10. Hyrule Castle (Breath of the Wild)

(originally posted July 21, 2023)

A collection of simple thoughts on last levels, final dungeons, and endgame zones.
Spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Table of Contents

Context: Calamity Ganon sleeps beneath Hyrule Castle, sealed for the past 100 years by Zelda's power. Link's quest is to destroy Ganon. Figure it out.

Breath of the Wild is an unorthodox Zelda game in many ways (well, I guess it's the new orthodoxy now), and letting you just run straight into the final dungeon is certainly one of them. You can explore the entire castle at your leisure and you aren't locked into anything until you enter the actual boss arena. It's worth braving the dangers even in the early game, since there's plenty of high level gear and such laying around.

No matter when you enter the castle, it feels properly climactic. BOTW's soundtrack is mostly ambient and understated, but the castle gets a big dramatic arrangement with several of the core series leitmotifs. The quieter "indoors" version of the theme ain't no slouch either.

The most interesting thing about this version of Hyrule Castle is that it's probably the only one that feels like an actual (albeit huge) castle that people may have lived and worked in. There's a proper moat - hidden dock and all - and the main entrance goes up an exposed, winding path with fortified gatehouses housing mini-bosses. It's got a sizeable kitchen and dining hall, a ton of side rooms, and even a guard's quarters, plus secret passages galore and its own lockup (separate from the wrecked prison on the edge of castle town).

This all of course ties back into BOTW's whole shtick being about the freedom of exploration in a living, breathing world. While the shrines and main dungeons are quite transparently "game-y" in how they're built (and there's nothing wrong with that, to be clear), most of the ruins and such feel like they were constructed as existing locations and then carefully broken down to then serve as dungeons and interesting zones for you to examine.

The castle naturally reappears in Tears of the Kingdom, largely unchanged apart from half of it now floating in midair (and a few more bits and bobs). If you do that game's story missions in the order you're told to do them, it's not the final dungeon or even the penultimate dungeon.

(10 posts! Oh boy oh boy I definitely could have put this creative energy towards something more productive to my personal growth and didn't!! I also wrote this one several posts ago and decided I needed a few more between Zelda games. Anyway, if you actually enjoy this series somehow, please let me know. It feels a bit superfluous to me since I don't have any unifying theme or intent and I'm not saying anything that doesn't seem plainly obvious. I dunno.)