Link’s newest adventure in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild harkens back to the franchise’s roots of exploration and discovery, but ultimately fails to fully embody that spirit. The game is still pretty fun and does succeed in some ways. Where the previous game Skyward Sword came as the most linear, hand-holding, restrictive game in the series, BOTW emerged as the opposite. The scenic open world invites players to explore at their leisure. The loose quest structure allows them to pursue tasks in whichever order they wish. The lack of an overly assistive companion character allows them to find their own solutions. All these elements conjure up the feeling of a true adventure. The problem is that adventure is a bit boring. Despite providing players more freedom than ever, the game’s systems make the gameplay so predictable it robs their journey of any dynamism and mystery. Finding solutions to these problems isn’t difficult. By looking back at past entries in the series and looking around at some of the game’s contemporaries we can figure out how to freshen up the Breath of the Wild.
Fundamentals of Freedom
The Legend of Zelda series begins with the 8-bit pixel boy Link as he finds himself in the sprawling world of Hyrule. He’s given no immediate direction but finds a cave in front of him, beckoning. Within it, an old man awaits him, presenting a sword with the iconic warning, “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” And with that, he’s off on his adventure.
The original NES title provides little guidance and allows you to explore Hyrule as you’d like. There may be a few mystical men to provide some clues, but largely you’re on your own. Shigeru Miyamoto, the producer of the game, said he drew inspiration from his experiences exploring as a child. That sense of wonder and discovery was what made the game so groundbreaking. As the series continued however, they had an increasing amount of trouble trying to scale that style to create more dynamic experiences and suit their target family audience. In order to house more interesting experiences, provide a richer narrative, and maintain a manageable progression of difficulty, the games became more linear. In order to appeal to a wider audience and become more approachable, the games became more accommodating. Eventually, they arrived at a formula that worked pretty well: a mostly static line-up of dungeons, a world that was limited at first but grew over time, and a chatty companion to guide you along the way. This ultimately resulted in Skyward Sword. That game took the formula to the extreme with the most linear of adventures, and the most obnoxious of assistants. The response to this game was mixed, to say the least. So, when Nintendo said they were attempting to recapture the magic of the original game with their next title, fans were hyped.
For the most part, Breath of the Wild delivered. Gone is the linear dungeon progression and the obtrusive attendant. Instead, the game features an open world where you’re free to explore and find new experiences in whichever order you’d like. But letting go of those older systems didn’t mean they forgot the design needs that drove them. They still wanted to provide dynamic experiences and be family friendly. The challenge was balancing those two priorities with a new one, providing a feeling of exploration and discovery. That balancing act proved too difficult. Ultimately they delivered a game that sacrifices the thrill of exploration and dynamic experiences for a condescending level of approachability.
Exponential Ease
Nintendo started off as a small company making karuta, Japanese playing cards. Over the years they expanded their enterprise and began making electronic toys along with more classic tabletop games. When they eventually revolutionized the video game market, they had already been long established as a family focused brand. That tradition continues to this day. Shigeru Miyamoto has stated that the appeal of their games and characters is “that they bring families together.” Where some video games pride themselves in their challenge and difficulty, Nintendo seeks to make their games lenient and approachable. There were even concerns that the original The Legend of Zelda didn’t give players enough direction. So, there they made sure to hedge their bets by supplementing the game with an extensive manual full of tips and tricks. As the franchise continued that feeling creeped its way into the games themselves, to the point where many players became frustrated. Eiji Aonuma, who has been leading the franchise since the 2000s, has admitted that “the recent Zelda games have been rather linear as I thought players didn’t like getting lost, wondering what to do, or where to go.” With BOTW they ditched their old tactics but couldn’t quite let go of the child harness.
Overall, the game is incredibly easy. There are a few difficulty spikes, but they’re pretty much optional. The main culprit is the game’s failure to ramp up difficulty over time. That issue is quite common in games with non-linear progressions. Usually, designers can easily control the difficulty curve since all players will experience the challenges in the same order. But when players can approach tasks in different arrangements it becomes harder to manage. In order to make this work designers often make the difficulty dynamically change over time. For example, recently in the Resident Evil series Capcom has employed adaptive difficulty by tuning the enemies and available resources based on how well a player is doing. In that way players always feel like they are being challenged the appropriate amount, albeit in a linear system. A better example though is Uncharted Lost Legacy, where in Chapter 4 players explore the Western Ghats. In order to progress they need to complete three different sections but can do them in any order. The game cleverly updates each area based on the sequence the player tackles them, so puzzles and enemies get progressively harder. BOTW takes some steps at using a similar system. Specifically they populate the map with more difficult enemies the farther you progress. But coming along with those enemies are significantly beefed up weapons, making the player much stronger as well. Additionally, each conquered divine beast (more on them later) provides a new almost game-breaking power. Add all that to the mastery over the simple combat system players are sure to acquire and the game quickly becomes a cakewalk. The little Nintendo did to try ramping up difficulty is just dwarfed by what they did to ramp up ease. What really breaks the game’s difficulty curve though is the lack of complexity in its systems.
