The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildlooks like an entirely different game from its predecessors. One writer suggests it should be treated as such.
While it seems like an absurd, high-risk approach, Nintendo’s entire E3 2016 presentation came down to the performance of one game in the eyes of its adoring fans –The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The company had originally planned for the newestLegend of Zeldagame to be its only showing, and although a long, drawn-out, and (in this writer’s opinion) cringe-worthy let’s play ofPokemon SunandMoonwas also put up on stream,Breath of the Wildwas tasked with generating all of the hype for Nintendo’s next year in video games.
A lesser title might have buckled under the weight of all that expectation, but somehowThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildheld strong. In fact, despite the earlier discussion of an open-worldLegend of Zeldagame from E3 2015 generating a fair amount of hype in its own right,Breath of the Wildmanaged to exceed expectations for a lot of gamers who were expecting a bit of a let down. After all,Nintendo arrived at E3 2016 with a very sparse schedulethat caused some worry for longtime fans of the company, and a three-hour long presentation based around one unfinished game has the potential to crash and burn.
Luckily for gamers everywhere,The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildisn’t like any otherLegend of Zeldatitle before it. Whereas hours of gameplay demonstrations from a previous iteration in the series might have unveiled a number of plot points, boss fights, and puzzle solutions,Breath of the Wildsimply managed to show enough to make fans crave more.Breath of the Wild’s open-world, nonlinear gameplayfelt like a perfect fit for Link at E3 2016, and it’s no surprise in retrospect that Nintendo was so confident about bringing only one game to the most important week in gaming.
It’s a remarkable difference in game design philosophy, too – previousLegend of Zeldagames have doubled down on giant, puzzle and monster-infested temples to create the bulk of the challenges throughout gameplay, whileBreath of the Wildwill feature a hundred different mini-shrineson top of them. Whereas absolute classics likeOcarina of TimeandMajora’s Maskrelied on slow character progression that was characterized by gradually allowing players access to increasingly more powerful weapons and items,Breath of the Wildfeatures RPG elementslike looting weapons from enemies and cooking meals to vary the way each gamer chooses to approach the new title.
Link, too, appears to have changed in a number of subtle ways. While the jury is still out on whether he’s an amnesiac again like he is in so many of the otherLegend of Zeldainstalments that have jumpstarted their narratives with the gaming trope, he at least appears to be competent from the very beginning. In the gameplay demos, Link is able to glide, chop down trees, cook, and fight enemies without needing his hand held by a fairy or told which end of the sword to stick into a monster by a kindly old stranger.
InLegend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the character design has grown up just a bit, but enough to make the game feel different enough that settingLink out into an open worlddoesn’t feel like leaving a child to wander into the woods at night. He’s self-sufficient and he can take care of himself in ways that it felt like other incarnations of Link couldn’t – and that’s not a knock on the average age of Link as he starts these games, as a very young Link inThe Legend of Zelda: Windwakerwas essentially a seasoned sailor. It’s just another element that makesThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildappear to be a very different spin on the expectLegend of Zeldaformula.
All of these elements combined, however, pose an interesting question: isThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildsimply the evolution of the series as Nintendo’s consoles get progressively more powerful, or is it secretly one of the most famous series reboots in the history of gaming, flying under the radar because it keeps to the basic premise of all the past games? It would certainly explain Shigeru Miyamoto’s reluctance to make Linkle a playable character – restarting the franchise without a clear cut protagonist would be problematic, even if the narrative is constructed in such a way that playing as male or female doesn’t change it in any significant way.
Beyond thecontroversy surrounding Linkle inBreath of the Wild, however, the rest of the game is also a totally different approach to the world ofLegend of Zelda. Players are given free rein over where they explore and when they encounter enemies on the world map, and they can carefully bake apples for sustenance or cause forest fires depending on their mood. Link isn’t just a character that players inhabit on the rails of a fairly rigid narrative anymore – Link can be varying levels of good in the newestBreath of the Wild, and that’s a very interesting nuance for a series that has always had a straight-laced, good-to-the-bone protagonist.
After all, one person might play Link as the stereotypical Nintendo fantasy hero,silently rescuing NPCs in distresswithout ever endangering another soul. Others, however, might set trees on fire and drop them into dry grass to attempt to set their enemies ablaze from a distance, a dangerous but effective tactic that could have long-term consequences.
These choices might not seem like a big deal, but they simply didn’t exist prior toThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The hundred small shrines complimenting the bigger handfuls of temples in earlier titles speaks to this same philosophy. Indeed, moving forward, it looks likeThe Legend of Zeldawants to be closer in line with other massive titles likeFallout 4andThe Witcher 3in the depth and variety of the options it offers players. Those comparisons might not be apt, but they’ll have to do, because the gaming world really hasn’t seen a game likeBreath of the Wildbefore.
And that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?Breath of the Wildlooks new from top-to-bottom, and is different enough from other iterations of Link’s adventures that it’s worth considering whether or not it means a series that, moving forward, might useBreath of the Wildas the foundation for its story-telling and gameplay devices rather than earlier games likeThe Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Is that a reboot? That depends on one’s definition of the term. But given the innovation being brought to the series and what appears to be some significant changes to the philosophy of the design team in regards to what makes aLegend of Zeldagame worthy of the name, it isn’t a stretch to believe thatBreath of the Wildis the beginning of something new and beautiful from Nintendo.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildwill release in 2017 for Nintendo Wii U and NX.
