Emma Rose Robinson
Recently, while listening to the soundtrack of the 2017 video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I began idly mulling over the game and why it appeals to me. Now, I don’t believe the appeal of Breath of the Wild—or any other work of art, for that matter—could ever be reduced to a single specific quality; there are a number of explanations I thought of in this case. However, one explanation particularly caught my attention: the treatment of second starts. As I considered how the game engages thematically with this topic, I realized that it shares surprising similarities with another, very different, work of art that is especially close to my heart: Susanna Clarke’s 2020 novel Piranesi.
Both Breath of the Wild and Piranesi follow a protagonist who is particularly attuned to the surrounding world. In Breath of the Wild, this is the player character, Link, who begins the game as an amnesiac on an uninhabited plateau. With no resources but those that can be scavenged, Link (and the player) are forced to pay attention to the environment to gain an understanding of the world; which rivers can safely be traversed for edible fish and which are too cold to swim through, where trees may be strategically cut down to form bridges, how foraged plants can be prepared to grant protection from hazardous climates. In Piranesi, the eponymous protagonist also lives nearly alone—in his case, in a vast and labyrinthine house containing its own ecosystem of birds and oceanic life. Despite the seeming chaos of his home, Piranesi is intimately familiar with its patterns; his study of the tides allows him to predict their cycles, and he never becomes lost even when he explores miles from his usual halls.
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