Most designers tend to implement recognizable patterns in the game’s structure that players are expected to decipher. This rewards those who take the time to understand the game, and can help overcome challenges. For games with torturous difficulty this can come in real handy. Doom Eternal, Monster Hunter World, and Dark Souls are all games where learning how to exploit these patterns is essential to defeating their devastating foes. This has always been a part of the Zelda franchise as well. Like many games, enemies and bosses often have predictable movement and obvious weaknesses to make beating them easier. The problem is that BOTW takes this to the extreme. Since those patterns are so easy to understand, certain enemies become completely obsolete. Take for example the elemental enemies of fire, ice, and electricity. The first two types become pointless, because it’s so obvious that fire defeats ice and ice defeats fire. Just one swipe from a fire sword or shot with an ice arrow and they pose no threat. Other predictable patterns govern enemy movement, the weather system, how runes can be used, just to name a few. With the game already super easy, being so heavy handed with easily exploitable systems was just not necessary and ultimately comes across as condescending. But not only does this absurd level of predictability harm the difficulty of the game, it robs the game of the wonder and spectacle that made the franchise beloved.
The Legacy of Zelda
The original Legend of Zelda was able to pack quite a surprising punch. Despite system limitations Nintendo churned out an overworld consisting of 96 unique rooms that housed 9 unique dungeons. Their focus on making an expansive world for Link to explore meant other elements of the game were pretty lean. This resulted in relatively simple combat, simple enemies, a simple narrative. The following games, A Link to the Past and Links Awakening (ignore The Adventure of Link), added some complexity, but were largely focused on refining the existing systems. The big change came with the jump to 3D in Ocarina of Time. The introduction of another dimension and the concept of an in-game camera drew the comparison to movies. The industry began demanding games with richer stories and characters, ample spectacle, and more fleshed out environments. Shigeru Miyamoto definitely felt that pressure and although he insisted on prioritizing gameplay, he said “we were always striving to make our games more cinematic.”
Films are a form of media with a strict and static structure, each scene following the last. To capture a similar flow with rising and falling tension, dramatic set pieces, and a riveting narrative, the team found Ocarina of Time taking a more linear form than previous titles. That, along with the ease of designing a difficulty curve, pushed all following Zelda titles to become more linear as well. The few that were able to stray from the pack were typically 2D, where the need for cinematic gameplay wasn’’t as present. What all these titles were able to create, however, were incredibly memorable worlds, stories, and gameplay. Each area in a Zelda world was completely unique with different environments, different creatures, and different themes. This translated to the dungeons as well, which all contained interesting puzzles, challenging mechanics, and captivating boss fights. On top of that, there were always new tools and abilities introduced, providing new ways to interact with the world and keeping the games feeling fresh till the very end. This became the hallmark of the Zelda brand. That is until the latest entry, which lost almost all of that intrigue.
The Good, the Bad, the Boring
As presented in BOTW, the world of Hyrule is elegant and expansive. The cell shaded graphics and spacious score paints the land in nostalgia and grace. At first glance, you’ll be quite taken aback by what’s presented to you. In the distance you’ll see the volcanic Death Mountain, the deserts of Gerudo, and the peaks of the Hebra range. In previous titles these areas would be locked until you had progressed enough, and even then, hidden behind strict paths and loading screens. Here, there are no such barriers; each area is free to explore. As you do though, you’ll notice that over time that wonder wears off.
There comes a feeling of sameness with exploring these different locations. They’re all governed by the same mechanics, possess mostly the same creatures, and are filled with largely the same experiences. There are some unique elements, such as in the temperature and method of traversal. Death Mountain is very hot, while most other mountains are very cold. The desert shifts from being hot in the day, and cold in the night. But all that really necessitates is a change in clothes. It’s a slight challenge at first but it doesn’t last. The movement mechanics are more interesting. Riding sand seals in the desert, shield-sledding up in the mountains, and ascending waterfalls and updrafts are all quite fun. However those elements aren’t utilized that often, and so after a time lose their edge. There are also some unique enemies, but they’re almost all just elemental versions of the standard enemies you’ll meet everywhere. They’re easy to defeat, and uninteresting to encounter.
