Four Years On, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Still Feels Magical
Nearly four years after its initial release, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild managed to capture my sense of imagination, wanderlust, and discovery all over again. While I had adventured through the game in its launch year, my recent revisit was my first trip back to Hyrule since, and I was once again captivated and lost in its masterfully designed world. This is a testament to how special the game is. // Image: Nintendo
There are few games that receive immediate acclaim upon their release. Even fewer get recognized and cemented into gaming culture and history as being one of the greatest examples of game design. And yet, no immediate smash hits are deserving of such overwhelming praise as much as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild., an undisputed master-class example of open world game design.
The open world subgenre of video games began gaining popularity during the seventh console generation. To exemplify the power of new hardware capable of outputting high-definition games, many developers opted to make their games bigger, offering larger, more interactive worlds for players to explore. But with a new subgenre of games, there comes growing pains. Indeed, most open world games from the mid-2000s and early 2010s rarely justified their size. Many games simply offered large worlds because they could - not necessarily because it made the game inherently better.
While there were certainly excellent examples of open world design that pushed the subgenre forward, such as Red Dead Redemption and offerings from The Elder Scrolls series, none approached what I personally thought that the genre was capable of. As someone that grew up playing imaginative JRPGs, I felt bigger, more open worlds were a natural fit for making JRPGs make greater strides at making more immersive, creative worlds. And as my tastes for games evolved during my teenage years, I developed an appreciation for games that incentivized, encouraged, and rewarded player exploration. Navigating through a game’s world, I felt, could and should be something that satisfies the player. I and so many others saw the potential that open world game design brought to the table, and it wouldn’t be too long until the best of what the genre had to offer would come to the forefront.
Monolith Soft, a studio that was then-newly acquired by Nintendo, put out Xenoblade Chronicles in 2010, which came stateside in 2012. Upon playing it, I immediately recognized Xenoblade as an amazing game with a world filled to the brim with imagination and creativity that players could get lost in, while offering giant areas that sprinkle monsters, collectables, and experience-giving hidden areas throughout the map. While the game wasn’t open world per se, its very large areas that consistently encouraged and rewarded player exploration were exactly what I thought more open games were capable of.
Monolith Soft pushed the envelope even further with the game’s 2015 spiritual successor, Xenoblade Chronicles X. This game further amplified the degree of freedom and exploration given to the player, with the entire world being accessible to the player from the very beginning. The game’s implementation of a larger world, still filled with monsters, collectables, and discoverable secret areas in addition to the player-earned ability to fly throughout the world offers an open world experience that can only be described as liberating. Xenoblade Chronicles X stands as a game that completely understands what open world games are capable of.
The reason I bring this up is because Monolith Soft were confirmed to be working on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a departure from the established traditions of the Legend of Zelda series. Following the lukewarm fan reception of the linear Skyward Sword, series producer Eiji Aonuma announced in 2013 that the next console Legend of Zelda game was going to be chartering a new direction for the series. Early looks at the game implied that the game was going to offer a large world to explore. Xenoblade Chronicles X was a phenomenal example of what open worlds could be to me, but I felt that the genre could be pushed even further. Perhaps Breath of the Wild could have been the game that realizes the potential of open world game design even greater than Xenoblade Chronicles X did.
While The Legend of Zelda titles occasionally offered large areas, the series had never touched the idea of offering a completely open world for players to explore prior to Breath of the Wild. With Monolith Soft assisting with development, their influence on the game’s direction and implementation on mechanics would become clear to see. Indeed, as early as its information blowout at E3 2016, Breath of the Wild immediately garnered recognition for having one of the most interactive and immersive open worlds ever seen - something that remained true in the final game.
Much like my experience with Xenoblade Chronicles X in 2015, my first playthrough of Breath of the Wild was magical. The Zelda team’s first attempt at making an open world was a complete slam dunk. The game gives a light tutorial in the opening Great Plateau, which introduces the player to the basic mechanics and abilities that they will have access to throughout the game. While previous Legend of Zelda games garnered the reputation of being over-tutorialized and “hand-holdy”, Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau is notably hands-off with its approach to teaching players about its mechanics. Instead of characters forcibly instructing the player how and when to perform certain actions, the player naturally learns what they’re capable of through playing in a sandbox that encourages taking advantage of the game’s mechanics. Moreover, the game as a whole consistently incentivizes and rewards exploration to the player, making for a gameplay experience that transported me to another world. Through exploring an imaginative and exceptionally well-designed world, I found myself in awe at countless points during my initial playthrough in 2017.
