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arosnowflake · 8 months ago

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By far the biggest flaw in BOTW's storytelling is its distribution of information. Its poor utilization of the flashbacks single-handedly turns a story that easily could've been great into one that's barely mediocre.

When creating a story, you need to decide 1) what information you want to put in it, and 2) where you want to put that information. Your choices can make or break your story on a fundamental level. Example one: if your story hinges on deconstructing a complex magic system, but then fails to explain this magic system to the audience, your story will completely fall apart. Example two: if you decide to open your story with a plot twist that'll be revealed halfway through, and then still try to pretend like the audience doesn't know what'll happen, your story will be very poorly received by an annoyed audience. However, if you reveal this twist and then utilize it as a sword of Damocles hanging over the characters' heads as they inch ever closer to it, it can create a unique tension. Which information you reveal and how you reveal it is a foundational aspect of storytelling.

BOTW, being an open world video game, can't really create a traditional linear story structure. Its information distribution is different than that of a movie, book, or even linear video game. BOTW has five avenues to distribute information: 1) main story cutscenes, 2) flashbacks, 3) NPC dialogue, 4) environmental storytelling, and 5) infodumps scattered throughout the world.

The first three speak for themselves, I don't feel like I have to explain them. With 'infodumps scattered around the world' I mean things like the Zora plaques and the diaries you can find; things you have to stop and read out in the world. I define 'environmental storytelling' primarily as location design; for example, the Guardian graveyard around Fort Hateno speaks to a fierce battle that then suddenly ended as Guardians failed to advance, information you can gather just from looking at it well before anyone tells you this. I distinguish this from NPC dialogue and infodumps because it's a completely wordless method of distributing information that essentially every person who plays the game will pick up on, regardless of whether they go out of their way to gather it or not.

Between these methods of distribution, main story cutscenes and environmental storytelling are the most reliable ways to distribute information. Your average player can be expected to watch at least most of the main story cutscenes, and since BOTW is a game about exploring, nearly all players will be exposed to environmental storytelling. Flashbacks are semi-reliable, in that most players can be expected to get at least a few of them, though a lot will probably not go out of their way to gather all. Lore dumps in the form of NPC dialogue and books/plaques/magazines/etc. are the least reliable, as a good chunk of players is simply not going to care about the story enough to read and seek them out.

The main story cutscenes do a fine job at explaining the basic story to the player and providing a bit of pathos for the Champions, which is their main job. I don't have much to say about them. But the real story of Breath of the Wild isn't really about calming the Divine Beasts and defeating Calamity Ganon; it's about what happened a hundred years ago. The story in the present matters, but is only a small percentage of the real picture.

The story of a hundred years ago lies primarily in the flashbacks, of which there are eightteen. Information is also distributed through certain diaries (most notably Rhoam and Zelda's), environmental storytelling, and NPC dialogue (mainly through Impa and some Zora NPCs). It is significantly more difficult to tell the story of the past than of the present, both because it's a lot more complex, and because there are fewer avenues to do so. As such, you need to be especially careful chosing what information you give where; flashbacks are the most complete way to distribute information, but environmental storytelling is the most universal. What information do you want most players to know, and what information is only really relevant to those already interested in the story? How do you maximize the information players receive?

This is where Breath of the Wild's story ultimately falls apart. It does a tremendously poor job recognizing what parts of the story are complex and important enough to be put in the flashbacks, and which information should instead be given through books and dialogue. It does not utilize the environmental storytelling to its full potential, either, though I won't be getting too much into that because it's the least egregious issue and this is already gonna be like a ten page essay. Instead, I'll focus on the flashbacks and, to a lesser extent, the books and dialogue.

First, to successfully write a story like this, you have to identify what information to put in the flashbacks, and what information you can give via environmental storytelling, books, or dialogue. Impa is capable of telling you about basic plot information from a hundred years ago, the Zora NPCs cover Mipha and some of Link's personal life, and the books give a more direct insight into Zelda and Rhoam's thoughts. However, these extra diaries will only be read by players already interested in the lore, so they should contain information that adds to what has already been established in the flashbacks; load-bearing information that the player needs to know should be present instead in the flashbacks and, where possible, environmental storytelling.

The flashbacks are structured as eighteen different scenes that should be able to stand alone, because they might be viewed in any order. Most of the scenes are dedicated to Zelda, which is a decent choice; you will gain information on the Champions through dialogue and the main story cutscenes, so they are less of a priority. It is harder to gather much meaningful information about Zelda through those, so prioritizing her in the flashbacks is a natural choice. That said, the few flashbacks we have of the Champions should absolutely provide information that couldn't have been gained from present day dialogue/cutscenes, especially seeing as there's only one for each. Likewise, information about Zelda already given via the flashbacks does not need to be repeated in books, since players who sit down to read those can be reasonably presumed to have either gathered all flashbacks already or be interested in doing so.

