Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 19

Today I've went for the final memories and faced Calamity Ganon once again to witness the full ending of the game. That's about it, but still pretty significant. Spoilers ahead!


Full Memory

Most of my game time today I spent with further exploring Hyrule Castle to look for the recipe(s) and the last memory from the locations on your Sheikah Slate. The latter wasn't easy to find, because the place in the picture isn't really recognizable anymore. I looked for it around the entire castle walls with no luck. And in the end I just found it by accident...

Together with Zelda's notes that you can find in her room and her study, it does paint a different picture of the princess, where her "obsession" with the ancient technology led to the discovery of the Sheikah Slate. It adds to the whole drama, where her farther didn't want her to waste time on this.

Anyway, Zelda's diary offers a meaningful explanation as to why Link is always so silent. It's simple, really, but it works for me. It didn't even have to be explained like that, but this part sure gave me some good laughs.

I also liked, how the friendly Guardians have the orange design from E3 2014. I always liked that much more than the corrupted look.

During my time at Hyrule Castle I noted, how the Blood Moon didn't have any effect here. It was visible in the sky, but the cutscene didn't roll and enemies weren't revived. This might have been a bug, similar to the one, where a Blood Moon can suddenly happen out of nowhere, but this might also be intended. It had me thinking, if you can simply avoid a Blood Moon by entering a shrine for the time... (Update: you can, but the Blood Moon will keep coming the next night.)

Back in Kakariko you have this very nice revelation that the final memory location has been right in front of you all this time. I wonder, how this works exactly and if you could have gotten this memory any earlier. I've fully explored the corresponding area before this and didn't see it. Also, I did take a picture of the picture with my Camera Rune and the game did recognize this by doing the typical "look at the photo to trigger a memory" thing with the picture that I took just now. Either that's a really nice detail or you have to do this in order to find the memory...

So, finally I got to see the full scene with the Guardian(s) attacking Link and Zelda in the rain. This was beautifully orchestrated, where it really moved me, how Zelda's powers awakened, because she wanted to protect Link. And her powers were really impressive.

And while the game didn't show Fi, it made clear references to her with the sounds and the voice that Zelda heard. This was beautifully done as well, a nice way to incorporate story elements from a previous Zelda game without being too intrusive. It's not out of place and fans will recognize, what Nintendo did here.

But I still wonder, how the Master Sword got so heavily wrecked in the first place. It seems that this was the job of the Guardians, but still... It's also not really explained, how it's able to regenerate.

I also wonder, what the deal about the Triforce is. It seems like Zelda is using its full power, but it never gets really mentioned or explained during the game. But maybe this is something that I still have to discover somewhere. I certainly like, how not all of the story is told in the major cutscenes, you have to fully explore the world to learn it all. It's exactly what I wanted out of a Zelda story.

Also, I like how the roles have reversed in this game. It's Zelda, who saves Link's life here and who keeps Ganon imprisoned at Hyrule Castle. The latter has some funny sense of irony to it, if you think about it.

So, what did collecting all the memories gain? Certainly not the "Sheikah Heirloom" in Impa's house, that's for sure. I still haven't understood, what you have to do to get the orb here. For all this time I thought that getting all the memories would do the trick, but obviously I'm missing something. I haven't even gotten a Shrine Quest in my Adventure Log yet, while there should be one. It's probably very trivial and maybe even something that you can solve early in the game, where this might be one of these cases, where I'm totally blind. But I'll find out eventually and this is part of the fun!

And with all memories found, I now could revisit the ending the of the game. It's actually not an alternate ending, but a post credits scene. The rest stays the same (including the "Remember me?" catch phrase), so there's no reason to not collect all memories right away.

Calamity Ganon showed off some new moves that I didn't see the last time, e.g. shooting ice blocks like Vah Ruta did. And overall this fight is certainly tough, it still took me quite some food to get through it. Mastering this early in the game with no armor and revivals will be a big challenge. It's probably like Ridley in the Hard Mode of Metroid: Other M, where each hit will kill you and you have to fully master the whole fight.

I'm still underwhelmed by the Dark Beast Ganon, though. This fight is way too simple, I didn't even get hit. It's probably even easier than doing any of the Divine Beast battles. All you have to do is ride around the huge thing and shoot it with some arrows... This whole fight just seems to be in the game to offer something gigantic at the end, but with the easy difficulty it seems more like a filler and not like the real deal.

The post credit scene was beautiful, especially with all those Silent Princesses around there. There was also one princess, who isn't silent at all, smiling at you at the very end... And I'm still not sure, whether I really like the new Zelda or not. She had it tough and she can be difficult, but that's what a dead mother and a demanding father can do to your personality. And she certainly had some redeeming moments in these final memories.

By the way, you can destroy all seriousness in the ending scenes with the right wardrobe. Try a Lynel Mask for example. That stuff is hilarious...!

Current Progress:

• Divine Beasts: 4/4
• Shrines: 94/120
• Koroks: 260/900
• Shrine Quests: 34/42
• Side Quests: 62/76
• Map Rate: 42.05%