It’s been nearly four years since then. While other amazing open world games have released in the last few years like Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption II, and Ghost of Tsushima, none captured the imagination and sense of consistent incentivization and rewarding of exploration seen in Breath of the Wild (well, maybe Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and its expansion, but my bias towards that series will digress for now). After four years of being blown away by the game and seeing countless other people have similar experiences documented on the likes of YouTube and Twitch, I decided to revisit the game. In addition to wanting the replay the game after having played the recently released Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which offers more story beats in the Breath of the Wild world and timeline, I decided to return to the world if Breath of the Wild to see if the magic of its open world and consistent rewarding of exploration could be recaptured.
After a full second playthrough and completing all 120 Shrines and DLC, I can confirm that even after four years, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild still captures everything that I look for in an open world game. For over 60 hours, I was immersed into a world where my only limitation on my exploration was my own curiosity.
How does the game manage to be so captivating? To answer this, I’m going to look back at some of the notable highlights of my recent playthrough and what I feel are some of the game’s greatest strengths. Let’s discuss why, even after four years, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild still feels magical to play.
One of the greatest moments in all of Breath of the Wild is the moment players are given access to the game’s entire world after receiving the Paraglider item. This gives way to the player embarking on a journey that’s as extensive as their imagination and curiosity allows for. This degree of freedom given to the player is among the many aspects of the game that drew so many into Breath of the Wild’s world. // Image Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked).
In many discussions of Breath of the Wild’s design, one of the most talked about aspects of it is its opening - the previously mentioned Great Plateau. Indeed, I feel that it provides a great environment where the player is forced to figure out and learn the mechanics of heat management, cooking, and using Runes to complete puzzles. However, I feel that one of Breath of the Wild’s greatest moments comes directly after this section. After completing the four Shrines on the Great Plateau (which are the only required Shrines to complete in the game), the player is given the Paraglider, which gives the player complete access to the rest of the game’s world. It’s this exact moment when the player is suddenly given complete freedom to venture beyond the area they’ve previously been confined to that is one of the most magical aspects of Breath of the Wild.
Which way do I go first? What landmarks do I see in the distance? What part of the world looks more interesting to explore? These are seemingly small, innocuous questions but they immediately get the player focused on one thing: their own curiosity. The game slightly nudges the player in a certain direction to make story progress (which itself is optional), but the player can ultimately decide to go in any direction they wish. While the player was initially limited by the confines of the Great Plateau, those confines are now lifted, resulting in a remarkably liberating empowerment given to the player. This singular moment and this empowering feeling of freedom given to the player is special, simply put - something that no other game before or since Breath of the Wild’s release has quite replicated.
Of course, the player’s curiosity about where to go and what to do is all for naught if there isn’t anything to do with the large world that the player is given complete access to. Thankfully, another one of Breath of the Wild’s greatest strengths becomes apparent as soon as leaving the Shrine of Resurrection at the very beginning of the game. The world is filled with interactive scenarios that genuinely feel like natural happenstances that the player encounters. Early on, there’s a now-famous section of the Great Plateau featuring a couple of red Bokoblins, the game’s weakest and most basic enemy type, that are situated near explosive barrels and a campfire at the bottom of a small ravine. Surrounding this ravine are two hills with large boulders on each hill. There’s no tutorial nor any kind of direct prompt encouraging the player to interact with such large boulders, and yet if the player engages with their own curiosity, they’ll be rewarded for partaking in their willingness to interact with the environment. Rolling the boulder off of the hill will most likely cause it to roll into the explosive barrels, causing an explosion that kills the red bokoblins in the ravine and giving the player the opportunity to easily loot some weapons and food.
This instance of cause-and-effect is but a microcosm for how the entire game treats the player’s own curiosity. Unlike most of the previous Legend of Zelda titles that featured more mechanical puzzles that necessitated the use of specific items the player acquired throughout the game, most of Breath of the Wild’s puzzles and challenges are physics-based, all designed around Link’s core moveset and abilities received during the Great Plateau segment of the game. While the player does receive abilities upon completion of each of the game’s Divine Beast dungeons, none of these abilities will allow the player to suddenly solve a puzzle or access an area that wouldn’t have otherwise had access to - the abilities simply allow for more flexible combat and traversal opportunities.
