ramblings
essays, ramblings, and other textposts that are too long for bluesky and tumblr (imo)
my recent escapades in legend of zelda: breath of the wild
20 feb 2025
i was gifted a BOTW/TOTK bundle for christmas and have been slowly making my way through the first of the two. so far, i am really enjoying it.
i had started playing BOTW via a copy from my friend like a year ago, but being new to the franchise, and really to gaming much in general, it took me a while to really get into. i had fun exploring the world and getting bits and pieces of the story, but having to fight all the enemies and especially the guardians was NOT fun for me. i ended up restarting a few times, but now i've made too much progress to go back. [...] Read more
for one, the music in this game is absolutely gorgeous. and the music for the guardians is beautifully terrifying. i talked about this with my friend, but those tracks filled my gut with such a painful dread that i was genuinely terrified whenever i had to fight the guardians. even now, after defeating two of the divine beasts, that goddamn piano sting haunts me. it took some time, but i have come to really appreciate how the music of this game made me feel.
so far, i have defeated vah ruta and vah medoh. i have also started the quests for the other two but haven't made much progress so i can only really speak on the music in the first two beasts for now. i remember when i first got onto vah ruta after doing the battle with sidon; the dissonance in the music really creeped me out. up to this point, i had been avoiding fighting the mobs as best as possible. but it was kind of impossible to do in the divine beasts because there's a bunch of little crawly guys roaming the whole beast. anyways, the music was one of the biggest factors for me not completing the dungeon as quickly as i did vah medoh's.
i'm not sure really how to describe the feeling, but it was just a sad pang i got in my gut everytime i stepped foot on vah ruta. then with each new terminal unlocked, the music would change somewhat and add to that feeling. i got right up to accessing the main terminal and defeating the main enemy, but i got so scared that i think i teleported out of vah ruta or quit the game... haha.
it was a little easier doing vah medoh's dungeon. i picked up the game again recently because... i'm not sure why but i wanted to play it again. at this point, i had played ffvii, ffxv, kingdom hearts, and other games, so i felt a little more confident about having to fight the enemy mobs in BOTW. (after all nothing would be worse to fight than that stupid monster in the safe in ffvii, so...) instead of going to fight the main guy in vah ruta, i decided to fill out my map a little more and unlock all the towers. its at this point that i got to rito village and started the quest to vah medoh.
vah medoh was the easiest of the two divine beasts to fight and solve for me. i think it was mostly because the layout of the beast itself. but destroying the canons and solving the puzzles came a lot easier than it did for vah ruta. the music in vah medoh's dungeon was also painfully beautiful. i remember seeing a post on tiktok about the SOS signals the divine beasts sent out and how tragic it was that in their final moments, the champions were calling for help. but the more tragic thing for me was the motifs reappearing in the final cut scenes with the spirits of the champions. i didn't notice it at first when i had defeated vah medoh, but i definitely caught it when i went back and finished up vah ruta. it brought tears to my eyes.
i think the more i play the game the more i will notice these things.
the more i've played, also, the less afraid of the guardians i've become. it's almost like exposure therapy. i'll probably make an updated blog post when i discover more cool music things about this game.
that's all for now :D