So, to summarize: the job of the flashbacks is to contain important information the player couldn't gather via dialogue or other present day infodumps. Things like characterization of Zelda, private scenes between Zelda and Link, and characterization details for the Champions should be prioritized here.

Important also: there are eighteen scenes. There is a hard limit on what information you can put in the flashbacks. When you have this few scenes to tell a story, you need to be ruthless in your prioritization of information. You need to put the most interesting, most important, most complex information in the flashbacks, and spread the rest through books and dialogue.

So. Why is there a flashback dedicated to showing monsters are acting up in the lead-up to Calamity Ganon's return? Like. That could've been an email, or, you know a diary entry. The only other thing the Eldin flashback provides is the knowledge that Zelda and Link are friends, that Zelda cares for Link, and that Link can be reckless when fighting. The first two are things we can see just as if not more clearly in other flashbacks, and the last is something that easily could've been put in the diary entry. Furthermore, 'monsters are acting up in the lead-up to Calamity Ganon's return' is information we could (and probably did) easily gather ourselves from seeing how the monsters are acting in the present day, with NPC dialogue informing us they are unusually active and Calamity Ganon having a clear direct effect on them via the Blood Moon. This information would've been nice flavoring in a diary entry; as a memory slot, it's wasting precious time and actively undercuts the story by doing so. This memory slot could've been used to show important information; instead, it's a complete waste of time.

This is just one example; Breath of the Wild is littered with memories that do little more than either repeat information established elsewhere or outright waste time, at best giving us irrelevant information, and at worst giving us nothing at all. Particularly egregious examples are the Mipha flashback, which does not provide us with any new information about her aside from maybe her healing, which is information that should've absolutely been previously established via dialogue instead and is established via other means elsewhere; the Kara Kara Bazaar flashback, which gives so little information as to be near useless (especially when this information is then later repeated in Zelda's diary for some reason) yet is still placed in such a way as to be basically unmissable and covers a load-bearing point in the story; and the one where Zelda reads off a travel itinerary, talks about basic Divine Beast facts we already know, and cuts out right at the point where we start to get into anything actually interesting.

Not all flashbacks are bad; some are mediocre, and some are outright great. But far too many flashbacks waste time repeating information or giving far too little, which eats away at the precious few scenes BOTW has to tell its story. I would consider the four scenes I just mentioned to be completely useless; memories tree and eight (travel itinerary and Eldin respectively) are useless to the point where you could outright cut them without missing anything real, and the other two are poorly written to the point where they are wasting space despite having an important part in the story.

However, I would only consider nine of the memories to be genuinely well-written, if I'm being generous (eight if I'm not, the swing vote being memory one). These are memories eleven through eighteen minus fourteen, multiple of which give important plot information that couldn't have been as effectively given in others ways, all of which provide characterization and/or additional context to plot events that couldn't have been given through other means. Also included is the frog memory, which contains no plot information, but shows what Zelda is like when she isn't stressed, an important part of characterization that, again, couldn't have been established nearly as effectively elsewhere. Memory one is very interesting in a lot of ways, but I feel like it's not as strong as the others and could've used a little more meat on its bones (for example: what does Mipha think of all this?). Ultimately, though, I do think it's interesting enough to be considered above average.

The rest of the memories are middling, basically passable to the point where I don't think the game would've necessarily been better off without them, but still ultimately not doing a great job telling the story. These are the memories that do give important information that couldn't be (effectively) given elsewhere, but that I don't feel utilize their time well. They are not very interesting and do not give enough information to justify their inclusion in the game as-is; they should've been rewritten to make better use of their time and provide more information. In a word: they're underwhelming. These are most of the Champion memories, where they simply give too little information about the Champions to be truly all that interesting to me; I feel like with some rewriting you could've made much better use of the one memory slot each Champion has. The last one in this category in memory fourteen, which does provide plot information and some characterization for Zelda and to a lesser extent Link, but ultimately feels more like a stopgap before the final act than anything else. Like, it's fine. I feel like you could've come up with a more interesting scenario with which to convey this information though. Which is basically my opinion on all these memories: they're fine, but could've used another pass.

(Memory five is one I'm not confident in placing; it does provide quite a bit of important information but I don't think it does so in a particularly interesting way; at the same time, I also don't think it's so weak that it strictly needed to be rewritten. So. Probably middling but in a less negative way than the others.)

We can twist and argue on the exact specifics on which memory should be included where, but I think that even with the most generous interpretation, it's difficult to argue against the estimation that there that about 25% to 50% of the memories included in Breath of the Wild do not do a good job telling their story. Seeing as the memories are the primary mechanism by which the story is told, that's. Bad. If 25% to 50% of your scenes are either bad or underwhelming, you don't have a very good story.