Since the game’s puzzle design is built on the game’s core movement, physics, and features, there isn’t anything that’s barred off from the player. Even some of the game’s strongest enemies that can easily kill the player in a single hit can be bested from the very beginning of the game through taking advantage of Flurry Rushes, Shield Parries, and exploring to find strong weapons - all of which are systems that encourage player practice, exploration, and freedom of expression. Returning to the boulder-rolling example from earlier, that and various other instances that the player will naturally come across in their time on the Great Plateau teach them to take notice of what they can interact with. This lesson in noticing oddities and points of interest in the game’s environment becomes essential as it fundamentally changes the way the player views the very world that they’re navigating.
The example of boulders that can be pushed off of a hill and into a ravine shows that if something is positioned in a particular way, there’s always a reason for it. This creates a degree of player trust in the game’s design - that if the player sees anything that raises their interest, they’ll be rewarding for taking notice of it and doing something with it. What makes Breath of the Wild so impressive as that it consistently pulls this off on a micro and macro level.
On a micro level, the player will be attentive towards any peculiarities that they come across - a circle of leaves in water encourages the player to jump into said circle, often resulting in a Korok Seed, one of the game’s collectables. Small aspects of the environment suddenly become parts of the environment that the player is looking out for, to see if there is anything that they can possibly interact with. Players will learn to consistently be on the lookout for any aspects of the environment that implies the presence of a puzzle - an implication that always results in some kind of reward for the player.
On a macro level, this level of inquisition and curiosity about the game’s environment is extended across one of the largest, most intricate open worlds of recent memory. Indeed, every corner of Hyrule in Breath of the Wild feels remarkably distinct from another. In addition to making the world feel diverse, the player is still encouraged to look for oddities and environmental puzzles in different climates and settings. In a more mountainous region, the player won’t find the circles of leaves in a body of water, but instead, they’ll often find a Korok Seed through climbing to the top of the tallest mountain peak in an area. Or they may find a Shrine that can only be accessed in a particular way.
In my recent playthrough, discovering and uncovering the Gee Ha’rah Shrine proved to be a highlight of my entire experience. To access this Shrine, the player must roll a snowball down a snowy hill in the correct route in order for the enlarged snowball to collide with a door at the bottom of the hill. It’s a relatively simple environmental puzzle, and yet overcoming this small trial feels so satisfying because of it feeling like a genuine discovery and test of the player’s curiosity. // Image Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked).
Shrines are arguably Breath of the Wild’s biggest incentive to explore. These Shrines act as miniature dungeons that reward the player with Spirit Orbs, which can be spent to increase the player’s health and endurance capacity. With 120 Shrines being present in the game - with more being added via DLC -, the Shrines will be a consistent find in the world of Hyrule. What separates Breath of the Wild from most other open world games is that there is a complete absence of the game every feeling like a checklist. Many games such as the games of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and even the recently released Cyberpunk 2077 plaster the game’s map with UI elements that indicate that something can be found in a particular section of the map. The player can then make waypoints to guide them directly to these points of interest, collect or engage with whatever the point of interest was, then move on to the next point of interest. Rinse and repeat. It’s long been documented as a problem in many open world games.
Breath of the Wild completely foregoes this. After activating a tower to unlock access to more of the map, there aren’t any UI elements that tell the player where to go or places that might have Shrines or Korok Seeds. Instead, the game gives the discretion of finding where Shrines and Korok Seeds may be entirely to the player. This encourages the player to decide what areas may have a Korok Seed, a Shrine, a powerful weapon, or something else that may be helpful to the player. And more often than not, wherever the player decides to go will give them some kind of reward.
However, there are other systems in place so that the player doesn’t feel entirely in the dark when searching for the game’s more hidden Shrines. There are various Shrine Quests that help point the player in the general direction of some hidden Shrines, most often via riddles told to the player by NPCs in towns. There is also an in-game radar that notifies the player if they are near a Shrine or other point of interest, but this still requires the player to examine and navigate the environment to uncover the location of the point of interest. This ensures that all discoveries that the player makes throughout the game feel natural happenstances - that player will consistently think to themselves “I found this!” because to find anything in Breath of the Wild only requires astute observation of the environment.
In fact, there’s one particular Shrine in the game that I feel perfectly exemplifies how Breath of the Wild encourages the player to engage in their own curiosity with the game’s environment: the Gee Ha’rah Shrine.
