The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Blade Runner 2049

Sequels, remakes and remasters plague Hollywood and the AAA games market. Disney has been a specific culprit of this in Hollywood, remaking old titles to appeal to young audiences without properly adapting or updating the themes, or effectively challenging the elements that don’t hold up years after their first release. The Triple A market has also been flooded with remasters for years, despite the rise in retro gaming consoles. Nintendo’s first party line-up is almost always sequels or remasters of some sort, and major productions from the likes of Capcom, Sega, Activision and Electronic Arts etc. all fall prey to recurring and endless remakes or sequels.

At the core of this craze to reproduce our favourite franchises and successful blockbuster titles is nostalgia. Nostalgia is a bittersweet remembrance for a time that has been lost, and these past experiences are often moments of strong social connectedness. Tinged with regret, nostalgia refers to the sadness of the passing of time, yet it can also be an antidote to those feelings. Nostalgia’s psychological weight is often tied to our identity and is central to maintaining our conception of our past and present selves (Madigan, 2013). Players and viewers are constantly wanting to have their memories triggered through nostalgic experiences, and films and video games take full advantage of this to sell as many products as they can.

In this article I’d like to explore some of the elements, both visual and aural, within Blade Runner 2049 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that cause them to be, what I deem, successful cases of nostalgia within their respective mediums. Both titles share a theme of memory (key to unlocking and exploring nostalgia), and evoke similar emotions of regret, guilt, sorrow, and redemption. These examples do not simply appeal to the instantly gratifying need for nostalgia but use it as a tool that both challenges and evolves our nostalgic memories, causing them to stand uniquely apart from other similar titles.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BotW) is a masterpiece of modern gaming. It comes at a time where many feared the Zelda series had become stagnant and needed a real change in direction. Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi saw an opportunity to target peoples’ nostalgia by providing players with extensive freedom and choice, a return to the ethos of the original The Legend of Zelda. BotW’s soundscape is also nostalgic, taking elements of old Zelda games’ music, fleshing them out, reducing them in tempo or timbre and reharmonizing them to suit a new, melancholic atmosphere. The game is a critique of modern formulaic game making, and rectifies many issues that the generic open-world genre imposes by using nostalgia to show that open-world is not a genre, but a concept to be used to enhance the role playing elements of a game. BotW shows that nostalgia does not have to be detrimental. Instead it shows that nostalgia, when used effectively, can unlock those precious memories we all have, and reinvent them to create new, beautiful experiences which play upon our bittersweet remembrance.

Nostalgia is an activation of memories, and it is fitting then, that a central theme to Breath of the Wild is memory. Nowhere is this theme highlighted better than how BotW engages players’ nostalgia with its soundtrack/soundscape. I say soundscape, as BotW uses sounds and noises to augment its beautifully orchestrated soundtrack, which itself takes elements from other Zelda games’ music and fleshes them out to adapt to the melancholic atmosphere of the game – an atmosphere that is reflected in Blade Runner 2049’s stylised 2049 Los Angeles and electronic soundscape. The major cities’ music in Breath of the Wild are all references or reimagined versions of tracks from old Zelda titles: Goron City, Zora’s Domain and Gerudo City all reference The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s soundtrack; while Rito Village references the melody of “Dragon Roost Island” from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

An early example of this soundscape is the track “Temple of Time”. After awaking for the first time as protagonist Link and leaving the cave from which you woke, you find yourself in a strange world with little recollection of anything. Walking down the path you come to a large Cathedral-like temple, and the track “Temple of Time” plays quietly. This track is a reharmonized version of the iconic track “Song of Time” from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The track is stripped back and played with gentle piano keys, in keeping with much of the orchestration in BotW. An ethereal and almost dreamlike sensation is achieved through the stripped back orchestration – gentle piano keys makeup the entire song – reduced tempo and reharmonization. These subtle changes are key to decentralising our nostalgia, showing that what once was can still be remembered, but must be evolved to create new, interesting experiences. What grounds this track so well into the gameplay is its noticeably long rests, in which only the sounds of the world (the crunched grass, the wind’s wisps, the clanking of armour) are heard, and fill the empty space the track leaves: in this way, the song demonstrates how the game uses the concept of a soundscape, in contrast to a singular soundtrack to emphasise the theme of memory, its open world, and its nostalgic references. The “Song of Time” is a personally nostalgic tune, and, for me, it is almost as if the “Temple of Time” is playing with that nostalgia. One of my most powerful memories has become just that, a memory. This nostalgic voicing cannot, or should not, be recreated, only reimagined.

