It’s fourth months old and has broken twice. In a minor way both times, thankfully, but it is still very frustrating that now I have to take more time out of my schedule to go to the dentist, my least favorite place I voluntarily visit at least twice a year. Growing up, my dentist didn’t believe in sensitive teeth, so every trip was miserable and I’ve formed a deep association between the dentist’s office and pain. As a result, even though my current dentist is wonderful and considerate and (mostly) excellent at their job, I still get unbelievably stressed every time I have to go there for something. Throw in that crown work generally takes a long time (especially if I’m gonna get it replaced this time, but we’ll see what the dentist recommends) and I just spend all of the time leading up to my appointments absolutely dreading them.
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