While navigating the Hebra region of the map, I came across a door at the bottom of the mountain. The in-game radar was indicating that there was a Shrine nearby. I figured that the Shrine had to be behind the door. “Why would a door even be here if it wasn’t guarding something important?” I thought. I looked around to see if there was a key or some kind of hint in regards to how to open it.
As I climbed the hillside in front of the door, I noticed that there seemed to be pathways that led downward towards the door, with many weaving in different directions. I then decided to climb to where all of these halfpipes led - to the top of a hill with small snowballs sitting in front of five avenues that would take the snowball in different directions down the hill. I placed a snowball on each avenue, as they all rolled down the hill, getting bigger and bigger along the way. Some went in different directions and ended up away from the door, while one particular avenue sent the enlarged snowball on a direct course to hit the door, which opened the way, revealing a Shrine.
While there is a Shrine Quest that suggests the location and reveal of this particular Shrine that the player can receive at another location, I came across this particular Shrine completely naturally and didn’t encounter it in my initial playthrough. This environmental puzzle is admittedly just a simple physics puzzle of pushing a snowball down a hill and picking the right way for it go to get to the desired destination, but it’s nevertheless remarkable in how it presents an environmental puzzle that feels like a natural challenge for the player to conquer.
It’s not a particularly challenging puzzle either, but what matters is that it’s a puzzle whose presence and solution can be deduced simply through the player’s own observation and curiosity. After seeing a hill, various halfpipe avenues, and snowballs at the top of the hill, the game gives more than enough to let the player add two and two together without needing to directly say anything to the player. The Shrine Quest’s existence for this particular Shrine is an appreciated touch, as it can help players be pointed in this direction and give them a head start at thinking about how to solve this particular puzzle.
Gaining access to the Gee Ha’rah Shrine is a simple, easy puzzle, and yet it stands out as a highlight of my 60+ hour playthrough because finding and solving the puzzle felt like an entirely natural, intuitive experience. These kinds of experiences are what proliferate the world of Breath of the Wild, to the point that every player will likely have a different particular Shrine, Korok Seed, or other puzzle that will stand out to them. This makes every experience of the game feel distinct from another, which amplifies the feeling of Breath of the Wild offering an adventure unique to every single player - something that inherently feels magical to experience.
There are 900 Korok Seeds to discover in Breath of the Wild. Since there are so many, the player is not intended to uncover every Korok Seed in a single playthrough. However, since there are so many, the player will likely find new Korok Seeds in every playthrough - furthering the unique nature of each experience with Breath of the Wild. // Image Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked).
This experience of discovering something entirely through one’s own observation of their surroundings is an inherently satisfying experience - and it’s one that defines the very experience of playing Breath of the Wild. While there are dozens of Shrines that are a joy to uncover, it’s the rewards given to the player that makes them even more satisfying to discover. Upon activation, all Shrines bestow a fast travel point to the player, allowing for quicker and more convenient navigation for the player should they ever need to return to a specific area of the map later in their adventure. As discussed previously, Shrines also reward the player with the ability to expand their health and stamina, effectively making the player stronger throughout the course of the game. But there’s another component of the game’s exploration and design that I would argue is perhaps the most fundamental at keeping the game’s sense of exploration, discovery, and satisfaction consistent: the Korok Seeds.
After meeting the character Hestu, the player is given the ability to exchange any acquired Korok Seeds for expanded inventory slots, allowing the player to hold onto more swords, shields, and bows throughout their adventure. Since weapons in Breath of the Wild frequently break, the player is encouraged to use different weapons consistently - having a larger inventory gives the player a greater amount of flexibility and convenience in regards to which weapons they want to use in combat encounters.
This means that, in turn, Korok Seeds ultimately reward the player with more convenience during combat - just as the Shrines reward the player with more convenience during map navigation via fast travel. There are 900 Korok Seeds throughout the game, an insanely large number that is not intended to be a nightmare for completionists. Rather, the presence of so many Korok Seeds ensures that there is something to discover in nearly every area of the game. Much like finding many of the game’s Shrines, almost all Korok Seeds require the player to engage with the environment in some capacity through interacting with some kind of oddity or point of interest. Sometimes, it’s as simple as rolling a rock into a socket where the rock perfectly fits. Other times, it’s walking to the farthest edge of a beach.
