The biggest video game mystery of the past decade. It's the most groundbreaking, medium-redefining experience of our generation - and nobody can explain why. I'm convinced this is all a conspiracy orchestrated by YouTube video essayists. The promise (yet unfulfilled) of The Great Open World Video Game blinds us to the fact that we've seen all of this many times before.
Fundamentally, Breath of the Wild is a pastiche of the safest, most focus-tested game design principles of the preceding decade. You could call it the 'Tower' type game. Climb a tower to unlock a new area on your map, which will reveal the repeatable skinner box activities you can complete there. Puzzles, dungeons, enemy camps, the usual. These activities give you something like XP, increased health, or a new item, which account for progression. Once you're done, you climb another tower and repeat the process until you're ready to fight the final boss (or more likely, until you're bored and ready to rush to the game's end).
That's the gameplay loop. And like every single other one of these games ever made, the loop eventually becomes a dull grind. Breath of the Wild does nothing to solve this problem endemic to open world games. Some have praised the game's traversal, which, other than shield surfing (which is cool to be fair), is really just climbing walls, riding a horse, using a glider, or fast travelling; the same traversal methods in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, released seven years earlier (Shadow of the Colossus is also a clear influence). Really I would challenge anyone to explain how Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece while Assassin's Creed is a soulless corporate product. You're playing the same game. What's the difference besides some nice vibes and a cell-shaded art style? Grass? At least Assassin's Creed has that cyberpunk meets ancient aliens meets secret societies meets historical fiction bullshit made up by French people. That's creativity.
Proponents of the game may praise the Shiekah slate physics abilities as an innovation, and that feels true at first. But eventually your enemies become too powerful for hitting them with rocks or whatever to do a thing; you'll need to use some bullshit level-scaled RPG weapon. And even if the Shiekah slate remained effective in combat, you would still end up doing this. Why? Because this game has so much dull, repeated content to wade through that it becomes easier to take the path of least resistance, the least thought required, and just hit them with your sword. 30 hours in, no player is using cool Shiekah slate tricks to clear those regenerating bokoblin camps.
Much discussion has already been had on the monotony of the 120 copy-pasted shrines, which make up the bulk of the game's content (its version of the side tasks from Assassin's Creed), and the 900 copy-pasted korok seed puzzles, which act as the collectibles obligatory of every Tower game. I won't rehash that too much here, copy-pasted content is already the most common criticism of open world games in general. But knowing that, I want to talk about something I've noticed with a lot of the praise for this game.
Some of the most common sentiments expressed toward Breath of the Wild are that it's "magical" and captures the "joy of discovery" and a sense of "childlike wonder". And I think if you play through the entire game and still feel this way, then that is a horror beyond comprehension. What was your childhood like? Did you spend it as a laboratory subject or something? Just completing mundane, repeated tasks and being awarded food pellets? Because that's what Breath of the Wild is: a world filled not with a sense of mystery or infinite possibility, but the exact opposite: A world where you know exactly what you will find under every rock, inside every strange ruin, over every next hill. A completely controlled, sterile environment of utilitarian systems for the player to exploit. Completely antithetical to anything "magical".
I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that video games fundamentally cannot represent anything magical, emotional, or spiritual. Depicting anything in interactive form drains it of all sacred meaning, makes it a joke; it's the "press f to pay respects" problem. The tenets of game design stipulate systems and mechanics that are rational and understandable to players. That might be the biggest sin of video games as an artistic medium: taking everything unquantifiable and beautiful in life and reducing it to man-made systems for a single individual to exploit (For more discussion of this issue, play the Metal Gear Solid series).
This is felt especially harshly in a Tower game like Breath of the Wild, where an entire open world is reduced to a few classes of interactive activities. Progressing through a game like this is a process of total disillusionment with the entire world; spiritual death. It accidentally replicates the central theme of Ocarina of Time: the transition from idyllic childhood to grim adulthood. But Ocarina ends with Link confronting the darkness of adulthood and returning to a childlike state of play with his adult wisdom integrated. Breath of the Wild, though, is a state of permanent adolescence - it never goes anywhere, and simply decays over time. Eventually, you exhaust all of this life's possibilities and choose to finally, mercifully end it. Deciding to face Ganon isn't about bringing the story to a climax; it's the gameplay equivalent of taking a plane to Switzerland to get euthanized. And the game practically spits in your face after you defeat him, simply reverting to an old save before the final fight. There is no salvation, no redemption for this world. Only the ceaseless march of content.
