8 Years Ago, The World's Zelda Obsession Finally Got Me
A Breath of fresh air.
The Legend Of Zelda was never my series growing up. My dad, who introduced me to video games, was all in on the then-newcomer PlayStation in the mid-to-late ‘90s thanks to the power of CDs. The hand-me-down Game Boy I got from a cousin came with a copy of Link’s Awakening, but at six-year-old I couldn’t make heads or tails of what that game was supposed to be. And when I finally played Ocarina Of Time’s 3DS port in college, I found that even games considered the greatest of all time could be tough to go back to if you don’t have the nostalgia to push you through its more obtuse mechanics.
As a player, I’ve always had a lot of reverence for Nintendo’s iconic adventure series. I loved what it meant to gaming culture, listened to its many excellent soundtracks over the years, and respected how it moved game design forward. But when it came time to actually play it, I’d concluded that it just wasn't for me. That was until 2017, when Nintendo’s decision to take the Zelda series in a bold new direction with Breath Of The Wild finally made this legendary series click for me.
When the Switch dropped in 2017, I was all in on Nintendo’s grand experiment. It was the first console to launch after I graduated college, so I was pumped about making a big, guilt-free purchase now that I didn’t have to save money for books or cafeteria food.
For early Switch adopters, Breath Of The Wild was the only title you had to play.
As excited as I was for the Switch, I knew those early months would be slim pickings. The best Mario Kart ever was still a few weeks away. Paying $60 for a gussied up Bomberman game seemed asinine. And there’s only so much Snipperclips one can play before losing their minds. The obvious choice for early adopters was Breath Of The Wild, the new Zelda game that fans waited six years to play. My previous run-ins with the series didn’t fill me with confidence, but I wasn’t exactly swimming in options.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a game prove me wrong so quickly as Breath Of The Wild did. The game’s surprisingly short tutorial section proved puzzles were no longer as rigid as Ocarina Of Time. These were less about collecting keys and special items and following a set of specific steps the developers created. This was a game about letting the players be as intuitive as they could be with the abilities they’ve been granted.
Once you entered the absolutely massive open world, the brief tutorial makes sense. There’s no tutorializing a world as unpredictable as this. Everything was reactive to the elements. Brush fires, elaborate Rube Goldberg machines of dynamic physics, the climate of the world, all could create scenarios that my friends would never see. It all made Hyrule feel tangible like no other video game as there wasn’t a single part of the world you couldn’t interact with, and it, you. It’s a cliche to say that an open world game feels “alive.” But for the first time since Grand Theft Auto 4, I well and truly felt this was an accurate description.
Nothing in gaming has felt as freeing as the opening scene of Breath Of The Wild.
It was a game that took away all of the clutter associated with marker-heavy, checklist focused open-world games of the time. Instead, all of the agency was given to the player. Completing a quest involved using your intuition as a player to solve the problems of the people. Players were given the freedom to walk right up to Ganon right from the start if they dared, all in the name of freedom. Because there was little to guide me, I felt compelled to see every corner of this world because it was just so unpredictable and open. And when I craved the more handcrafted brilliance Nintendo is known for, I could seek out one of the 120 shrines available in the world to test my wits.
By 2017, games that prioritized organic exploration had already begun a resurgence. Titles like Dark Souls and Bloodborne had already challenged players long coddled by contemporary open world game design to reassess their threshold for something with a bit more friction. But as excellent as From Software’s work is (and continues to be), it was refreshing to see those sensibilities applied to a game far less oppressive. It’s not to say Breath Of The Wild was easy. Many players can attest to how brutal the early hours can be. But there was just as much wonder when exploring the eerily silent valleys of Hyrule as there was danger.
For the first time in my life, I understood what must have made the original Legend of Zelda so special to those who played it back in the ‘80s. Breath Of The Wild was essentially that original vision of adventure, one inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto’s childhood memories exploring the countryside as a child, fully realized in a way that the NES, N64, and Wii could never truly replicate. The fact that this was somehow running on a handheld made the Switch feel unreal.
For as late as Nintendo was to making an open world game, they well and truly made it count. In my opinion, Breath Of The Wild is the best open-world game I’ve ever played and it's not even close. It gave meaning back to the open world, a genre that flew dangerously close to becoming trivial. And in an industry obsessed with fidelity and pushing boundaries, Nintendo mastered it with a fraction of the technology.
If there was ever a game I’d want to experience for the first time all over again, it would be The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And its lasting impact on the industry can be felt in today’s games, inspiring the likes of games like Elden Ring and smaller productions like Eternal Strands. Most importantly, it helped me better appreciate this legendary franchise with an entirely new perspective.