Breath of the Wild acts as a critique to the open-world genre. The melancholic music reflects how the game is empty, it is open. Open-World games have increasingly become generic/formulaic with spaces that are supposed to be full and busy but are often empty. In parallel to this, many open worlds can also become overcrowded with meaningless/repetitive activities. Take for example, the Assassin’s Creed series. Whenever you activate a synchronization point, the region becomes visible and the map gets littered with various activities to do. You would think, the sheer amount of content would be exciting, providing hours of gameplay. However, the activities are often repetitive fetch/follow quests that provide no engaging gameplay, and are therefore not diversifying the open world, they are cluttering it. BotW’s quests and missions are found by you, the player (other than main quests). Whenever you activate a region’s tower in BotW, shrines and their locations are not just magically provided for you, in fact, almost no information except the terrain and an excellent vantage point is provided to the player. Open worlds are designed to enhance the role-playing experience, providing a sandbox for the player to discover and explore. How much discovery is there then, in following a marker on a map?

BotW encourages exploration and discovery, a decision explicitly made to follow the design philosophy of freedom. You are equipped with the tools to go anywhere and find anything that exists in the world. No mountain is unclimbable, no water is un-swimmable, and no area is forbidden - all that’s left is what you want to achieve. During my first playthrough, after finishing the story elements in the Rito Village area, I decided to have a quick walkaround the treacherous Hebra Mountains, looking for more shrines. As I neared the peak, my shrine indicator started buzzing so I knew that what I was looking for was nearby. After making it over a hill I came across a little shack near the top of the mountain. Inside was Selmie, a random Non-Playable Character that explained to me I could shield surf down slopes! If I hadn’t stumbled upon this cosy house in the mountains, I may never have known that mechanic was even possible. All at once, BotW had rewarded my exploration and provided me with a new way to explore the world.

Discoveries feel natural and player-driven, and Breath of the Wild asks its players to walk through its long, patient spells with the promise that you’ll find something - in this game, even if that something is simply finding a breathtaking view of the scenic and beautiful landscape, I will gladly take that. Breath of the Wild’s focus on freedom and exploration is a return to the original ethos of The Legend of Zelda. In the original, you are given some tools and told to go explore, no waypoints, no guides, nothing. Recognising that the series had become stale, especially given the amount of remakes and remasters that had been coming out, as well as a fairly poorly received Skyward Sword, Nintendo purposefully played upon players’ nostalgia to reinvigorate players, while adapting elements of combat, world building and discovery to create something that strayed away from contemporary open-world games.

Blade Runner 2049

The Blade Runner series is an apt depiction of American history, and the most accurate depiction of developing American capitalism for the past 40 years. Not only does it provide a deep reflection of social inequity, but it develops its representation of environments (both urban and natural) and technology. Alongside this, its thematic development helps Blade Runner 2049 (2049) diverge from simple nostalgic fan service, to a natural successor in an evolving global world. Although Blade Runner 2049 is of course a nostalgic homage to Blade Runner in many ways, director Denis Villeneuve knew very clearly that the film needed to become its own, and in this way, it diverges from other blockbuster franchises and uses nostalgia as a tool to develop, challenge and reinvent the original material.

Blade Runner 2049 and Breath of the Wild both utilise “soundscapes” within traditional soundtracks to create nostalgic reference to their source material. 2049’s play on nostalgic reference is noted in the opening shot. An homage to the original film, the track “2049”’s melodic lines and pounding, rhythmic elements are reminiscent of the “Main titles – From Blade Runner” original introduction. Following 2049’s prologue, the film cuts to an extreme close-up of an eyelid, lit brightly from the top of the frame, emphasising every fine detail of skin and eyelash, which slowly reveals a green eye with an almost synthetic aesthetic underneath. The music accompanies this reveal by sliding into an explosive crescendo of synthesized trumpets, supported by a C# droning bass. The image itself is referential to Blade Runner’s eyelid opening, serving the purpose of continuity. In 2049 however, the accompaniment of the image with a new synthesized trumpet sound connotes a departure into new themes and new narratives. Although this is a nostalgic appeal to the original, its subtle change places the film in a contemporary setting for a contemporary audience.

Blade Runner 2049 and Breath of the Wild are similar in tone. Both try to evoke a melancholia about the world, in 2049’s case, the melancholia stems from a dystopian, socially inequitable and environmentally annihilated setting. Villeneuve himself, in a 2017 interview with Google, has said the soundtrack was intended to both reflect the soundtrack of the original and create a mood of beautiful melancholia. In a way, nostalgia is a beautiful melancholia. We remember the beautiful memories and experiences we’ve had but are all too aware of the sadness that comes with knowing we cannot experience them again. What I love about Blade Runner 2049 is how it confronts that beautiful melancholia.

