When it comes to The Legend of Zelda, the series isn’t shy in terms of putting the player’s feelings through the wringer. Whether it be feelings of joy, anger, sadness, etc., each game always has some way of making you feel something in a tremendous way.
Breath of the Wild is no exception to this. Next to Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess, I think this game made me feel the most for NPCs than any other game in the entire franchise. The Champions’ Ballad, specifically, gave much needed depth to the four Champions of Hyrule.
As I solved the trials and became further engrossed in their past lives by reading their diaries, they became realer to me than they ever had. All of them had tugged my heartstrings in the main game at one point or another, especially Mipha, but the DLC truly made them feel like real individuals with real lives — and made the fact that they were so brutally killed in battle even more heart wrenching for me. Kass’s songs also didn’t help matters.
But what truly got me was the last memory that you unlock from finishing the DLC: when everyone takes the group photo. I won’t lie, I teared up. I felt so sad, especially for Link, who had lost four of his closest friends to this devastating war. And when I put the picture up at Link’s house and looked at it one final time, it only furthered my wishes that they could somehow be brought back and given another chance at life.
I understand that, as a writer, that would belittle their sacrifices and would lessen the story as a whole. But as a person, I really, truly miss them, and I hope there’s a way to revive them in Tears of the Kingdom. Who knows if that will happen or not? But either way, I applaud the game for making me feel so strongly about these characters, and for making me remember them even after all these years.
