Breath of the Wild is Asking You to Listen
I can’t stop thinking about Breath of the Wild.
I’m not alone. Dozens of articles have been written about how innovative the game is, how it plays with expectations, reinvents principles of open-world design, and uses its setting to tell its story. Opinion pieces abound about how it is a perfect game, or how it is far from the masterpiece it’s claimed to be, or how it’s an utter failure to the Zelda franchise.
Without ignoring the value of these pieces, I’d like to offer a slightly different take on what Breath of the Wild (BotW) is trying to say–or rather, what it is trying to get the player to hear.
Most of your time in BotW is spent moving. In the grand tradition of open-world games, BotW requires the player to consider both where they want to go and how they want to get there. There’s always a few methods at your disposal. The fast travel system is instantaneous, efficient, and immediate, but requires you to have visited the location you want to go to, or somewhere near it, before. Horses are a fast way to get places new, but you’ll need to either tame one or pick one you’ve previously tamed up from a stable first, and they can’t climb mountains (unrealistic). Walking is reliable, but a bit slow.
When I first played Breath of the Wild, I found myself walking most places.
It wasn’t because I didn’t have a horse, or I didn’t have fast travel. I usually did. And yet, I found myself uninterested in trying to do things efficiently. I wanted to take my time, to savor the beauty of the world Nintendo had created, to simply observe.
The music in BotW is sometimes criticized as being overly sparse, unthematic, unbecoming of the grandiosity and scale of the Zelda series. It is certainly a controversial soundtrack; previous games in the series have had soundtracks that are bombastic, dynamic, and fantastic. Previous Zelda soundtracks featured soaring violin melodies over triumphant orchestral arrangements, using clear cultural signifiers for ‘epic’ and ‘heroic’. The stories are much the same–following the precedent set by Ocarina of Time, every 3D Zelda game shows Link (the player) becoming a hero, and lets you (the player) experience that journey from start to finish. They follow the archetypical heroes journey, giving you the experience of being the brave hero who saves the day.
Breath of the Wild is the opposite of that journey. The world of BotW is nearly empty–civilization clings on in pockets, around the edges, but most civilization lies abandoned. Link was the hero, and spends most of the game discovering everything he lost. His quest in BotW is less a grand quest with a colorful cast of characters and terrifying villain, and more a quiet solace. He defeats Ganon at the end, but there is no kingdom to celebrate.
The music in BotW tells that story.
The soundtrack centers around the piano, acting as a pseudo-’main character’ across the game. It’s a fitting choice–piano is versatile, capable of intense dynamics both soft and loud, and is able to play polyphonically (with multiple notes at the same time). However, it’s a sudden departure from the string-heavy arrangements of previous games, with a distinctly solo sound. More often than not, the piano is playing by itself. Other instruments only join when the player isn’t alone; in combat, in towns, in shrines, and on horseback. It serves to reinforce the theme of loneliness; when you’re wandering the world alone, you’re accompanied by a piano, alone.
Field – Day is one of the most important tracks in the soundtrack, as it represents the “overworld” theme for the game. Hyrule field is absolutely enormous in this game, and you’ll need to traverse it in order to access most other regions. You spend a lot of time just walking through it, searching for your next shrine or quest or korok seed.
Unfortunately, the soundtrack version doesn’t really do this piece justice. It’s comprised of a series of shorter ‘phrases’, each consisting of a few piano notes, the occasional reversed note, and a few ‘chopped’ notes and phrases, jumping back and forth from the left and right channels. A few motifs introduce themselves, but they never seem to develop into full themes. They’re like the skeleton of a melody–never quite reaching a final form, existing merely as fragments. They dance across space, sometimes close, sometimes far, sometimes to your left or right, sometimes almost behind you. It’s the perfect embodiment of Link–his memories are fragments scattered across the world, and the world itself has been reduced to shades of what it once was. In the same way, the music is defined by fragments and whispers, echoes across a vast space.
The implementation of this track in game is also noteworthy. Rather than playing the whole way through, the melody fragments are shuffled around, with indeterminate lengths of silence between them. You hear echoes of music, but are often left to the whistling of wind, chirping of crickets, and rhythm of Link’s footsteps. This randomness also leads to constant serendipitous sync; you’ll often hear the twinkling of music when you crest a hill, glide off a cliff, or cross a river, and the constant moments of discovery that the game offers you adds to this feeling of serendipity. The music invites you to take a moment and just appreciate the serenity of the world you’re exploring, whether you’re admiring the splendor of Hyrule Field, the grandeur of Death Mountain, or the mystery of Hyrule Castle.
