Is Breath of the Wild a Breath of Fresh Air?

            Since I was six years old and received my first Nintendo console from my parents I have always been a fan of the Legend of Zelda series. So naturally, when Breath of the Wild was announced for release I, like many fans of the franchise, was skeptical of the game’s many departures from what I had come to expect of Zelda games. That being the standard story-driven progression with each leg of the adventure taking you to a different part of the world, meeting a key character or two, collecting your dungeon item and a bit of exploration sprinkled in between. Breath of the Wild however, takes a completely different approach to not only how you explore the world, but how you connect-the-dots of the story as well.

            Gone are the days where the story was neatly gift-wrapped for the player and handed out in increments as the player progressed through the game. In Breath of the Wild, you truly need to earn it if you want the full explanation of what is going on. There is still a main story quest which will give you a good idea of the game’s plot, but since one of the game’s core components is exploration, you’ll need to search far and wide if you want every detail. Nintendo manages this by having Link, the well-known protagonist of the series, lose his memory at the game’s exposition, and in order to fully regain it, he must find certain landmarks and vistas throughout the world in order to experience flashbacks that reveal certain aspects of his relationship with several key characters. Needless to say, that as a fan, far too many hours of my time were spent on this aspect of the game alone. However, this is by far not the most obvious, nor impactful departure that Nintendo takes from its past titles. And I’m not just talking about the lack of a green cap and tunic.

            Past titles in the series have always included a somewhat limited world, with most parts being explored no matter what the player does as they progress through the game. Breath of the Wild instead, returns to the roots of the Zelda franchise and the game that started it all, the original Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The very first Zelda game famously dropped players into a world with no direction, no story, and no idea what to do next. With naught but the words “its dangerous to go alone! Take this!” Players were sent out into the world to chart their own course and see how they fared.

            Now, Breath of the Wild is a title that is aimed at getting a new generation hooked on the franchise, and as such, it does hold your hand throughout the first thirty to forty minutes (or the first few hours depending on how much aimless wandering you do, guilty!) of gameplay. However, after the players clear the initial starting area they are free to go anywhere they wish. As previously mentioned, there is a story questline that can give some direction. But the choice is ultimately up to the player. I myself spent a good number of hours hunting through the forest, taming horses, and fishing before I continued on with the main quest. All in all though, this departure from the franchise formula was extremely refreshing, even as a long time fan. Yes, today’s market is oversaturated with “open-world” games that make it seem more like a requirement than a feature, but the way that Nintendo went about designing their open world just feels… right.

            To elaborate, a problem many open-world games have nowadays is that they make their worlds too big. On the surface, it seems like an excellent selling point for any open-world game. However, when you design your world to be too big you quickly run out of assets, be they props, people, or buildings, to fill your world with. Now, hold on a moment… isn’t Breath of the Wild’s map extremely empty? Isn’t it filled with wide open spaces? Sprawling deserts and vast, emerald fields? Absolutely. The very reason Breath of the Wild’s world feels so believable and alive is because it is meant to be that way.

            Everything, from the title to the plot, makes the world feel vast and untamed. In other words, the world feels wild, and the reason that works is because everything in the game revolves around a central theme of loss and decline. The world is built through its storytelling that you are not in Hyrule anymore. At least, not the Hyrule you knew. Link awakens in rags, he has lost everything; his memory, his sword, and almost everyone he knew. The kingdom he once fought to defend has fallen, and the sentient races of Hyrule have lost their grip on the land. Allowing it to flourish in all its wild and natural ways for one-hundred years. In essence, if a desolate and destroyed kingdom were full of people and man-made environments to explore, it would feel wrong. With Breath of the Wild’s depiction of Hyrule, less is certainly more.

            However, for all its claims to success, Breath of the Wild is not perfect. There are many design choices that, in my experience, are somewhat questionable, and the balance between the game’s realism (which in this installment feels like a much more emphasised element than in previous titles) and how fun it is to play is certainly off-kilter in some aspects of the game. Chief among these realism versus playability conflicts has to do with the game’s weather system, and all its various effects it has on the surrounding environment. While I appreciate and, more often than not, enjoy the diverse weather and how it affects gameplay, the element of rain and how it affects climbable surfaces is a questionable design decision at best. The main issue here lies in the fact that Nintendo decided to make climbing one of the game’s core mechanics for navigating the world. However, assumingly for realism’s sake, they then decided to make it so that when it rains every climbable surface in the game becomes wet, causing Link to slip back down the slope, or cliff-face and suffer a stamina penalty after climbing a short distance.

            Now, this normally would not be an issue as in most adventure game hybrids there are ways to skip large amounts of in-game time for the sake of pacing. Breath of the Wild has a similar feature in the form of resting at campfires, which you can handily light wherever you are in the world by combining a pile of wood, some flint, and a bladed weapon. However, once again for realism’s sake, when it rains you cannot strike the flint to light the fire and pass time. This creates a somewhat troubling scenario. For example, imagine there is a landmark that will unlock one of Link’s memories nearby, and the only way you can reach it is to climb a sheer cliff-face. Halfway up the cliff you come to a plateau and it begins to rain. Now you can no longer climb up the other half of the cliff, can no longer light a fire to pass the time so it will stop raining, and you don’t want to jump down and move on because you, like me, want to get the memory and never have to come back and climb this cliff again.

