Weapon degradation is not your enemy
The fragility of Breath of the Wild's arsenal is what makes it so valuable
One of my favourite recurring moments in The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is the desperation that came from knowing that your strongest weapon is at its natural conclusion. When the blade, club, spear, axe or, if you're really down on your luck, the pointed stick in your hand is down to its last few hits, the icon starts to flash, and a decision has to be made.
Do you keep swinging with desperate abandon until it shatters in your hand, or do you give it one last hurrah, chuck that son of a bitch John Wick style into your opponent's stupid face for a tasty bit of bonus damage. Either act is followed by a brief but immediate panic as you scramble for another tool of bloodshed to finish the job, or, should you have come insufficiently prepared, an exit strategy. It’s a brilliant bit of design that always keeps you on the backstep, but I don’t think people realise how crucial it is to the experience as a whole.
Breath of the Wild's weapon degradation is not the subject of universal praise, and I don't want to discredit those whose enjoyment of the game was hampered by it. There's a lot of stuff about Breath of the Wild that is a matter of taste, a matter of what the audience understands a Zelda game to be and what they want from that experience. I'm not here to say that you're wrong for not liking this system, but I hope to explain why I think it’s so essential.
The Hyrule of Breath of the Wild is a once majestic kingdom condemned to ruin. Post-apocalypse is hardly the appropriate way to describe it, because in the absence of monarchical civilization an even greater majesty has emerged. A vast utopia of breathless abundance. Gorgeous blue skies, crystal clear waters and verdant horizons abound. Every sight, sound and feeling like the tender brush strokes of an artist at the apex of their career.
Embracing the natural order of things is a core tenet of Breath of the Wild's gameplay loop. Fire spreads, water douses, the wind rises and lightning rattles the metals you clad yourself in. Elements combine and converge and react to one another in a plethora of fascinating ways and at its heart there is a strong sense of the finiteness of all things. Your opportunities are brief, contextual, but conceptually limitless, and for this to make sense, that finiteness intrinsically needs to extend to Link’s armoury.
Shields crack, blades shatter, and thanks to the macabre beauty of the blood moon, enemies never stay dead for long. For some, an intimidating element that breeds a reluctance to engage with the myriad combat encounters that dot this vast landscape. For me, with the shame of invoking my least favourite argument, that's the point.
This world is bigger than you. Its myriad challenges will outlast you. In a most perfect sense Breath of the Wild makes the best use of the open world formula where so many others have failed: you are not expected to do everything, you are just expected to survive, to learn about how this world works and utilise that knowledge to get the better of an enemy that towers over you. In order for this to work, every piece of design needs to be built around this idea.
This reticence to retain permanence is a fundamental part of what drives the ebb and flow of Breath of the Wild, and because of this, its world is allowed to retain an identity independent of its stoic, voiceless hero. There’s a diegetic feel to the way creatures interact with the spaces around them. Not just your foe, they too are part of this wild alchemical system in place that I just don’t think would work with a more traditional equipment loadout.
Part of the joy of this game is knowing that you can’t simply wade into any Moblin encampment and clown those fools without breaking a sweat. You have to take a step back and observe. You have to make a decision about the cost of your actions: whether there might be ways you can thin the herd before making a move on the shiny widget being held by your foe; and whether the spoils of war are even going to be worth it. It’s an interesting dilemma that I think a lot of games are reluctant to commit to, for obvious reasons as the discourse around this game has proven, but I think it’s one that greatly elevates the quality of your time in Hyrule. It’s not your enemy if you work with it instead of against it.
There’s one particular moment that flies in the face of all of this that, paradoxically, I think makes the rest of the game’s choices make even more sense: the discovery of the Master Sword.
On top of finding this legacy weapon in the first place, a task that requires using the elements to navigate a tricksy labyrinthine forest, the cost to the player in unsheathing it from the stone it’s been held in for a hundred years calls for the sum total of hours of exploration, combat and navigation. You need a lot of health to withstand the physical and mental burden of wielding a blade to slice through the darkness of the world, one that doubles in strength in the presence of great evil. It’s a brilliant bit of symbiosis between mechanics and narrative that makes me think about the words in Zack Gorman’s excellent Zelda Comic:
‘There is no safety to be found in a sword. A sword brings death. It does not give life. It is a responsibility, a burden’
Once you have succeeded, what you have is…well, something a bit complicated to celebrate outright. Breath of the Wild’s Master Sword does not break like all other weapons do, but its power does wane if used improperly, rendering it inert for a period of time before you can use it again. A lesson in humility, that even divine forged steel is no match for the infinite power of the open world, but consequently the comfort in knowing that this too also applies to your gargantuan seemingly immortal opponent.
The Master Sword’s utility is at its peak only contextually, in symbiosis with the systems at play. Whereas in other games obtaining this legendary blade was an automatic consequence of progression, here it is not essential for beating Calamity Ganon, but in a way that makes its presence all the more important. A milestone for your journey, through necessity almost at its climax and after hours of messy, brittle, makeshift combat encounters that have built up a more valuable arsenal of the mind, one that will have instilled in you a vital lesson:
It's not the size of the blade that matters, it's the measure of the person who wields it.