Field – Night is constructed in a similar way, consisting of melodic fragments strewn across time, but is a little darker; more eerie and disconcerting. Moments of slight dissonance, augmented harmonies, and unusual motions invite the player to feel a little bit on edge, while still encouraging them to explore. The sound of a high key, echoing like a dropped ping-pong ball, shifts across the sound field, suggesting something moving in the distance. Low reversed notes hint at something hiding out of sight, while reassuring cadences encourage you to keep exploring.
I should take a moment to acknowledge a clever technique the soundtrack uses. The soundtrack uses a combination of clever filtering (adjusting specific sounds to sound brighter or darker), panning (moving objects to sound more to your left or right) and reverb (echo simulating acoustic spaces) to make sounds appear all around you, dancing across space. Even in moments with solo piano, there’s an almost pointillistic approach to where each sound comes from. Notes dance around, some close, some far, some to your left, some to your right. It creates a tremendous sense of space and depth, in otherwise simplistic pieces.
Unlike the previous two pieces I’ve mentioned, Riding – Day always plays through in order (rather than shuffling between melodic fragments) and is one of the most melodic pieces in the soundtrack. Starting with a staccato pattern on the piano, the piece introduces a jumping melody, alongside a regular rhythm that imitates the rhythmic gallops of your horse. Notes dance across the stereo field, with some appearing further apart or closer than others, keeping the otherwise repeating phrase interesting. About halfway through the piece, we hear our first new instruments–a pair of violins, playing in counterpoint, moving their way through the melody of Zelda’s Lullaby. It’s a remarkable moment, the first time you hear it. It reminds you of what your quest is for, and urges you to keep riding, keep fighting, keep exploring.
Similarly, in Riding – Night, we hear one of the only direct quotations of the original Legend of Zelda Theme. It’s a similarly impactful moment; the first time most players will hear the wonderfully heroic theme that has defined the franchise. Yet, there is a tinge of melancholy in this variation of the theme. It’s played on solo viola, with a pair of violins outlining the harmony in the treble range, and at a soft dynamic. We hear the opening four bars, but the motivic setup is never completed. The theme has a certain liminal quality to it; it’s halfway towards the grand display of the Legend of Zelda theme the listener wants, but never quite reaches it. In the quiet melancholy of BotW’s nights, it’s profoundly effectual.
I would be remiss to not mention the music of the towns. Hateno, Kakariko, Rito Village, and many of the other settlements across Hyrule break the norm set by the field and riding themes with upbeat, exciting pieces that take advantage of a multitude of instruments. The themes use unusual instruments, like marimba (a form of mallet percussion, similar to xylophone) and shakuhachi (a Japanese flute), to create a homely and welcoming feel to the settlements, encouraging you to stay a while there. Some include little quotations of previous games, similar to the riding theme; Rito Village includes the melody of Windwaker’s Dragon Roost Island (In many ways Breath of the Wild acts as a spiritual successor to the ideas of Windwaker, making this callback all the more resonant). The themes are all written for ensembles–multiple instruments–planting the idea that while society has been pushed to the edges, it’s still holding on.
There are plenty of other creative techniques used in BotW’s soundtrack. When in battle, scoring a critical will trigger a musical stinger–but the game waits until the next beat of music in order to play it, creating a satisfying cause-and-effect without detracting from the music’s momentum. It acts as a conditioning tool; Kass, a friendly Rito with a mighty accordion, is usually heard before seen, his accordion echoing around hills and cliffs and encouraging us to investigate. Cutscenes are all scored with unique jingles which recall themes from pieces you’ve heard before, creating a real sense of connectivity among every piece in the soundtrack. Classic ‘stingers’ from previous games–short compositions heard when you open a chest, die, or level up–are reimagined around the piano, creating an effective balance of familiarity without triteness. The piece heard when fighting a guardian, a terrifying spider-like robot with a powerful laser and six claw-like legs, is wonderfully dissonant and aggressive, sending most players on edge the second they hear the first few notes.
So what does BotW’s music achieve? I think the predominant effect of the game’s music is one of momentum; the music encourages you to keep going forward, to keep exploring, and to keep searching. Moreover, the restraint in the music, through enthusiastic use of silence and stripped-back orchestration, encourages you to listen to the ambiences that surround you. The sound design of the world in BotW is beautiful; birdsong, crickets, wind, the fluttering of grass, the chatter of NPCs, and your own footsteps all surround your aural field, and being able to hear enemies before you see them is a valuable asset that would have been buried under a busier soundtrack. The extended rests (moments of silence) in pieces like Field (Day) ask the listener to listen closer, to hunt out the next fragment of melody that might dance between your ears. The game wants you to stop, take a breath, and listen.
