Breath of the Wild Fort Hateno

[Spirit]

Breath of the Wild has a lot of ruins, dropping from the plateau into Hyrule proper the first thing you'll most likely come across are ruins. Ruined villages, ruined barracks, cathedrals, fountains, towns colosseum and a certain fort.

I followed the first few story beats (up until Impa marks the Beasts on your Slate) so I saw Fort Hateno early on and it really made an impression on me.

I stopped and stared in awe at a lot of things in BotW but Fort Hateno made me stop and feel emotional at what i was seeing.

This is the place where the idea of Calamity Ganon and the struggles of the past really hit home.

Did this area have any effect on you when you saw it the first time?

Were there any places that had an emotional effect on you during your playthrough?

 

[CyborgElfStephanie]

It really didn't hit hard on me at that time but the Temple of Time, and Link's memories hit me real hard.

 

[Azure Sage]

It sure as heck did. When I first found it, I talked with a guy outside who said the Hylian Champion fought a deadly battle defending the fort from Guardians. That really put me in awe, seeing the impact that Link made 100 years ago and then seeing him standing there again in the present. Hateno is also my favorite village in the game. I really like that area.

 

[Scoopapa]

Following the game's paths leads to a lot of awesome sequences, which is impressive considering you have the option (which I took) of climbing everywhere and bypassing most of it. I didn't actually find this until I read about the multiple corser bee honeys you can find there. Even though I was just trying to farm I had a moment of immersion when I saw it. They tell you that Hateno village wasn't destroyed in the calamity and it was cool to see (I assume) the wall that kept it at bay.

 

[AncientPoe]

I mean, I felt it as an artistic point throughout my time playing the game, but it didn't hit me emotionally until I stumbled across the Ranch Ruins after a particularly pitched battle. I was so caught up in the frantic fighting that I was only able to take stock of where I was once it was over. Suddenly flashed on the countless hours I spent at Lon Lon Ranch as a kid. It really got me.

 

[Wiggum]

I guess I'm the "jerk" here when I say that I have never found anything in any video game "emotional" ... or that I never have cared about back story to a game, the current story while playing, or any story that goes with the game.

Just give me a cool game with good controls and good gameplay ... at least decent if not awesome graphics, and let's get to work. Why I'm going around killing monsters and/or trying to save the princess/world ... I don't care at all, because no matter what the reason or story is, I'm going to take on the task. I don't need a reason to do it other than "I want to, and it's gonna be awesomely fun doing it".

 

[Nicolai]

It didn't really affect me the same way, game-wide. It all seemed in the distant past; it would have seemed more terrible if the calamity was happening in the present, and I saw people reacting to their hardships. Places like Hateno, Lurelin, and Zora's Domain gave me way too much hope of peaceful civilization to feel much remorse for the past.

 

[Vanessa28]

Nope, no matter how much I love the game I didn't get emotional at any scene. I did look at the ruins and was like "did the people all die or where they able to flee" but I never got emotional.

 

[SinkingBadges]

It was neat, gave me a "wow, guess something must've happened here" kind of reaction. I didn't think they'd do much with trying to give the world a sense of having history of its own so it was a surprise for me to see it being done at all. It's kinda cool how the last memory brings you back there and loops that back into what you're doing now. I can't say I got emotional about it but I'm not the kind to frown upon it being there at all either, even though I'd hardly call a game great based on this kind of thing alone.

Other places that left at least a small impression on me would be the love ponds. They are weird and outlandish enough that I could see people in-game making up stories about them, and standing out like that makes it neat when they have sidequests linked to them at all.