What’s even more frustrating however is the loss of dungeons. They’re replaced with shrines and divine beasts, which both contain elements of their predecessor. In past games, some had been focused on puzzle solving, others were more centered around combat, a few dungeons were focused on manipulating the larger structure of the dungeon itself, and most were a mix of the three. The first two aspects manifest themselves in shrines. The divine beasts behave more like the third kind of dungeon, where the beast itself must be moved to complete the challenges. The problem with these replacements is that they fail to capture the essence of what makes dungeons so special, their uniqueness. Every shrine has the same look, as does every divine beast. They’re all governed by pretty much the same mechanics. In order to conquer them you use the same handful of tools you have since the beginning of the game. Previous dungeons had a very loose pattern to how they were solved. You’d arrive at one, find a map at some point, gain some sort of power perhaps, and defeat the boss. There was a lot of room for interpretation there, a lot of space to color in. BOTW’s replacements adhere to a much stricter set of rules.
Each divine beast follows a strict and short structure: find the beast’s map, unlock the five terminals, defeat the boss. Sounds like the old dungeons, right? Except where previous games fleshed out that skeleton with unique experiences, BOTW chooses uses recycled content to just barely cover it up, so the bones really stick out. The map goes a long way to remove all wonder from the experience. Maps used to reveal relatively little, and usually needed to be filled out along the way. BOTW provides the maps completely filled, detailing the structure of the beast and everywhere you need to go. Not that there’s much to reveal, as each divine beast uses the same texture, the same enemies, and the general mechanics. But the maps go one step further to ruin the experience, providing the ability to directly move the beast. In the original macro-puzzle dungeons the dungeon structure could only be manipulated from certain locations. This meant the puzzle wasn’t only about moving the dungeon, but navigating to those areas. BOTW loses that layer complexity completely. All this is likely meant to help make the divine beasts more approachable and easy to understand. All it really does is make them a poor imitation of their forebears.
The shrines contain a bit more variety, but also fall into some lazy patterns. Each one is either a test of strength (combat focused), puzzle based, or a blessing, meaning the challenge was about getting to the shrine itself. The tests of combat were just lazy and repetitive, each just a slight variation on fighting the same enemy. The puzzles were a bit more interesting, but also followed a pretty standard pattern. The blessings were not really a shrine at all, just a lazy reward for completing a quest in the overworld. And that starts shining a light on where the game fails the hardest, its reward system.
Why Bother?
In previous Zelda dungeons, part of the fun was the mystery behind the prize. Typically, when defeating the boss you got a heart container, giving you more permanent health. But the real surprise was what the other secrets the area was hiding. There are some clues within the dungeon itself and the overworld, as there are obstacles you couldn’t get past without a new item or ability like in a Metroidvania. So, as you excitedly seek it out, you're thinking ahead to how you could utilize it in unique ways to overcome those obstacles. That was the thrill. The build-up, the achievement, and the usage all contributed to the wonder of the rewards.
BOTW flubs real hard here. Pretty much all the tools you need in the game are given right away. To be fair, the divine beasts do each give you a unique power, but only after beating them so they don’t aid in the dungeon themselves. While those abilities are fun to use, they aren’t actually necessary to overcome any obstacle. All they really do is make the game easier, ruining the difficulty curve like I mentioned before. But beyond that, there aren’t many interesting rewards in the game. The shrines will always give you an orb, 4 of which can be traded in for more health or stamina. The korok trials, smaller, extremely repetitive puzzles scattered throughout the overworld, just give you korok seeds, which are traded in for more inventory space. Neither reward is very interesting and just serve as more padding to an already soft experience. As for side quests given to you by the NPCs, they only provide money and material, neither of which are that interesting. Since you know what the rewards are for pretty much everything you do, and those prizes aren’t very meaningful, all the tasks and challenges in the game become more menial than fun.
The quest menu helps further than problem by over differentiating quests. Its inclusion isn’t surprising though, as it’s a common tool for handling task management. When a game allows you to pursue a variety of tasks, having a place to record all of them and their related information is helpful. Previous Zelda titles didn’t need such a thing because the tasks available at any one time were pretty limited. But BOTW follows the same pattern as most RPGs in implementing a quest system, and suffers from the common side effects. By detailing quests within the menu, the game dilutes the discovery and mystery around them. The more detail you add, the more intrigue you drain.