In one scene in the film, Agent KD6-3.7 (the protagonist) has finally found the father of the replicant-human hybrid child, Rick Deckard. Upon being discovered after years of hiding, Deckard attempts to fight and kill K, who he believes has come to kill him. Their fight takes place in this beautiful, old, abandoned casino out in 2049 Las Vegas. Thirty years on from the 2019 of Blade Runner, Las Vegas has been abandoned and lies as a deserted, radioactive landscape. The memory of the place encapsulated only by Elvis Presley’s, “Suspicious Minds” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, songs both played over the fight between Deckard and K. In Deckard’s eyes, those songs remind him of a time of fun, kicking back without cares in the world. But this nostalgia is, indeed, rose-tinted. Deckard is now on the run and very aware that the people hunting him are part of the forces that, even back then, were controlling society with an agenda of ‘order’. 2049 implores us not simply to remember past experiences with a sad longing, but challenges us to say, look at the world then and look at it now. Cultist fans of Blade Runner are obsessed with the world, constantly looking to cosplay characters, costumes and designs from that world, but this misses the point of the series. This is a world that you shouldn’t want. 2049 reminds audiences that this is a world where corporations run the world, minorities are persecuted and marginalised, and the environment is all but forgotten. These nostalgic memories we have miss a wider picture, the world now is desolate and dying – nostalgia has blinded us to the realities of the world that we live in. In contrast to modern Hollywood cinema, 2049 uses nostalgia to challenge us.

Take a look, for example, at Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Tarantino, 2019). Disregarding the fact that Tarantino’s films are references in themselves, this film portrays a history of 50s/60s Hollywood dominated by white male actors struggling and persevering against personal issues. Remembering the magic of Hollywood filmmaking is certainly nostalgic but does not critique the very real and ongoing issues that plagued those decades, and in particular the struggle for diverse characters trying to enter the creative industries. Tarantino is simply remembering, just to remember. Blade Runner 2049 references effectively, evoking nostalgic memories while bringing them into new contexts, challenging our notion of what those memories really mean.

There was a real danger, to many fans of the original and to avid filmgoers, that 2049 was a monumental task that had high potential to flop or fall prey to Hollywood convention of being simple nostalgic fan service. Blade Runner is iconic and is attributed to the emergence of cyberpunk - for many, it is a nostalgic film. It is impressive then, that Villeneuve was able to blend his own understanding of the film with source material ideas. For example, it would have been very easy for 2049 to have been about original protagonist Rick Deckard. Although the sequel’s story revolves around finding the child of Deckard, the protagonist is newcomer, Agent K, who enables Deckard’s story and undergoes his own fully fledged transformation.

Harrison Ford is an excellent subject for critiquing nostalgic reference in Hollywood. In the most recent Star Wars trilogy, Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo, the swashbuckling, egotistical pilot of the original films. His character is identifiable, almost ageless. But his character is also tired, a simple homage to the loveable character many remember of days old. In 2049 Harrison Ford returns as Deckard, but is no longer the identifiable oblivious, egotist of the original film. He is now rugged, depressed and full of regret and sorrow for abandoning his child, even though he knew it was the right thing to do. 2049 does not simply give us a beloved character, it echoes the character. Adapted to the thirty years of time that has passed, this is now a character that has been changed by his life experiences – the same cannot be said for Han Solo. What audiences see going wrong with this epidemic of remakes and sequels is a simple recreation of what once was, characters that haven’t evolved or changed, the films are tired nostalgic references – a bittersweet remembrance.

Nostalgia and referencing can be executed poorly, but it can also be executed well. Franchises need to be bold and take the risk to challenge what they once were, it is unrealistic and unreasonable to assume things never change, in fact, change is precisely what drives interest, and the changes in Blade Runner 2049 are what lead it to be a successful case of nostalgia in Hollywood.

Final Thoughts

This post, admittedly, is somewhat of a love letter to two franchises that I deeply admire and believe are excellent representations of what is possible when real care and attention is paid to creating visual experiences. I have previously written extensively on the Blade Runner series and have been wanting to explore Breath of the Wild for some time now. I have personally been interested in approaching these texts from the aspect of nostalgia as they are, by their very nature, similar. Not only are they thematically similar, but they are both sequels that were made roughly thirty years after their originals, and provide an ample time frame through which to comment on how the evolution of our world is mirrored through the evolution of their own. Indeed, these texts use remembrance to naturally reflect on what they once were but are not blinded by nostalgia into repeating memories of old or falling prey to contemporary market trends. Instead, by reflecting on our own nostalgia, and challenging us to develop and evolve, the texts ask us to live in the present and soak up the beautifully crafted experiences they offer.