The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which can be shortened to BOTW, is a pinnacle of game design. Winning countless awards, such as the title “2017 Game of the Year,” BOTW deviated from the classic Zelda formula in many ways. This creative departure largely brought new life into the series, opening unexpected gameplay mechanics and story elements to a formally formalistic series. Some of the most profound additions to BOTW were its mini dungeons: shrines. Deceptively simple, 132 shrines lead the player to an underground playground of puzzle-solving majesty. These puzzles’ open-ended designs allow the player to solve them in many ways given the plethora of multifaceted tools that the game employs. Because BOTW’s shrines so profoundly elevate the player experience in this hallmark game, their implementation is worthwhile to dissect and understand for greater enjoyment of BOTW and greater derivation of these mechanics in future games.
Instant allure
Before the player even enters BOTW’s shrines, clever design features are already in play. Undiscovered shrines glow with a bright orange. Not only is orange a visually striking color, but BOTW rarely incorporates it in other instances. Because of its vivid and sparse presence in the game, shrines’ orange glow quickly draws the player’s attention. This color choice silently and effectively communicates to the player what opportunities await. Such advertisement is particularly important in BOTW because of its large, open-air nature. After all, it is easy to miss something worthwhile in such a geographically expansive game, but visual indications help prevent the player from missing shrines. Furthermore, BOTW’s adoption of verticality and air traversal aid shrine detection because this orange hue is easily detectable from the sky. Whether it be from scouting the land upon a Sheikah tower or soaring over Hyrule from a mountaintop, shrines’ glow are easily noticeable from high elevations due to the game’s clear skies. Thus, whether the player be traveling by land or air, shrines effectively communicate their presence in a fluid and noninvasive manner.
After tackling a few shrines, the player quickly appreciates just how unique each one is. They share similar music and visual style, yet each shrine involves different puzzle mechanics and solution steps. From their rich variety, the player understands how each shrine offers a special gameplay experience. Thus, each shrine is anticipated with excitement. The player feels a palpable sense of wonder when a shrine is spotted. This wonder incorporates excitement for the oncoming entertainment, but also a feeling of mystery and intrigue as to what exactly the shrine could entail. Will it adopt a fire mechanic motif? Will the puzzles involve surfacing the shine (as in Kass’s mission shrines)? Will a new physics-based mechanic be introduced? The player may only quench his/her feelings of wonder by engaging the shrine. This process cements wonder as a continually motivating factor that drives the player in search of shrines.
Structured for focus
When the player enters shrines, a distinctive atmosphere helps concentrate him/her for puzzle-solving. Gone is the lush and bright Hyrule; instead, the player enters a dark, reflective space perfect for concentration. While random occurrences such as Stone Talus battles or weather changes help divert the player’s attention in the overworld, shrines remain highly controlled and contained. Such predictability helps prevent random occurrences from distracting the player. Further differences among the overworld and shrines appear with musical choice. A strange, yet relaxing score plays in shrines (included in the video above). This song is only heard in shrines, and the selectivity of this song to play exclusively in shrines helps separate them from the rest of the game’s overworld experience. While this mutual exclusivity in music could appear limiting to shrines, it actually characterizes them as something all of their own. Because shrines' music does not play in the overworld, the player psychologically loses touch with the overworld while in shrines. This separation helps the player concentrate on the given shrine. Whether it be through visual style or musical choice, atmosphere helps create an isolated feeling that focuses the player. Because this concentration matches and benefits shrines’ puzzle-solving gameplay, ambiance subtly prepares the player for an enjoyable experience.
Rewards
Rewards motivate the player on several differing dimensions. Typically in the forms of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, games incorporate rewards as incentives to drive player behavior. Shrines utilize both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to encourage the player to tackle their challenges, subsequently entertaining the player with cerebral puzzle-solving. Regarding extrinsic motivation, all shrines reward the player with a spirit orb upon a shrine’s completion. The player may trade four spirit orbs for either increased health or stamina. Thus, by engaging a shrine and enjoying its mechanics, the player is able to further engage the game due to either increased health or traversal ability. More health helps prevent tough battles from inhibiting player progress and more stamina helps the player overcome geographic barriers, such as tall mountains to climb. Additionally, many shrines contain treasure chests with weapons inside. Due to BOTW’s weapon durability system, weapons frequently break. Shrines help prevent the player from running out of weapons by providing him/her a constant variety of swords, clubs, spears, bows, rods, etc. Spirit orbs and weapons are tangible resources that extrinsically motivate the player by both bestowing power and preventing powerlessness. This motivation enables the player to engage more of BOTW, thereby entertaining the player with more to experience.
BOTW also encourages the player to engage its shrines through intrinsic motivation. This intrinsic motivation is largely a result of the shrines’ open-ended puzzle-solving. The massive scale of shrines’ puzzles paired with their nondirected format results in a heightened sense of engagement in the player. These puzzles are so thoughtfully crafted that they would even entertain the player without the aforementioned extrinsically motivating rewards. Their many mechanics incorporate BOTW’s runes, platforming, battling, physics engine, chemistry engine, etc. to create a vibrant and dynamic puzzle experience for the player. The integration of these robust mechanics produces inherently satisfying puzzle-solving gameplay that intrinsically motivates the player to seek out more shrines to solve more puzzles.
Gameplay diversity
As previously mentioned, shrines offer a completely different gameplay experience from BOTW’s overworld. While the overworld mainly emphasizes combat, shrines prioritize puzzle-solving. Yes, the overworld incorporates puzzle-solving, such as with the 900 Korok Seed puzzles, but it does not predominantly rely on puzzle-solving to entertain the player like how shrines do. It is refreshing, then, to dive into a different form of gameplay with shrines. It is enjoyable to escape the constant priorities of exploration and combat by slowing down, taking a breath, and thinking through some puzzles. Shrines offer that momentary escape. BOTW’s overworld is exceedingly enjoyable, but without variety, even it can become stale. Shrines help prevent such blandness of gameplay by offering, and not forcing, the player a different way to savor the game.
While each shrine is different from the overworld, each shrine is also different from the others. Some shrines expand upon one rune’s capabilities, others involve combat of varying difficulty, several boast a puzzle of how to find or reach the shrine, etc. The vast diversity of what each shrine offers keeps them fresh. Each shrine shares the same ambiance, yet they adopt tremendously individualistic approaches to gameplay. Very similarly to the Mario games’ level design philosophy, each shrine tends to introduce a particular game mechanic, expand upon it, twist it, and challenge the player with its more challenging applications. The Oman Au shrine perfectly demonstrates this philosophy. In this shrine, the player receives the Magnesis rune. With it, the player learns how to move metal, understands some of its applications, can enjoy a twist of fusing magnesis with combat, and blends it all together with platforming. This is just one example of how BOTW’s 132 shrines introduce and manipulate the game’s mechanics. By iterating this process differently for each shrine, the player savors a continuously unique gameplay experience, resulting in consistent engagement, commitment, and satisfaction.
Conclusion
BOTW is an undeniable gem in game design. Its additions not only to the Zelda franchise but also to gaming at large will likely propel both entities forward to amazing results. And one of the most influential components of BOTW are its shrines. From their creativity, quality, and novelty, shrines embody the Zelda series’s time-honored love of puzzles. Although BOTW had questionable dungeons, its shrines remain unanimously praised from the continual variety and imagination they breathe into gameplay. Future additions to the Zelda franchise are encouraged to incorporate similarly distributed puzzle-solving experiences that challenge the player with nondirected possibilities. After all, shrines were one strong feature that made BOTW legendary.
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