Games
Fishing has been a part of the Zelda experience for years, so why is it so poorly represented in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild?
For many, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the first time they'd ever experienced joyful side-quests and mini-games in a game as sprawling as that title was. For others, you've probably never played it before given it was released in 1998. For us, however, it was a bait we couldn't ignore; hooked on a line of challenge and discovery that peaked while nestled at a fishing hole in Lake Hylia, in Ocarina of Time. Here, you paid some rupees, hired a rod and went and spent hours and hours not only catching fish, but also looking for a prized giant bass. The biggest one in Hyrule, to be exact. And the exercise was glorious.
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker ignored fishing, but in Twilight Princess it returned in expanded fashion, utilising the Wii Remote and Nunchuk brilliantly; transcending arbitrary waggle for an interactive side-activity that even featured a fishing logbook. When you consider the weight of responsibility that exists upon Link's shoulders Zelda game to Zelda game, the idea of taking a break to drop a line into the water and just... relax, well, it almost presents as necessity, doesn't it?
So here we are with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -- a game that takes survival for Link to new levels with true hunting and cooking, to the point that shooting a boar with a flaming arrow cooks the meat for you, insta-meal styles. Don't want it cooked? Just shoot it with an ice arrow for frozen produce goodness.
But fishing is, for lack of a better expression, just a fish-in-a-barrel experience in Breath of the Wild. They don't even put up a fight, while some will even jump on to shore, effectively fishing themselves for you. It's not an entirely bad system -- after all, collecting multitudes of ingredients for the game is important, but there's a missed opportunity here, and it exists within how a true fishing activity would have come to life like never before with the Switch's Joy-Con controllers.
Now, don't confuse that last sentiment with us wanting Wii-like waggle. I think we can all agree that era of gaming is long behind us, even if some of the Shrine challenges in Breath of the Wild do force use of the console’s gyro (shame, Nintendo. Shame). But when you consider how much Ninty has seemingly invested in the Joy-Cons, it makes little-to-no sense they would exclude what would arguably be a perfect flagship beyond 1-2 Switch, which not everyone is going to play, for their movement and rumble features in each of the little devices. The barrier here, really, is simply that maybe fishing players would have to undock their Joy-Cons, or put down the Pro Controller, but really a basic option for choosing either motion fishing controls, or basic controller controls would make this easy as fish pie
And then the possibilities are endless. You could have a quest built around catching a General Sherman-like Hyrule bass. You could run into a keen angler NPC who offers you a series of challenges at different lakes, rivers, coastal waters and more. Or maybe it doesn’t have to be a single person, it could be a club of anglers where you need to catch a rare fish to join, then once you’ve joined you could share your catches with them with the game’s photo mode, replete with the selfie option. Throw in the General Sherman Hyrule bass with this person, or group, and all of a sudden you have a wonderful distraction from rushing to Calamity Ganon, and another reason to explore the game’s vast expanses and various environments. Ice fishing people. Think about it. Ice fishing.
Imagine being able to cast a line with one Joy-Con, to the level of having to hold your finger down on the bumper of the non-casting Joy-Con as if you were holding the line on a real-world reel with a perfectly timed release of the button as you cast out to the water. Then using one Joy-Con to actually reel in your line. You could have lures or bait. Heck, you could even have fly fishing considering these little controllers aren’t attached to one another -- the freedom of movement is there, the 1:1 motion is there, and the rumble fidelity is there. The game-world full of fishing opportunities -- and fish -- is there. So why didn’t Nintendo include this in the final product?
The likely answer to this is they just didn’t think of it or, if they did, they thought players would get tired of undocking their Joy-Cons. It could also be due to the game having been developed initially for Wii U considering those annoying forced Shrine motion control sections require full movement of the GamePad, or Joy-Cons while docked. Whatever the reason, we’re worse off for it not happening. The fishing sub-quest in Twilight Princess was inspired and Nintendo finally has the hardware capable of capitalising on its fishing endeavours, which began all those years ago with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
There’s still time of course, with DLC on its way, but we’re pretty sure all content for these has been locked down, but maybe if enough anglers out there shout out to Nintendo via some sort of #wewantjoyconfishinginzelda type of thing, then who knows? What we do know is this is a missed opportunity for both the developer and punters to get even more out of Nintendo’s impressive little machine and to further entrench themselves in the world of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. So, c’mon Nintendo -- cast away.
