manufactured loneliness and the sublime in "Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild"

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a renowned open-world game in the hit Legend of Zelda franchise. You play as the titular character, Link, after he fell into a healing coma for one hundred years. In the meantime, Hyrule has fallen into ruin, and the castle has been taken over by calamity Ganon. If Link doesn't stop him, Ganon will take over the whole world. And so, he is awoken from his slumber for another life-or-death quest.

https://blog.prototypr.io/thoughts-on-ux-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-fd4d2248dbc1, Link staring he no lout over an abandoned Hyrule.

What stood out to me about this game when I played it for the first time wasn't this quest, however. This quest is a pretty typical format for Zelda games. Rather, it was the setting that was so different for me. In this game, Hyrule is empty. People are mostly secluded to the small towns scattered throughout Hyrule, with some travelers here and there (typically found closer to these towns). But most of the land is marked by the monsters of Ganon and remnants of the ancient battle that scarred the land one hundred years prior. You can wander around, viewing the ghostly remains of the world. And it feels... lonely. Its kind of serene and peaceful in a way, with the only audio that plays is sparse background music and the sounds of the nature around you. Link is, for a majority of the game, completely alone in a world no longer recognizes.

It's interesting to me how well this game can instill that sense of loneliness, almost a sense of sublimity as well. I would argue that, under something like ecocritical theory and romantic theory, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild captures the sublime almost perfectly: Link is continuously confronted by awe-inspiring, terrifying, and overwhelming aspects of nature--often coupled with more fantastical parts of nature that somehow slot perfectly in place. All the while, he is experiencing this alone. I think that fact only adds to the sublimity of Hyrule.

This interaction between man and nature, and the power imbalance marked by this dynamic, is built into the game mechanics as well--mainly through the game's use of weather, and how it interacts with the player. Lightning will strike during storms if the player is carrying metal, rain will make surfaces harder to climb, the heat and the cold will cause the player to slowly lose health. All of these things will kill the player and cause a game over--if the player doesn't take these mechanics seriously. It creates an interesting dynamic, from a game design perspective, and from more of a literary theory standpoint as well.

The prevalence of the sublime and the lack of other people throughout Hyrule manufactures what I believe is an excellent representation of this loneliness. Link, in being more of a blank slate of a main character, almost forces the player to view themself in this world instead of Link; which causes this lonesome, sublime feeling in the player instead--even if we never see Link feel this way himself.