Skyrim for example doesn’t do much to distinguish quests from each other. They’re all listed in the same menu, with subtle UI differences to discern the different quest lines. The Witcher 3, on the other hand, fully separates main quests and side quests in different menus, but still leaves a lot left to discover. BOTW goes a step further by splitting quests into Main Quest, Shrine Quest, and Side Quest menus. What makes this all the more harmful is patterns these quests abide by. In both Skyrim and The Witcher, quests are unique and varied enough so players are left wondering what the task, difficulty, and reward is. But BOTW leaves little up to the imagination. Shrine quests for example will always lead to shrines, and therefore orbs. When the quest’s reward and experience is so predictable, and not very enticing, there’s little incentive to do it.
Some quests are a bit more interesting though. The two DLCs add the EX quests, clearly denoted in the side quest menu, which are treasure hunts leading to unique clothing. Since they can’t be found anywhere else in the game, each item is a prize worthy of tracking down. The other side quests in comparison provide little that interesting. The most unique, though, are the main quests. They do follow some patterns, but they are where most of the dynamic gameplay really lies, and some unique rewards. However as those missions handle the story, they display how the game fails to tell it very well.
No Show, No Tell
Legend of Zelda games aren’t necessarily masterpieces of storytelling. Miyamoto explains his philosophy as such: “I think after someone has played a game, it's important that a story lingers in their mind. But what I do think is a challenge, is to cut down on playtime to set up and explain a story that's already been set.” What the design team values is gameplay. So when it comes to telling a story, they try to do so by weaving the narrative into the gameplay. Breath of the Wild has only a handful of quests which deal with the story, and they feel disconnected from the rest of the game. The quests themselves can be quite interesting.The experiences leading up to each divine beast were all unique and fun, and raiding Hyrule Castle was a romp. The hidden memory missions are also interesting, as they have you scouring Hyrule for places which match given photos. They’re a good way to utilize the landscape and test map awareness. They also present the main problem with the way the game approaches storytelling: flashbacks.
Any writer will tell you that flashbacks are a very useful tool, but also quite a dangerous one because they can easily become crutch. This goes double for video games because, as Shigeru Miyamoto so correctly states, it’s not a movie, it’s “interactive media.” It’s frustrating enough when an entire story in a game is told through cutscenes, but when more than half of those cutscenes are flashbacks, it becomes absurd. Where previous games had you experience most of the significant story moments, BOTW chooses instead to just show them to you. There comes a point in this game where you’d just rather watch it than actually play it. It’s a bit more forgivable in this case with the game’s themes of nostalgia and loss. However other games have toyed with similar ideas but were able to make better experiences. Take Halo 3: ODST, the black sheep of the Halo franchise. That game also features exploring an open map and uses flashbacks to tell a large part of the story. The difference is rather than watching the flashbacks, in ODST you play them. But you don’t need to use flashbacks at all to tell a story about a broken world filled with regret, loss, and new beginnings.
Hollow Knight’s story has parallels to BOTW, but it doesn't need flashbacks at all. Rather, Team Cherry utilizes the characters, environments, and gameplay to provide insights to the story and lets the player uncover it themselves. I would have liked to see BOTW try something similar. The world certainly has that potential but isn’t nearly utilized enough. By separating the story from most of the gameplay, the designers once again dilute the game’s spectacle. That, along with the loss of mystery, the failure of rewards, and the broken difficulty curve, all just end up hurting the one goal that fueled the game’s development.
Emptiness in Exploration
Back again to the OG, The Legend of Zelda was focused on capturing the wonder and awe of discovering the world around us. Shigeru Miyamoto drew upon his experiences wandering the wilderness of Kyoto. He once said, “when I traveled around the country without a map, trying to find my way, stumbling on amazing things as I went, I realized how it felt to go on an adventure like this.” The essence of that adventure was the feeling of not quite knowing where you were going or what you were going to find. In that original game that emotion captured quite well. There was no map to guide you (except in dungeons) and no directive to explore one area vs another, only the bliss of discovering what was around you. As the series progressed that sensation became diluted. Starting with A Link to the Past, every game provided a world map. They also began providing distinct directives on what to do. In that game it was pretty vague, just to conquer the dungeons and defeat Ganon. Then Ocarina of Time introduced the “helpful” fairy friend Navi, starting the trend of overly-assistive companions. This desire to provide direction to players grew to the point where you even had your companion telling you how to solve puzzles in the dungeon without even giving you a chance to think for yourself.
