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brightknightie) wrote2026-01-25 08:03 am
brightknightie) wrote2026-01-25 08:03 am
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The most key clue that BOTW 2017 is Zelda 1986 reimagined
I'm sure that I must have read or been told this long ago, but I didn't take it fully on board until recently. The BOTW Hero of the Wilds armor (outfit) is the Zelda '86 garb. And we're meant to know that. The elevator pitch for BOTW must have been: "What if the very first game, but with everything today's systems can offer and fans have come to love?"
It dawned on me 400+ hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as I run out of ways to delay confronting the Calamity and saying goodbye. When I personally earned the "Hero of the Wilds" outfit and began leveling it up, it hit me. The Wilds set -- green cap, green tunic, brown long-sleeved shirt and short pants -- is the ultimate tangible reward for exploring (beating all 120 base-game shrines), specifically described in-game as "the warrant of the true hero," "meant for a hero who travels the wild lands," "just your size," "wearing it just feels so right," etc. etc. With the DLC and amiibos, I have found sets for the other distinctive Link outfits from the other games. Their descriptions are not like this. The others emphasize the specific ancient hero who sailed the seas, or battled the twilight, who is not you, the player character in BOTW. This set is in the base game, not bonus material, and it is explicitly for you, you who have traveled the wild lands, just like the first Link from 1986. (Also, this is the only set that can be leveled up as high as the knight's set. The knight is who the Hero of the Wilds was in the pre-Calamity past; traveling the wild lands is who he is in the post-Calamity present.)
Naturally, of course, one game does not replace the other! Both games are on the timeline (cough). BOTW is explicitly and provably long after the others. And Zelda '86 is known, I believe, to be set wholly in the foothills of the Eldin region, less than a quarter of known Hyrule, aside from all the infinite other differences. But. Both are set in a fallen society, where the surviving people hide from roaming monsters, and Link must search and search and search for how to help bring it the peace to begin to repair itself and emerge from its darkness.
And he does. ♥ Well, if you beat the games. Which I did not do as a child on a relative's console in the '80s, for sure. But will do soon, now.
It dawned on me 400+ hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as I run out of ways to delay confronting the Calamity and saying goodbye. When I personally earned the "Hero of the Wilds" outfit and began leveling it up, it hit me. The Wilds set -- green cap, green tunic, brown long-sleeved shirt and short pants -- is the ultimate tangible reward for exploring (beating all 120 base-game shrines), specifically described in-game as "the warrant of the true hero," "meant for a hero who travels the wild lands," "just your size," "wearing it just feels so right," etc. etc. With the DLC and amiibos, I have found sets for the other distinctive Link outfits from the other games. Their descriptions are not like this. The others emphasize the specific ancient hero who sailed the seas, or battled the twilight, who is not you, the player character in BOTW. This set is in the base game, not bonus material, and it is explicitly for you, you who have traveled the wild lands, just like the first Link from 1986. (Also, this is the only set that can be leveled up as high as the knight's set. The knight is who the Hero of the Wilds was in the pre-Calamity past; traveling the wild lands is who he is in the post-Calamity present.)
Naturally, of course, one game does not replace the other! Both games are on the timeline (cough). BOTW is explicitly and provably long after the others. And Zelda '86 is known, I believe, to be set wholly in the foothills of the Eldin region, less than a quarter of known Hyrule, aside from all the infinite other differences. But. Both are set in a fallen society, where the surviving people hide from roaming monsters, and Link must search and search and search for how to help bring it the peace to begin to repair itself and emerge from its darkness.
And he does. ♥ Well, if you beat the games. Which I did not do as a child on a relative's console in the '80s, for sure. But will do soon, now.
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