The Zelda series, as a whole, isn’t known for incorporating co-op elements. A few isolated mechanics have appeared in games over the years, such as the Tingle Tuner in The Wind Waker, while two games, Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, offered us a full-blown multiplayer experience. But in general, the games are meant to be played by a single person. So, it’s a rather special moment whenever you and your friends or family members work together to conquer a dungeon, a boss fight, or some other challenge within a game that’s meant to be conquered solo.
This has happened to me multiple times, but the co-op experience that lingers in my mind the most is, probably not surprisingly, the most recent one. It was my birthday in May 2017, and my friends were slowly filing in to help me celebrate. My friend Ben, who was the earliest to arrive, had been wanting to give Breath of the Wild a try, and I was happy to oblige. It was nice to see him enjoying the game so much, and we even acquired my very first Star Fragment while he was playing.
At some point, he asked me about the dungeons, and I told him that I had recently arrived at one that I hadn’t attempted to conquer yet: Rudania. We decided to tackle it together and see what progress could be made. We successfully made it through two terminals, but soon hit a snag when we couldn’t figure out how to light the torches inside the dungeon. That’s when my next friend, Josh, arrived and proposed that we use the blue fire within the dungeon to light them. I was convinced that the blue fire was just for show, but I decided to humor him and try it anyway. To my surprise, it worked.
The three of us managed to get through the last three terminals, and we finally made our way to Fireblight Ganon’s boss room. It was then that we ran into another problem: we couldn’t figure out how to expose the monster’s vulnerability in order to attack. I was out of arrows, so I couldn’t shoot it, and none of the other weapons in my possession could seem to penetrate its defenses, either. I noticed that it performed a suction attack and instinctively threw a bomb in its direction, but that didn’t seem to work.
So, after about 10 minutes of me just trying my best to avoid a Game Over, my friend Byron came in and suggested that we try throwing the bomb into the vortex. I told him that I’d tried that already, but, remembering that my assumptions had held me back before, I decided to give it another try. And sure enough, it worked! Perhaps I wasn’t close enough the first time? I’m not entirely sure. But after that, it was pretty easy to take Fireblight Ganon out and set Daruk’s spirit free, and we were rewarded with that heartwarming cutscene of Daruk giving Yunobo some praise.
In a game like Breath of the Wild where it feels like you have to the face the world of Hyrule alone, it’s nice to know that you can still count on people from your own world to help you overcome the obstacles in your path.
