Listen to a deep dive into Breath of the Wild's classic Zelda influences
This week's podcast looks at a recent game's connections to three decades of its own heritage.
Since its very inception, Retronauts has always orbited around current topics. I mean, yes, it's about old games… but whenever possible, we've tried to connect the show (and this site) to classic game anniversaries and relevant recent releases. With this week's episode, we've attempted to take that mindset a step further than I can recall us ever having ventured in the past: We're looking specifically at a brand-new game.
Well, brand-new-ish. We've kept this one on ice for a while, having recorded it back in May. But the main topic — The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — has new downloadable content due shortly, and on top of that it's about to enter the mainstream conversation again as websites begin debating their game-of-the-year picks.
We won't be doing that sort of voting here, but we have nevertheless dedicated an entire episode to Breath of the Wild. Why? Because Nintendo pushed the angle that Breath touches back to vintage 8-bit Zelda really hard during its pre-launch marketing… and they were right. As we discuss in this episode, Breath captures both the "get lost, have an adventure" sensation of those old gold cartridges as well as making some specific connections to the 8-bit games. I mean, did you see those Lynels?
So before you @ us about how this game isn't retro at alllll, give the episode a listen and see what you think of the discussion. Personally, I love how this episode turned out, and I'm eager to produce more in the same vein. Heck, between Super Mario Odyssey and Wolfenstein II, that's two episodes' worth of conversation that launched just a few days ago.
Also, as a quick note about guest Jose Otero: At the time of this recording, he worked with IGN. He has since taken a job with Nintendo, but this recording predates that career change. He does not speak as a Nintendo employee in this episode, so please don't take any of his comments as some official corporate statement. I think this may be Jose's final podcast appearance for the foreseeable future, so we're happy to see him off on his journey to the other side discussion a topic he clearly enjoys so much.
MP3, 45.6 MB | 1:35:03
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Episode description: It's not an old game, but it has an old soul. Jeremy and Bob chat with Henry Gilbert and (former) IGN editor Jose Otero about the latest Legend of Zelda (Breath of the Wild) and how it connects the series' present to its past.
P.S.: Important science facts about the cover art — if we assume the Great Fairy here is holding an actual boxed NES cartridge here, we can extrapolate the fact that Link is tiny and that Nintendo scaled the NES/Super NES Classic Edition mini-consoles to his proportions.