Simply remaining curious and explorative throughout their journey will consistently give the player access to more conveniences to make combat and navigation feel smoother. So often, open world games create big worlds just for the sake of having a big world that can be marketed as a selling point. It’s rare for open world games to be designed to feature points of interest that reward the player in some way in nearly every location on the map, and yet Breath of the Wild pulls it off. Despite its incredibly large scale, every area within the world of Breath of the Wild has a focused design that gives the player something to look for - making finding any oddities and inconsistencies that may result in discovering a Korok Seed feel entirely natural and seamless for the player.
Much like my experiences with the worlds found in Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X, the world of Breath of the Wild offers so much depth in its design while also offering so many opportunities to make natural discoveries with the game’s world, making for a gameplay experience where every single discovery, every moment feels like a triumph unique to every player.
Everything else in Breath of the Wild serves as a compliment of the magnificent design seen in the game’s environment. The game has fantastic writing in its dialogue and cutscenes, and excellently delivers an admittedly simple story that nevertheless delivers story beats that feel unique from one another. There are a lot of aspects of Breath of the Wild that elevate the game to be special among so many other games, but the biggest takeaway from my experience is how mesmerizing the design of the game’s open world truly is.
Through creating a world that actively and consistently invites the player to interact with its systems to uncover points of interest the reward the player with more convenience, Breath of the Wild feels like more than a game at times - it feels like a platform for players to embark on unique adventures with. The liberating feeling of unadulterated player freedom, the teaching of mechanics to the player, and the game’s hands-off approach at encouraging players to acquire access to more conveniences in world navigation and combat through interacting with its world all help elevate this game to feel special to play. Despite being in a crowded genre, Breath of the Wild stands out among any other open world action-adventure-RPG due to how much trust it puts in the player.
Breath of the Wild trusts that the player will notice points of interest on their own - and so, it foregoes the need to excessively highlight such points of interest to the player via the map. In a series that was once often criticized for holding players’ hands at times, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is remarkable in that it tells so much to the player through showing, not telling - which inherently makes for a more engaging, immersive, and personal experience. Simply put, the hours spent in Breath of the Wild’s open world fly by because the player is constantly learning about how to observe and interact with the world that they’re in, which in turn, keeps them immersed in the world for longer.
Getting so lost in a world that’s as detailed as the one in Breath of the Wild is a truly magical experience. Even amidst the four years of countless discoveries within the game that people have shared online, there are still many things that I learned about the game during my recent playthrough. There were various Shrines and Korok Seeds that I discovered that I didn’t find on my first playthrough in 2017. There were countless details that I finally had an opportunity to appreciate.
In so many other games, this level of detail and constant cycle of teaching and learning tapers off as the scale of the game’s world increases. And yet, that doesn’t happen at all in Breath of the Wild’s case. Perhaps some of this is due to Monolith Soft’s assistance in development, as they brought some recent experience and knowledge in open world game design with them. Nevertheless, Nintendo EPD simply did a remarkable job at creating a world begging to be explored and understood by players, all while encouraging such exploration in a hands-off manner.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is often regarded as a masterpiece, and it’s difficult to argue against such a claim. While some may not enjoy the game’s departure from the larger, more intricate dungeons seen in previous Legend of Zelda titles, I would argue that dungeons really aren’t the focus for this game. The focus of Breath of the Wild is the very world that the player navigates and interacts with, and this game in particular sought to create a world that was designed in such to consistently encourage player curiosity and engagement with its core mechanics. In that regard, Breath of the Wild couldn’t have been a greater success.
Four years after being blown away by the game, I ended up falling in love with this game all over again as I discovered and interacted with even more of Breath of the Wild’s world. I learned an exceptional amount about the game, and I will likely still be learning and making new discoveries about this game for years to come. And that’s the magic of Breath of the Wild - the confidence I have that I truly don’t know how much more I can learn about this game. There are doubtlessly hundreds of Korok Seeds that I have yet to uncover, or specific combat styles and approaches that haven’t even occurred to me.
And yet, I can’t wait to learn more about this game. I can’t wait to make those inevitable discoveries about this game in the future. I know they’re going to happen - I trust that the game has many secrets still in store for me because of the countless number of secrets I’ve already discovered. Breath of the Wild offers an unprecedented amount of adventure to the player - so much so that, even after four years, there are still many more adventures that the game invites players to embark upon. Breath of the Wild is ruthless in its devotion to keep players coming back to learn more and make more discoveries about it. That, above all, is what makes the game so unique and so magical, no matter how much time passes.
Thank you so much for reading! What are your thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? How do you think it stacks up against other open world games that have released before or since Breath of the Wild? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter @DerekExMachina.
