Link's Memories are collectible cutscenes in Breath of the Wild

It's almost a tradition that Link begins a new adventure asleep, shortly thereafter awaken by some urge or magical voice. But it isn't common that this happens after a 100 years slumber, and that's precisely the premise of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Add to that a complete memory loss, and you have an interesting mystery to solve: your own past. All of this was mostly known to those who have been following the progress of the game, and you can hear what seems to be both Great Deku Tree and King of Hyrule referring to this whole memories/slumber matter in the trailer below.

However, what many of those fans might not have learned yet is how Link is going to recover those memories. And judging by what we played recently at Gamereactor, it turns out that these memories transcend the mere narrative aspect to become an open-world mechanic. In particular, Link's memories are one of the main collectibles.

That is, in order to realise what happened 100 years ago, it's not just a matter of the story automatically unfolding itself via cutscenes as you progress through the game anymore, but here you'll have to collect those sequences at your own pace, in your own particular order and piece together the events. Effectively, all this ends up registered in its own archive that you can always consult.

Players can open up the Sheikah Slate menu to check the map, inventory, missions, destinations and such, but in the Adventure Log, next to the Main Quest menu (and after the still blacked-out logs for what look like Shrines and Side Missions) there's actually a list of Recovered Memories. Each one comes with an unmistakable video icon, obviously suggesting that you can replay these memories to try and understand, bit by bit, what took place in the past.

We know there are at least six memories to recover, but we're guessing the amount will at least reach into double digits. Perhaps it won't match the 100+ Shrines waiting for you on the game map (and it seems they have a list of their own), but a sweet amount for every player to solve the bigger puzzle their own way. And a very interesting detail we have to mention: the background of this menu is decorated by the same flower prominently shown right when the memories are mentioned during the trailer, the very same flower used for the game's logo, next to the Master Sword of Resurrection. That flower and Link's past are indeed related.

So even some details were leaked from the Hylian writings found on the maps included in the Collector's Edition, this will make Zelda fans not just speculate about the plot and the collectible videos, but also to try and fit the story somewhere into the series' timeline and to think about what this means in terms of endings. Will you get a different ending if you collect them all?

You can see the Link's Recovered Memories screen in the following shots and during our exclusive gameplay clip: