So.
I love Breath of the Wild.
I don’t know that I can say it’s the best Zelda game ever or even my favorite, but it
is definitely the Zelda game that I and presumably most fans of the series needed to play right
now in order to remember how special this franchise can be.
Skyward Sword agitated a lot of people, myself included, with its handholdy design choices,
and Breath of the Wild is the perfect response to those frustrations.
The amount of player freedom it offers is staggering, and unlike many modern games,
it trusts that players aren’t total idiots, allowing them to answer questions like, where
to go, what to do, and how to do things without constant instruction or reminders, which is
immensely refreshing.
Having a game answer these kinds of questions for the player before they even gets a chance
to takes away agency and leads to a feeling of being on autopilot.
Instead of providing answers, Breath of the Wild starts almost every quest, diversion,
and plot point with a question.
They are often quick and easy to answer, but Breath of the Wild’s ability to link together
tiny activities through these question plays a huge role in building the sense of freedom
and adventure that make this title so special.
Journeys are intrinsically focused on finding answers, whether they be about the world,
one’s self, or anything in between, and giving players the opportunity to constantly
answer questions leads directly into the theme of adventure.
To be honest, I really expected not to like Breath of the Wild.
After hearing that this entry would feature an open world, I assumed it wasn’t really
for me.
If you’ve been around my channel for awhile, you know that a lot of the staples of the
genre bother me.
So many titles don’t do the heavy lifting when it comes to world design, which makes
things like mini-maps and fast travel become crutches that are leaned on far too often.
These functions often strip away mystery and organic discovery.
Surprisingly though, the way Breath of the Wild approaches travel and navigation pretty
much lines up with what I have been hoping to see from open-world games for awhile now.
The world is densely peppered with tons of little things to do while heading to a destination
that don’t take up much time and give useful rewards.
In general, Nintendo did a superb job with placing and creating notable stuff in every
nook and cranny of the map.
When playing, it seemed like no matter where I went, I found something worthwhile.
Although Breath of the Wild feels like one massive adventure, it is really just a well-connected
string of tiny ones.
After finishing a task there is this drive to immediately jump into the next thing, and
a large part of that derives from the idea of the game presenting almost everything as
a question instead of as an answer.
This can be best seen with one of the game’s main collectibles, the Korok seeds.
Instead of just being an actual item scattered across the map that players can run to and
quickly pick up, the developers opted to hide the Korok Seeds behind small inconsistencies
in the world.
So instead of saying, “Oh, there’s a thing I should pick up,” an actual question is
formed: “Why is there a circle of rocks in this lake?” or “What are these blocks
doing here?”
They are simple questions with simple answers, but they act as quick hooks that lead to small
challenges and rewards.
There’s mystery to each Korok seed which is far more compelling than just seeing a
blue orb and grabbing it.
Even when the connection between these weird inconsistencies and Korok seeds is made, there
is always the question of, “What do I need to do to get it?” so that sense of uncertainty
never really goes away.
This same idea is also exhibited by the way quests, especially side quests, are approached.
During sidequests in most other open-world games I’ve played, an NPC will give the
quest, and then a waypoint will appear on the map showing where to go.
However, in Breath of the Wild, more often than not, NPCs will either give a riddle or
point in the direction of a landmark for reference.
From there, it is the player's job to figure out what it means.
Instead of having the game do all of the work, the player actually has to do something, which,
unfortunately in this day and age is not a given.
Turning these things into questions may seem simple, but it ends up being the difference
between what amounts to collecting bread crumbs and actually engaging in a world.
It gives a hook that players want to follow, and frankly it makes players feel smart for
knowing to follow it.
This makes navigation center around following mysteries and solving them opposed to following
a waypoint or a line on the mini-map.
In general, the way Breath of the Wild approaches assisting the player is incredibly effective.
For instance, despite having a busy HUD that at first glance seems overbearing, all of
the information on it can also be picked up from audio and visual cues, whether it be
from Link’s body language or the terrain itself.The first thing I did when I started
playing was turn off the mini-map, and at no point did I struggle with navigation.
There are so many memorable landmarks, all but forcing players to become familiar with
the layout of Hyrule despite its enormous size.
Also, the game’s massive draw distance makes it really easy to examine the landscape, identify
familiar places, pick a path and move accordingly.
While I usually get tired of traveling across a map due to boring movement mechanics and
there not being enough to do between quest markers, I didn’t really feel those issues
with Breath of the Wild because of how bombarded I was with those tiny questions: what’s
over this hill?
Is anything near this monster camp that could help take them out?
What else do I need to do to solve this riddle?
The fact that there are multiple ways to answer any given question also adds to feeling powerful
as a player, and Link’s mobility is one of the main sources of this player freedom.
