Derik Badman's Journal

The past slowly fades into the forgotten. What have I been reading? Watching? Doing?

Breath of the Wild continues in small bursts. It truly is a very D&D-esque old school sandbox. After you get through the opening tutorial section, you are unleashed upon a very large world that you can mostly explore, barring elemental dangers (it gets cold high up on the mountains without adequate protection) or running into tough/large monsters (I've stumbled upon quite a few that I just turned tail and ran from). You almost immediately get your final goal, but the steps along the way are so far pretty vague. Talking to people gets you clues to locations or small side missions. But otherwise it seems you just have to keep exploring. You don't get experience points or level up, but if you complete the puzzles in these shrines scattered across the world you can increase your health/stamina. Otherwise it seems like getting better equipment is the only way you change, and I mostly just occasionally stumble onto something new or interesting, but have no clear idea if there is a way to find anything better. I don't even have a sense if there are "harder" areas that might require me to be tougher but also net me better treasure.

One of my main actual goals is finding the location of these various photographs so I can restore my character's memories. Between this and the shrines, it's mostly just exploring. You can get to high locations to look for landmarks to note on your map, and then you head off to reach them, stumbling upon things on the way. It might be the most directionless game I've played yet. I assume at some point I will get more clues on how I actually complete the end goal, at this point I have no idea, but that seems ok... for now.