This last month I reached a level of burnout that kept me from any real progress on Sad Land. The burnout itself came from several different factors outside my creative work but still left me taxed and in need of a recharge. It’s times like these that make me glad that Sad Land is a personal passion project and not something with firm deadlines or I’d be losing my mind. I aspire to be a full-time creative someday, maybe, but for the time being it’s relegated to nights and weekends. There have been times in the past that I’ve pushed myself harder than I felt comfortable to reach a deadline, leaving me emotionally and mentally drained for weeks or even months. The last thing I want is for my creative work to be something I resent, so knowing when to take a step back and give myself some space is always something I try to stay conscious of. This last month I’ve spent a lot of time with friends, played video games, spent a lot more time at the piano than I normally do, and worked on a short story that will probably see the light of day before the end of this year.

One game I went back to as a means of relaxing was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Since it came out last year, I’ve been picking it up intermittently, playing for a few weeks, making some headway, and then taking a long break before picking it up a few months later. When I pick up a game that really grabs me, I have a hard time putting it down before the credits roll, so I usually don’t gravitate toward open-ended or 60+ hour experiences. That said, I’ve enjoyed my time with Tears of the Kingdom, some repetitive gameplay and quests aside, especially the familiarity that grows over time with you and the land of Hyrule.

When I first heard the announcement news for Breath of the Wild ten years ago, I was skeptical of an open-world Zelda title. The preview footage was beautiful, but the environment looked sparse and none of it struck me as iconically Zelda. I had played the series’ most recent title, Skyward Sword, and had been disappointed by several aspects of that game: both the meandering length and its propensity to have you revisit areas over and over again, making the world map incredibly stale by the end of the game. However, as more information came out about Breath of the Wild and the reviews rolled in, my skepticism waned. By March 2017, I had already preordered my Nintendo Switch and waited in line at Game Stop for the console’s release. From the moment I booted up the game, I was fully engaged. When I wasn’t playing Breath of the Wild, I was thinking about playing Breath of the Wild. Having that kind of intense connection with a game is one of the reasons I am a lifelong gamer. At best, I find playing a truly great game like being in the middle of a real page-turner of a book, but you are in the driver’s seat. You are Arthur pressing A to pull the sword from the stone. You are Alice pushing the D-Pad forward to go through the looking glass. You are Moby Dick holding down L and R to rip through a whaleboat and kill some sailors. Not many games may truly grab you, but when they do, it’s a tight grip.

An aspect of both modern Zelda titles that I really appreciate is their depiction of the world’s ancient (and not so ancient) ruins. One thing that brought me back to Tears of the Kingdom after putting it down again this past winter was the recent trip I took to Rome. I have taken several trips to Europe before, but never to Rome and never with such an eye toward historical architecture. Taking a bike tour along the Appian Way to the Park of the Aqueducts felt both otherworldly and oddly familiar. Just a few months before I had fought a Flame Gleeok (giant three-headed dragon) on top of a very similar set of stone arches. The two structures were built to serve different functions, but the aesthetics are the same.

Every stop on my tour held reminders of Hyrule: massive feats of architecture crumbling under the sands of time or beaten by a different great calamity.

The now subterranean Domus Aurea, a decadent “Golden House” in the center of Rome built under Nero, is now a musty cave stripped of its marble. The term grotesque (roughly meaning “like from a cave”) was created to describe the deteriorated frescoes found in the buried site of the complex in the Early Renaissance. Tears of the Kingdom opens with Link and Zelda exploring the caverns beneath Hyrule Castle, stopping every so often to discuss the history of the art that adorns the dark and echoey hallways.

The Colosseum, just a short walk from the Domus Aurea, a towering amphitheater that once regularly held tens of thousands of spectators, a place of so much entertainment and death, now sits nearly two thousand years later preserved as well as it can be as a monument to public gatherings and spectacle. Hyrule contains several deteriorated Colosseums built as arenas for battle, housing dangerous and aggressive creatures.

The Roman Forum today is an impressive span of arches, pillars, and foundations for buildings leveled long ago, but this site was once a center for commerce and politics. While some buildings still stand, this area more closely resembles a cemetery than a city square, mainly because over the years these buildings were broken down and used as raw materials to create new structures elsewhere. Hyrule Castle Town, leveled predominately by Sheikah Guardians during the Calamity years before the game takes place, is just as derelict and vacant as the present-day Roman Forum.

The Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers) in the Piazza Navona is the first piece of architecture I’ve mentioned here that still holds the same function today as it did when it was built. That said, it’s not right for comparison as the fountain is not a Roman ruin but a piece of public art built in the 1600’s in the location where the Stadium of Domitian once stood. This beautiful, ornate piece of craftmanship stands today, water flowing from the basins of four chiseled river gods, each representing one of the four major rivers of the four continents (the Nile/Africa, the Danube/Europe, the Ganges/Asia, and the Río de la Plata/the Americas). The other fountain depicted (the close-up of a fish) is part of the Fountain of the Moro, another fountain nearby in the Piazza Navona. Zora Domain, the city of Hyrule’s fishlike people, resembles this type of fountain with its verticality, nautical theming, continuous waterflow, and smooth surface carved of stone. The style itself seems to be based on Art Nouveau architecture and glasswork. You can find a detailed exploration of its influences at The Architecture of Zelda.

I’ve only scratched the surface regarding the historical influences found in Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom and only those in the Western world. For instance, much of the advanced/ancient technology that I mentioned in last month’s newsletter was inspired by art from the Japanese Jōmon period (c. 14,000 and 300 BC), a unique style that blends a geometric and organic aesthetic. Beyond that, you can find Native American and Arabic influences, to name a few.

Similar to the artists of Nintendo, researching a diverse range of architecture and cultures to craft Hyrule, Rome too borrowed architectural ideas from nearby regions to craft their city. The Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, for instance, is topped with an obelisk, a tall four-sided monument with a pyramidical top first built by the Egyptians. The widespread use of columns throughout the city were adapted from Greek architecture. These hallmarks were used again during the construction of Washington DC in the late 1700s.

Since I started building the art assets for Sad Land, I’ve considered the world’s history and the world-building benefits of juxtaposing different eras of architecture and technology. In the desert area, one of the first locations of Sad Land, I’ve placed a few artifacts from more modern history: an abandoned house with a chimney still intact and evidence of a mining operation and other structures that could be hundreds of years old—statues and ornate platforms.

Underneath the desert, in a deeper part of the mine, the player comes across small modules that can be activated to open passages or be used for puzzle rooms. In my mind, there is no one in the world of the game that knows much about these things except for the fact that they are very old and utilize some advanced energy source that has been lost to time. This type of thing, finding antique automatons and magic relics, is a constant in the Zelda series, often presented as leftovers from the Sheikah people or more recently the Zonai. In both cases the builders of these items and structures used secret methods or magic often inaccessible to the modern inhabitants of Hyrule.

With all this history on the brain, I couldn’t help but notice the changes happening to Boston’s architecture on my commute into the city. Built in 1899, South Station has been modified plenty in the last 100 years, but the current addition of the luxury tower, glass jutting out from the old stone train station, is an interesting addition that expands on the landmark, reinventing without erasing. A reminder that architecture doesn’t need a plaque to tell a story.

One last thing before I wrap this up! My comic So You Want to Make an Indie Game but Don't Know Where to Start is now available over at Radiator Comics. This is my first time working with a distributor for a physical release and I'm very excited to have it available. Stay tuned for next month's newsletter where I'll be exploring biomes in video games.

Sincerely,
Neil