The issues don't stop at the memories. They also pop up in Zelda's diary, one of the other most important methods of information distribution. The third entry is about memory five and does not give meaningful insight on it, since memory five was already in Zelda's point of view and it was very easy to follow her thought process. The only new information is that she feels guilty about it. This is a waste of a dairy entry; we've already received most of this information, and the rest is not interesting enough to be worth its inclusion. Entry four is about the Kara Kara Bazaar flashback (or, you know, it would be if the flashback scene wasn't so weak), and similarly wastes an entry in its inclusion, since you're all but guaranteed to have gotten this memory by the time you read the diary and it doesn't really give much meaningful insight into Zelda's thought process (I mean. Still more than the actual memory. But come on now). Both of these are important for a narrative flow to the diary, I guess, but could've easily been incorporated into other entries with a sentence or two.

For example, while entry six also retells a memory, it does so in a few sentences, and spends the rest of its time providing insight into Zelda's thoughts on her mother and how those intertwine with her thoughts around her power and her failure to connect with it. This is a much more effective usage of the diary, providing extra information that's not essential to the story, but interesting to know for people who care. People who are sitting down to read the diary are people who care about the story; they'll have almost certainly either gotten the memories at this point, or be planning on getting them. You don't need whole entries dedicated to retelling the memories. They'll find them eventually, if they haven't yet. Instead, use the time more wisely by providing this extra flavor that deepens the story as a whole, rather than laying its basic foundations. That's the memories' job.

The other entries mostly do a pretty good job; the diary isn't the main issue with the story. However, there is one other entry that stands out to me: entry five, which describes Zelda and Link's first real bonding conversation. This is where the story gets kind of kneecapped by the game's insistence on keeping Link as a blank slate first and a character second. The writing correctly identified anyone who'd sit down to read Zelda's diary as someone who would like or at least wouldn't mind deeper Link characterization, but didn't want to risk alienating any players by putting more than vague hints towards characterization in the main memories. Link's lack of characterization is a separate issue from information distribution that only really hurts the story on two occasions (this one and the itinerary memory); I won't be getting into it here (again. the post is long enough), but I'm noting it because the information in this entry is far better suited to a memory. This is an important turning point in Link and Zelda's relationship, a foundational aspect of the story, not merely flavor text. The Kara Kara Bazaar memory, in part due to how bare bones it is, does not do a good job bearing the weight of this turning point. If you just watch the memories, the transition between Zelda disliking Link and them becoming good friends feels very sudden. The scene the entry describes is full of extremely interesting information that would make for a good flashback scene; however, most of it is about Link, and it would require giving him stronger characterization than the game was willing to commit to. Entry five is a good example of flavor text that should've, by all rights, been in the main story; however, its exclusion was deliberate. In my opinion, it still counts as an information distribution issue, but it isn't purely one.

So we have memories that should've been diary entries, diary entries that should've been memories, diary entries that should've been rewritten, memories that should've been rewritten because they provide so little information as to be either outright worthless or underwhelming, and memories that could've just been straight-out cut.

And here's the reason all of this matters: these things take up time. They take up valuable space in the narrative that could've been spent on things that were far more interesting. The foundation of Breath of the Wild's story, that of Zelda conflicting with her destiny and of a people doomed to tragedy due to a blind reliance on the past, is very strong. But in practice, it doesn't end up doing much of anything interesting with it.

Its characterization of the Champions is bare bones, with not enough information provided in the world to make up for the mediocre memories. Zelda's characterization is deeper and more interesting, but a lot of time that could've been spent flashing it out further instead goes to wasting time or repeating information established elsewhere. It never goes further than base elements you'd logically expect from this type of story set-up, and I don't believe that's because there wasn't anything interesting to do; look at the diary entry talking about Zelda's strange dream about a glowing woman. Is it Hylia? Is it Zelda having a prophetic dream about her own future? Is it something else? This is something you could easily mine and do something very interesting with. The summary describes memory three (the itinerary one) as Zelda 'interrogating Link, after which the pain she's held inside surfaces' (paraphrasing, I play the game in Dutch and am translating), which is wildly overstating what actually happens because the memory cuts off before it can do anything interesting. Part of that is the previously stated desire to keep Link a blank slate, but if that's what you want to do, why structure a precious memory slot around a scene you know is doomed to go nowhere? If you used this slot to actually have Zelda talk about how Hyrule views the Master Sword and what her own relationship is to it, you'd actually have an interesting memory and a more developed world and character to boot; perhaps you could even foreshadow the part in memory seventeen where Zelda knows Link's alive because the Master Sword still glows. Do you see what I mean? Time that's now wasted could've been used to provide much more interesting information that would deepen the story as a whole.

The fact is that Breath of the Wild spends too much time on far too little. It did a poor job understanding what information should go where, prioritizing unimportant, underwhelming, or repeating information for memory slots when they already had so few of them. The result is a story that is infuriatingly mediocre despite its potential.

#botw #loz #my posts #genuinely the way the memories are utilized makes me feel like i'm chewing at the bars #why would you write it like that. why would you do that to me specifically #anyway. botw thoughts today. i'll try to get it out of my system #but i'm probably making at least one other post about the kara kara bazaar flashback #bc that memory is my arch nemesis. there is genuinely not a single good thing about it #it sucks so bad!!! i hate it so much!!!!

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