            Therein lies the dilemma, did Nintendo perhaps make the Breath of the Wild too realistic? In my opinion, slightly. I feel they could have either reduced, or eliminated the climbing penalty when it rains, as it is one of the game’s main mechanics and methods of traversing the terrain. Doing this would have made the game less realistic yes, but it would have eliminated the previous scenario that ultimately kills the game’s pacing. Which in my opinion is far worse than having to sacrifice a bit of realism. Another option would have been to alter the effects of the effects of the Climber’s armour set. This three-piece set of armour initially boosts Link’s climbing speed and, after acquiring two upgrades to all three pieces in the set, provides a reduced stamina cost for jumping up or to the side while climbing. In my opinion, this would have been the ultimate solution to this conflict between the game’s realism and its playability. Rather than giving the player reduced stamina cost for climbing jumps, give the player the ability to climb while its raining with no slipping penalty. That way without the upgraded armour the realism of slippery-when-wet climbing surfaces can remain a factor in the game, but also have a way to completely eliminate it, provided players put in the time and effort to find and upgrade all three armour pieces.

            Thankfully, Nintendo did leave realism out where it didn’t need to be present. One of the most prevalent areas where realism does not, and should not ever be present in a video game (particularly RPGs) is its inventory system. Inventory is often one of the more challenging features to design in any game, and it often calls for a good deal of suspended disbelief from players. The same applies to Breath of the Wild and how its inventory system works. Items in Breath of the Wild are first sorted into various categories, with weapons, shields, bows and arrows, ingredients, and consumables being the most frequently managed and used as it relates to gameplay. However, only weapons, shields, and bows have a limit to how many you can carry. This limit is enforced by slots with each item taking up one slot regardless of its size or weight.

            While this is a limiting factor, it is the only use of realism present in the inventory system, and in this case the use of the word ‘realism’ is a stretch at best. Because while the game does have a carry limit for combat items, from the game’s beginning the amount is still generous and greatly defies any realistic limits on how many weapons one man could actually carry. Additionally, the game has a system in place in which the player seeks out little tree creatures known as Koroks, who give Link seeds he can trade to increase his carry limit for combat weapons. As for the rest of the item types, ingredients and consumables do not have a limit on how much you can carry. This is because the game does not provide a way to store these items elsewhere, and the player may find cook-fires in many locations around the world where they may want to cook up food or potions in order to restore health. And since food is the main mechanic for regaining health in Breath of the Wild, it behooves the game to not put a limit on these items in order to smooth out the experience. This keeps the player from wasting too much time managing their inventory, thus mitigating the most boring part of any adventure or RPG.

            Lastly, on the topic of weapons and equipment, Breath of the Wild introduces several new mechanics on how melee and ranged combat work. In past Zelda games the player would be given anywhere between one to three swords over the course of their adventure. Usually culminating in the acquisition of the series’ hallmark weapon: the Master Sword. However, in Breath of the Wild, Nintendo has completely thrown away that concept for a system that feels more realistic, and suits the game’s open-world and exploratory themes. In Breath of the Wild the player can cut down a tree and use a branch as a weapon, or use weapons found in the wilderness or dropped from enemies. This freedom of choice comes at a cost though, and that is almost every weapon in Breath of the Wild can break. Some weapons obviously will have more durability than others, but all of them will end up shattering in Link’s hand at some point or another. The same goes for bows and shields as well.

            Now, from a realistic standpoint it does make sense that Link’s weapon will break. Anything would after you’ve smashed it against other things long enough. However, this is another one of those design that has left me wondering if Nintendo didn’t sacrifice too much fun for the sake of the game being realistic. The one exception to this rule being the iconic Master Sword itself. It is present in the game, however whether or not the player obtains it is optional. The Master Sword in Breath of the Wild behaves differently though, than its past iterations. While other Master Swords have served as Link’s all-purpose evil-slayer, in the newest installment it serves solely as a weapon the player can use against the game’s final boss. Any other use of the weapon and its incredible power to never be shattered is considered in the game’s canon to be “unworthy use” of its power. This results in the weapon randomly flying from Link’s hand during combat which, as you can imagine, is a rather annoying occurrence. This forces players to constantly have to keep assembling a stockpile of weaponry throughout the game, and can lead to some frustrating moments when you’re left to fight a boss with nothing but a stick in your hand. Though if you win it can make for a truly legendary moment, albeit a frustrating one.

            Alas, when all is said and done, I enjoyed Breath of the Wild for what it was. A new type of Zelda game for a new generation of Zelda fans, pioneering the new console it came out on. It’s fresh, different, and overall has many new and classic Zelda traits that long-time fans like myself enjoy and while some design elements are questionable, I never encountered anything that rendered the game completely unplayable. It has rough edges here and there, particularly in how the game has approached a more realistic feel to its gameplay, but in the end, I was satisfied with a great adventure filled with many memorable moments. And that is all we Zelda fans have ever truly wanted.