Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild
You wouldn’t think that PS4’s largest new IP and the Nintendo Switch’s critically acclaimed launch title would have anything in common. After all, Sony’s Horizon Zero Dawn is about a post-post-apocalyptic world full of robot animals, tribal humans, and lots of hacking. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a new entry in the celebrated franchise that keeps a lot of the tried-and-true series formula in tact while also introducing entirely new open-world mechanics.
Let’s get the obvious similarities out of the way first. Both Horizon Zero Dawn and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild share a lot of gameplay features. This may be due to the fact that both drop players into an open world, or that they both happen to use the same type of ranged weapon. There’s a large focus on world traversal in both Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild, too.
This is where the gameplay similarities begin to run out, though. The Legend of Zelda has a much heavier reliance on survival and inventory management than Sony’s exclusive. The art style in each game is not similar in the slightest, either, with Horizon Zero dawn taking a more grounded, realistic approach, and Breath of the Wild sporting Nintendo’s trademark artistic flair. The company knows how to make the most of any hardware given to them, and this latest release looks like a living painting.
However, the games have a lot more story similarities than anyone would’ve thought possible. We’re going to go into the big ones, but before we do, we should warn you that there will be a few story spoilers for both games ahead. If you’ve yet to play either game and really want to experience them for yourself, you may want to turn back now and come back after playing. If you’re just itching with curiosity and want to see how alike these two blockbusters are, continue on.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The Heroes Awaken Within a Mountain Then Receive Their Quest From an Old Person
Oddly enough, both Link and Aloy start their journeys in a mountain. Actually, Aloy starts in a mountain twice. When she’s found as a baby, after the vault unceremoniously dumps her outside its door, she lays on the cold steel within the large mountain where the Nora tribe have built their home. Then, after the events of the Proven – where the Shadow Carja murder her only family along with many of Aloy’s people – she awakens in that same mountain, greeted by High Matriarch Teersa before being sent on her quest to stop the evil corrupting the machines.
The Shrine of Resurrection that Link finds himself in when he first opens his eyes after 100 years of sleep is in the side of a mountain. He awakens, not knowing what the heck just happened. Shortly after he’s given his mission by an old man, who turns out to be the spirit of King Rhoam, Zelda’s deceased father.
Aloy and Link Face Robotic Enemies Built By Their Predecessors
While one game is clearly going for more of a futuristic, sci-fi thing, and the other is going for fantasy, they both are preceded by events where the machines that were built by humans (Hylians in Breath of the Wild) went wild and killed nearly everyone, forcing the survivors into corners of the world.
In Horizon Zero Dawn, the humans built a bunch of robots for who knows what reason. Unfortunately, around the time when the company behind their development started to move into the weapon side of things, a glitch appeared in the system that caused the machines to start devouring all of the resources. This basically caused the apocalypse, and now humanity is struggling to put the pieces back together. But now, machines spewing the machines are acting up again after being corrupted by red blasts of corruption, and they are part of the obstacles Aloy must overcome to uncover history and save the world.
In Breath of the Wild, the Guardians didn’t immediately take over and kill everyone (thank goodness for that). They were built thousands of years before the events of the game, but 100 years before Link wakes up, Ganon took them over and turned them against Hyrule. You know what Ganon used to turn them? Huge, reddish/purplish blasts of corruption. Two completely different universes that use the same method to turn machines into homicidal pieces of equipment.
Zelda and Elisabet Sobeck Set Up Future Heroes for Success
With impending doom looking them in the eye, pretty much everyone lost their minds and couldn’t deal with the end. Thankfully both Horizon Zero Dawn’s world and Hyrule Kingdom each had a strong, resourceful woman around to make sure that their people would eventually overcome the threats they faced. While their methods were different, they accomplished the same goal by making sure those who were around in the future would be able to do what was needed to truly achieve victory.
In Horizon Zero Dawn we had Elisabet Sobeck. She helped to develop and set up the Project Zero Dawn and was part of the development of GAIA. She also had a fail-safe put in place where if needed, she could be reinitialized in the future in order to help humanity survive — that’s how we got Aloy. Elisabet left clues and information so the hero could find their way through all the turmoil overtaking the world.
Zelda also had the foresight to see that more time was needed, and that the future hero would need a guiding hand. It was her that gave the order to have Link placed into the Shrine of Resurrection. She also took photos to give Link a sort of map to help him regain his memories, and placed everything he needed in places he would naturally go to and with people she could trust. And, just to make sure that everyone had time to accomplish their goals, she pit herself against Calamity Ganon in a battle where she stays locked, keeping the evil in place while the world around moves to restore itself.
Link and Aloy Defeat Their Evils, but They Will Return
The Legend of Zelda’s cycle is nothing new to fans of the series. Every so many years Ganon is resurrected into the world, but there are also two heroes that appear as well, Link and some form of Zelda. They fight, one side wins, then after a few thousand years they do the whole dance again. At the end of Breath of the Wild, if you get the true ending, you can see Zelda start planning for the next battle with Ganon, hoping to ensure that future generations will survive its evil.
While Horizon Zero Dawn doesn’t have the same type of prophecy holding up its narrative, the ending of the game does show that HADES’ evil will return again. You can see the machine that was defeated by Aloy found by a group of people some time after the epic battle. It reawakens and casts a blast of corruption into the sky. Sylens catches it while standing atop a massive, dangerous looking robot.
About the author
