Up the hill from Hateno Village’s main road is one of my favorite Breath of the Wild locations. You pass the Shrine nestled in the trees, take the worn path between Bolson Construction’s show homes, and find yourself at a wooden bridge spanning a gorge. Across this bridge is a house much like the ones in the village below.
Depending on what stage you’re at in the game, you may not have completed the ‘Hylian Homeowner’ sidequest. But if you have, then this house is now yours. There’s a light on the porch that’s always on, ivy climbing the walls, and a crooked chimney that all give the place a warmth and homeliness.
Link’s House is quaint and cozy, and its interior is as delightful as its exterior. But I think the little garden around the property says a lot about Link and what’s important to him. This is your home post-Calamity, but it’s also implied that Link already owned the home pre-Calamity.
I find it fascinating that Link ends up with a house in Hateno Village. Though I don’t think it’s ever stated outright, it is suggested in Breath of the Wild that Link was from Hateno, way out in the countryside, before he became a palace guard.
Was this house his family home then, or was it a place he’d aspired to own when he began to earn for himself? His father was a soldier before him, so would they have been comfortable rather than poor? This house is certainly larger than many of the others in the game, compared to the little wooden cabins in Kakariko. It’s got both a larger square-footage, and has a mezzanine bedroom. Made of brick rather than wooden planks, it’s sturdier and more costly to build, but less to maintain. Parts of it survived the Calamity, proving the bricks worth their additional cost.
The house is also outside the village proper, setting it apart from daily Hateno life. Was this for privacy, or defensive purposes? Backed by cliff face and with a natural moat to the front, I wonder if Link planned to have a fortified home originally, and if the security appealed to him still after the Calamity. Did he buy it before meeting Princess Zelda, or did he buy it as a safe house for their difficult road ahead? It is near an Ancient Shrine, and right below the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab. And where else is safer in a crisis than one’s own hometown?
Around the house itself tells us more about our silent hero. There is a mighty tree, very reminiscent of the Great Deku Tree, below which Bolson’s cooking pot sits. Around the front of the house is a sturdy-looking wooden fence. To the right of this is an open stable, with room enough for two horses, and around the stable is open grassland, dotted here and there with saplings.
Behind the stables is a pond, another huge tree providing some shade from the midday sun. For all it’s seclusion, this is quite a sunny spot. Stand with your back to the tree and you can see the Dueling Peaks. Death Mountain is just visible, and Hyrule Castle is completely out of view. From here, one could pretend that the valley below was all of Hyrule, and that Link’s problems were out of sight and out of mind.
Around the back of Link’s house is a little fenced-in garden. An apple tree is laden with fruit, and the grass is free of weeds. There’s a little shed or outhouse, and around the side is a sledghammer propped against the wall. There’s a covered area for stacking wood for the fire. Within the fenced garden, all is orderly in a very rustic way, and beyond the fence the garden grows more wild. But there is little tension between the two parts. This makes me wonder: Does tension lie between Link’s sense of restraint and wildness? I don’t know. He seems to flit between the two with ease, going from restrained and logical to throwing himself off the edge — literally — with wild abandon.
As with everything in this game, I want so much more. I want to see Zelda experiencing it for the first time and seeing a different side of Link. Neat, but still warm and homely. Rustic and refined.
And, of course, there’s only one single bed, so Link would have to sleep on the floor.
