While the Green Bay Packers go through OTAs, I, too, have been accomplishing meaningful work in shorts.
I’ve spent significant hours training myself, mastering footwork, and working on my rush moves so that I can save Princess Zelda and the land of Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom.
For those not currently hooked on Nintendo, the latest installment of the acclaimed The Legend of Zelda series is out, and it’s a masterpiece. After reinventing the Zelda formula with Breath of the Wild, Nintendo built on that foundation to create an even better game.
What does any of this have to do with the Green Bay Packers? In my haze of play, I thought about the franchise formula of both Zelda and the Packers. Both are historic icons with a long history of success that had lost steam in recent years. The Packers made deep playoff runs in most seasons thanks to elite quarterback play but have consistently fallen short of the big game. Zelda games always sell well, but their most recent titles hadn’t wowed audiences, and many wondered if the formula was getting stale.
In 2017, Zelda made a big pivot to their gameplay formula. In 2023, the Packers made the choice to move on from Aaron Rodgers. Can the Jordan Love era become the Packers’ Breath of the Wild?
For those unfamiliar with Zelda, the general premise of the games is that Ganon threatens the fantasyland of Hyrule, who is mean. Sometimes, he’s just a guy. Other times, he’s a big scary demon guy. Usually, he’s both. The game’s protagonist, Link, must save the land of Hyrule and its beloved Princess Zelda.
Zelda games have evolved since the ‘80s, but 1991’s A Link To The Past really defined the franchise’s formula. The player would need to explore the lands and find the legendary Master Sword. Sword in hand, Link would complete dungeons to obtain new items and some sort of necessary collectible. Finding a dungeon’s item would unlock more of the world, allowing you to traverse new areas. Eventually, you’d fight Ganon and save the world.
For years, Zelda followed this basic formula. The themes and settings might change, but the core loop was the same. Do a dungeon and claim its item, then use that item to make your way to the next. Find the Master Sword, fight bad guy.
The franchise remained successful, but with each game adhering to the formula, it was worth wondering if there couldn’t be more. And Breath of the Wild proved it could.
The 2017 release stuck to the same premise. Ganon is being super mean and you need to stop him. But the journey became a totally new experience.
Breath of the Wild handed you everything you need to complete the game in the first hour. After a short tutorial, you had every major power and the game said, “Have fun!” It featured a fully explorable open world with survival elements, including cooking, a weapon durability system, and dynamic weather. You could choose to fight Ganon the second you left the tutorial zone or you could explore the world and check out anything that looks neat.
The world was truly open, unlike previous games where you were gated based on dungeon progress. The game was a massive shakeup not without risks. Changing the formula could risk alienating fans, who have clear expectations on what a Zelda game is. Open world games, while popular, don’t always succeed. Many open-world games force you to complete tedious checklists to get the full experience, and many companies saw their product quality decline thanks to poorly made open worlds (looking at you, BioWare!).
Green Bay has been in a similar state for the past few seasons. Their formula of trusting Aaron Rodgers to lead the team to victory while mostly avoiding free agency got the Packers close to a second Rodgers-era Super Bowl, but they never quite stuck the landing.
The Packers lost playoff games in every conceivable way — defensive collapses, special teams collapses, offensive collapses, the refs being bad, not seeing the ball in overtime, and literally running out of cornerbacks. If moblins attacked the team mid-game, it still would have been less surprising than the 2014 NFC Championship game. By Green Bay’s 2021 loss against the San Francisco 49ers, it felt like the team might never get over the hump, and it’s not like Rodgers was getting any younger.
So the Packers took the franchise-altering route and traded Rodgers to the New York Jets. Despite a bad year in 2022, it’s not like Rodgers’ tank is empty. He won back-to-back MVPs — quite recently. But he wasn’t able to get over the hump and return to the biggest game. Green Bay will see what it has in Jordan Love.
Is a new leader and center of the team the key to getting back to the Super Bowl? Will this move set the franchise back on track?
It’s too much pressure to say Love needs to be the Breath of the Wild of the Green Bay Packers. That game was a risk, but it was helmed by a team of experienced developers, marketed by one of the world’s most successful entertainment companies, and earned several Game of the Year Awards while being in contention for “best game of all time.” It would be unfair to expect Love to be a generational, Super Bowl-winning quarterback in his first year as a starter, even if he’s given the Master Sword.
But we can look at the decision-making process. The Zelda franchise needed a boost to increase sales and receive more acclaim. The Packers needed to do something different to get back to the Super Bowl. Both franchises took risks that could have alienated their fan bases. Green Bay turned the page from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love in an attempt to win a different way. It worked for Zelda. Will it work for the Packers?