Breath of the Wild stepped back from a lot of those practices. You still have an overworld map, but you mostly have to fill it in yourself. You’re still given some guidance, but it’s done sparingly and is relatively vague. You still have discrete objectives to complete, but you can decide if or when to tackle most of them. However, despite getting rid of those elements that hurt many previous Zelda titles, BOTW failed at capturing the essence of the exploration, the mystery. As mentioned previously, the game relies heavily on easily understood patterns: color-coded enemies, predictable rewards, simple environmental mechanics, etc. The player is rarely left wondering what they’ll get out of exploring an area. And without mystery of what you’ll get out of an experience, all you’re left with is the cold reality that it’s not going to be worth it.
“What over that hill?”
“A Korok trial or a shrine.”
“Oh, okay.... nevermind then.”
Most tasks are so repetitive there comes a point where they aren’t fun, you’re just doing them for the sake of completion. So, if the reward isn’t going to incentivize playing the game, maybe just the experiences of seeing the world are enough. Well they aren’t. The world all too often repeats itself. Once you see one forest, one snowy peak, one river or pond, you’ve pretty much seen them all. The natural beauty alone just isn’t enough to prop up the game. About halfway through playing it, there is little to no challenge, no more unique experiences, and no more reason to explore the world. Sure there are 50 shrines left, hundreds of korok seeds, plenty of side quests, but what’s the point anymore? It becomes a chore rather than a game.
These problems aren’t inherent to the base of Breath of the Wild, there are a fair amount of good experiences to be had in the game. Helping found and build Tarrey Town was unique and rewarding. It was incredible seeing the dragons fly across the sky and interacting with them was awesome. Meeting champion successors and helping them bring down divine beasts was amazing. The problem is just that there isn’t enough. Nintendo fell into the trap that most open world games have, copy and paste content. The Far Cry, Grand Theft Auto, and The Elder Scrolls franchises, among plenty of others, have the same problem. They have huge, amazing worlds, but just not enough good content to fill it. So, they fall back on trailing missions, mini-games, and find-an item quests. Ultimately what’s able to save those games is the length and dynamism of the main content and the mystery of interesting rewards, which BOTW is severely lacking.
Rebalancing the Wheels
To reiterate my feeling about the game, Breath of the Wild is good, just not as good as it could be. It’s great seeing studios take bold risks with their properties and breaking away from the Zelda formula has proven to be quite successful for Nintendo. But now that the initial shock and awe has worn off, it’s important to look critically at the mistakes made and opportunities missed.
They had three main priorities for this game, two old, one new. First, they needed to maintain the family friendliness of the franchise while breaking away from the overbearing systems they’d grown dependent on. Additionally, they needed to provide dynamic and exciting experiences without the reliance on controlled, linear gameplay. Lastly, they needed to bring back the feeling of exploration and discovery that franchise had lost over time. They missed the mark on all three. The scaling difficulty of the game was overshadowed by the scaling easiness, so most of the game posed no challenge at all. In part this was due to the over-reliance on predictable patterns, which also hurt the dynamism of the gameplay. The spectacular dungeons were replaced by an array of tepid challenges. The grand, diverse areas gave way to a comparatively dull open world. The exploration was great at first, but quickly lost the glimmer of mystery and the energy of discovery.
All these problems are solvable though. With a larger focus on scaling difficulty the game can provide enough challenge to keep players engaged. By letting go of the strict patterns that limited the game and embracing systems that are more complex and daring they can create a world of fantastic experiences. Keeping the mystery alive and providing more exciting rewards and incentives for exploration will keep the game fresh for much longer. All of this necessitates a high level of dedication to creating content. Most open worlds have some aspect of these problems, but because this is a Zelda game, and a Nintendo game, my expectations are higher. Rather than relying on the lazy tropes of sub-par open world games, the designers can learn from their mistakes and recapture the magic of the franchise.
With a sequel underway, I’m sure they’re looking into these problems, and maybe, unlikely as it is, they’ll come across this article. Even if they don’t though, anyone can analyze the game and see what they did right, and what they did wrong. Plenty of other studios are showing how they are, let’s just say, “inspired” by Breath of the Wild. While I couldn’t get into Genshin Impact, it wasn’t hard to tell how “inspired” they were. But as everyone takes their stab at it, I hope we can find new and exciting ways to balance exploration, dynamism, and difficulty. And I hope to god that whatever BOTW2 ends up being, they release a Switch that can actually handle the game. No more frame rate drops please.
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