Being able to climb on anything and glide from place to place opens up a lot of possibilities
for traversal and exploration which pairs well with the fact that there’s so much
to discover.
At the same time, there are enough limitations with his mobility in the form of the stamina
and rain, that players are incentivized to either increase Link’s abilities or find
creative ways to navigate areas.
With the proper vantage point or enough stamina, players can go anywhere in Breath of the Wild,
and being able to travel anywhere in order to try to answer a question, whether it be
in regards to a collectible or location, satisfies the basic premise of what an open-world can
be.
The biggest question presented in Breath of the Wild is “How are you going to defeat
Ganon?”
And the fact that the answer to this is not exclusively, “complete the main quest”
is kind of amazing.
See I’ve noticed that a lot of open-world games have stories that don’t really need
an open world to be told.
Because of this, in many titles, I often get railroaded by the main quest and end up missing
out on the things that don’t affect the primary objective.
For example, in the Witcher 3 the main quest is extremely compelling; Geralt needs to find
his adoptive daughter, Ciri, before the people pursuing her do.
This raises the stakes and gives Geralt and the player a strong motivation, which makes
for an interesting story, but, at least for how I approach games, it doesn’t really
support the elements of open-worlds that make them captivating.
The fun of an open world comes from discovery, but the Witcher 3’s story constantly calls
for urgency, so I rode right past the interesting things sprinkled throughout the world, foregoing
exploration in favor of completing the story, which is a shame because The Witcher 3’s
open-world and main story are both incredible, but they don’t really work in tandem.
And I am sure that plenty of players have the ability to not focus too much on the main
quest and be able to enjoy the diversions, and that is awesome for them, but it doesn’t
really work for me.
In general, it seems a little backwards to not create a story that supports the world
it takes place in, which has led me to want an open-world game that doesn’t have such
a strong story; one where the world and exploration of it is directly supported by the main quest,
and Breath of the Wild does this better than any open-world game I’ve played.
This opens the door for the player to choose how to take on Ganon.
Like, primarily searching for the choicest bugs and food ingredients in order to make
a ridiculous amount of elixirs and recipes is actually a viable, albeit impractical approach
to beating the game.
Almost every diversion and side activity supports the main goal of getting stronger, whether
it’s completing trials in order to get more health and stamina, doing sidequests to earn
money and get better gear, raiding monster camps to get useful weapons and materials,
or finding Koroks Seeds in order to increase inventory size, and more importantly, to stop
getting the notification saying there is no more room for weapons—which, by the way,
is a really obnoxious way to push the player toward wanting to keep searching for Koroks,
but also an effective one.
There is this powerful sense that everything is building toward a single effect, and that
no matter what you are doing, it is the right thing to be doing.
To me, that is how an open-world game should feel, and that is why this one has struck
such a chord with me.
It asks the question: how do you want to do this?
And you actually get to answer that however you want.
The fact that this is the game we got is pretty amazing considering that Skyward Sword received
nearly universal acclaim from review outlets, which most developers would take as a sign
to keep doing what they are doing.
Instead, Breath of the Wild is pretty much the exact opposite of Skyward Sword, at least
in terms of how it handles progression and direction, and this seems to indicate that
Nintendo prioritized the feedback of actual fans over the countless reviews that performed
endless fellatio on what amounted to be an okay game.
With all of this said, Breath of the Wild is certainly far from perfect.
The hooks of the Korok seeds and Trials definitely see diminishing returns near the end of the
game.
It would have been nice to see a few more types of rewards for sidequest, completing
trials and finding Koroks, because there got to be a point where I didn’t really need
more hearts, stamina, or inventory space, which made those mysteries less interesting
to pursue.
It also would have been nice to see a little more diversity with the trials.
For instance, they could have taken a handful of trials, combined their elements together,
reskinned them, and placed what would feel like a traditional Zelda dungeon at some random
spot in the world for the player to stumbleupon.
Having a few of these bigger trial dungeons around the world could have led to some really
interesting quests and provided another type of reward.
Breath of the Wild’s shortcomings are hard to focus on because of how many things it
gets right.
Ultimately most of my complaints can be boiled down to that this game I spent an incredible
50 hours with, didn’t have enough stuff to make me want to play for 100 hours, which,
obviously, should be taken with a grain of salt.
On the whole, Nintendo really outdid themselves.
They approached their world with a care and focus that is rare for this genre because
of how hard it is to do right.
Faith in the Zelda franchise and Nintendo have been at an all-time low, but Breath of
the Wild proved that Nintendo still has a lot of surprises up their sleeve, and at the
end of the day, they know how to make good games.
Zelda started as a series about adventure and exploration, and this entry nails those
tenants more powerfully than any game before it.
I can’t vouch for everything Nintendo does, but at the very least, they understand the
power that questions and mystery can have on an adventure.