I Like the Divine Beasts

July 28, 2024 • 900 words (4 min)

When Breath of the Wild came out, it sparked a debate in the Zelda community. Many people appreciated that the game stepped away from the, by that point, overdone Zelda formula, replacing the linear progression from dungeon to dungeon with an open world map. Others criticized it for that very change, describing it as not a "true" Zelda game. One thing they could agree on, though, was that the Divine Beasts, the main "dungeons" of the game, kinda sucked.

Despite the title of this essay, I agree. The puzzles needed to complete the Divine Beasts are extremely lackluster compared to earlier games. Rather than being sprawling, interconnected labyrinths like classic dungeons, the Divine Beasts are made up of five terminals that you can unlock in any order, guarded by simplistic puzzles. Because Breath of the Wild does away with the item system from previous games, there is nothing you need to unlock to progress through different sections of the dungeon, no new mechanics to learn other than the ability to move parts of the Divine Beast, which is introduced at the beginning of each Divine Beast and taken away once it's completed.

However, this gimmick—moving parts of the Divine Beast and changing the layout of the dungeon you're traversing in real time—fascinated me. It was reminiscent of some of my favorite parts of earlier Zelda dungeons, like flipping Majora's Masks's Stone Tower Temple or working with the orange and blue blocks in Link's Awakening's Eagle Tower, where the process of navigating the dungeon was altered by your actions. The changes to the Divine Beasts feel more significant, though. The entirety of Vah Medoh or Vah Rudania will tilt and change the places you can access, as well as how physics-based objects like balls would interact with the environment. You have to ride the trunk of Vah Ruto as it moves, climbing onto stable ground as soon as you can. The flow of electricity through Vah Naboris will open new areas, but close off others. This movement is also connected to the unique design of the Divine Beasts as animals, and was proof of technical improvement and innovation in the series. The dungeons were no longer static structures, but living, moving creatures.

Another unique element of the Divine Beasts is how they exist in the world before you board them. Unfortunately, most of them can't be interacted with, just seen in the distance looming over their respective towns, but Vah Naboris is unique. It wanders through the desert in the haze of a sandstorm, and when you get close, it powers up a beam of lightning and zaps you. This was such a cool way to show the threat of the Divine Beasts, and made them feel like a tangible part of the world. Their designs as massive mechanical animals, and the way they interact with their environments, reminded me of something…

In 2005, a little game called Shadow of the Colossus came out. It was unlike anything before or since: a beautifully designed technical marvel that pushed the Playstation 2 to its limits. Its gameplay is made up of traveling across a desolate open world to find colossi, giant mechanical beasts that you have to manipulate in different ways in order to climb and defeat them.

Breath of the Wild was clearly inspired by Shadow of the Colossus (in more ways than just the Divine Beasts), which was in turn inspired by Zelda games of the time. The concept behind the colossi, giant moving puzzle levels that the player directly interacts with it, hasn't really been innovated upon since Shadow of the Colossus, which is a shame. However, the Divine Beasts were a step in that direction. They feel like a prototype of colossus-esque Zelda dungeons: complex moving contraptions, with unique puzzles that force the player to think in three dimensions and consider how their actions with affect the entirety of the structure they're dealing with. The Divine Beasts' puzzles were easy, but they could have been a stepping stone toward far more intricate designs in the future. This could even be an improvement on Shadow of the Colossus, since the worst parts of that game revolve around the finicky, animalistic AI of the colossi—with a more mechanical focus, a Zelda game could recreate the unique puzzles without the frustration.

Unfortunately, Breath of the Wild's sequel had nothing like this. In response to criticism from fans, Tears of the Kingdom took a step back toward classic dungeon designs, but without solving any of the fundamental flaws with the Divine Beasts. Tears of the Kingdom's dungeons still use a boring, simple terminal-based structure, but without any of the unique designs or moving parts that gave the Divine Beasts potential for something more.

The Zelda series doesn't have to keep going in this direction. It can take the concept of the Divine Beasts, the complex puzzles of the classic games, and inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus and make creative new dungeon designs. We have the technology now to create moving, interactive levels without dropping the Playstation 2's framerate to a crawl. The unique elements of the Divine Beasts—their interactions with the world around them, the changes to their structure through moving parts—can be expanded into complex, innovative new dungeons.