12/23/2023 0 Comments Legend of zelda work journal![]() Producer Aonuma Eiji suggested that speedrunners could go straight to the final battle if they wished: Users may not actually get the full story depending on how they play this game and how they strategize and solve puzzles….Users are able to go to the very end goal without revealing why Link woke up the way he did and where he did. A major point was the emphasis on player choice in a more open-world game, where puzzles and dungeons could be completed out of order or not attempted at all. ![]() Director Fujibayashi Hidemaro presented a panel at the 2017 Game Developers’ Conference with art director Takizawa Satoru and technical director Dohta Takuhiro, addressing change and consistency in Breath of the Wild in the context of the series. The open world gives a similar sense of thrilling exploration found in the first Zelda game from 1986, “rediscovering the essence” of the series in allowing players to go in any direction and do whatever actions they like, while gradually becoming accustomed to the map (Webster, 2017). Basic gameplay elements have much in common with previous 3D installments, including dungeons, puzzles, fearsome boss battles and the need to save a world in danger. The game retells the story of the young hero Link, the beautiful Princess Zelda of Hyrule and the evil villain Ganon, as does every title in the series. Selling more than 24 million copies to date, the game was an instant success, praised for its vast and complex open world, the ambient music suffusing the environment, and beautiful graphics inspired by visual conventions of Studio Ghibli. Nintendo’s latest offering in The Legend of Zelda series is Breath of the Wild, released on the Switch console in 2017. Keywords: colonialism, Nintendo, ideology, player agency, open world, Legend of Zelda Introduction In the open world, “observant play” becomes as much a self-directed interpretive practice as an exercise in following instructions. From my own observations, I argue that the designers encourage non-violent action and an anti-colonialist worldview. While environmental cues and narrative development are seen to complement one another, the balance between observing external, scripted instructions and following one’s own interests and predilections of play is seen to reach a tipping point, leading to an individual, specific interpretation of the game’s rhetoric. The essay incorporates an experimental playthrough to perform a close reading of in-game instructions and their significance. As such, the observant player is defined as a specific subset of the implied player. “Observant play” is defined as paying close attention to direct instructions, limiting possibilities of action in the open world, and negotiating meaning-making according the player’s own values, prior knowledge and experience. I test the hypothesis that the ideology of the game is clearest in its architecture - the structure of rules and script that serves as a shell to player-driven exploration - and is accessible through observant play. I investigate the game’s ideology in terms of how it is conveyed to players, not only on the representational plane of narrative, theme and character design, but also in the manipulation of the implied player in the context of an open-world environment. This essay examines the charge of colonial rhetoric in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017), taking into account the Japanese origin of the game and what “colonialism” means in the Japanese context. Observant Play: Colonial Ideology in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild by Rachael Hutchinson Abstract
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