Early on I said this game's reputation is a mystery, and I actually lied; there's a pretty simple explanation, one that I briefly mentioned:grass vibes. The game has an incredible atmosphere when you're first starting out, and that's what people are talking about when they call it "a breath of fresh air" or whatever cliché they think of. It has nothing to do with any game design element found here. Because there is no common understanding of what that would even mean. There's no concept of the formal elements of game design, or the storytelling language of video games. We're all just making this shit up.
People only pay attention to, y'know, the actual art: music, animation, visuals. The game itself can be anything, nobody really cares. The discourse surrounding games as a medium of art in themselves is mostly bullshit. People appreciate the traditional artistic aspects of a game (music, animation, visuals, acting performances, writing) and then project that sense of artistry onto the game design itself, where there is none (and in fact, there is a profound dissonance between it and those elements). That's how people process games as an art form. And that's why games like Breath of the Wild are held up as the pinnacle of games as art.
(I'll also say that I have no respect for any open world game like this after the release of Metal Gear Solid V (2015). It correctly portrayed this breed of AAA open world game as something that cannot be revived or rejuvenated as Breath of the Wild attempts to do; this is all salted earth. If MGSV had been properly understood, we would have seen it as the just and merciful execution of games like this.)
Fundamentally, Breath of the Wild is a pastiche of the safest, most focus-tested game design principles of the preceding decade. You could call it the 'Tower' type game. Climb a tower to unlock a new area on your map, which will reveal the repeatable skinner box activities you can complete there. Puzzles, dungeons, enemy camps, the usual. These activities give you something like XP, increased health, or a new item, which account for progression. Once you're done, you climb another tower and repeat the process until you're ready to fight the final boss (or more likely, until you're bored and ready to rush to the game's end).
That's the gameplay loop. And like every single other one of these games ever made, the loop eventually becomes a dull grind. Breath of the Wild does nothing to solve this problem endemic to open world games. Some have praised the game's traversal, which, other than shield surfing (which is cool to be fair), is really just climbing walls, riding a horse, using a glider, or fast travelling; the same traversal methods in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, released seven years earlier (Shadow of the Colossus is also a clear influence). Really I would challenge anyone to explain how Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece while Assassin's Creed is a soulless corporate product. You're playing the same game. What's the difference besides some nice vibes and a cell-shaded art style? Grass? At least Assassin's Creed has that cyberpunk meets ancient aliens meets secret societies meets historical fiction bullshit made up by French people. That's creativity.
Proponents of the game may praise the Shiekah slate physics abilities as an innovation, and that feels true at first. But eventually your enemies become too powerful for hitting them with rocks or whatever to do a thing; you'll need to use some bullshit level-scaled RPG weapon. And even if the Shiekah slate remained effective in combat, you would still end up doing this. Why? Because this game has so much dull, repeated content to wade through that it becomes easier to take the path of least resistance, the least thought required, and just hit them with your sword. 30 hours in, no player is using cool Shiekah slate tricks to clear those regenerating bokoblin camps.
Much discussion has already been had on the monotony of the 120 copy-pasted shrines, which make up the bulk of the game's content (its version of the side tasks from Assassin's Creed), and the 900 copy-pasted korok seed puzzles, which act as the collectibles obligatory of every Tower game. I won't rehash that too much here, copy-pasted content is already the most common criticism of open world games in general. But knowing that, I want to talk about something I've noticed with a lot of the praise for this game.
Some of the most common sentiments expressed toward Breath of the Wild are that it's "magical" and captures the "joy of discovery" and a sense of "childlike wonder". And I think if you play through the entire game and still feel this way, then that is a horror beyond comprehension. What was your childhood like? Did you spend it as a laboratory subject or something? Just completing mundane, repeated tasks and being awarded food pellets? Because that's what Breath of the Wild is: a world filled not with a sense of mystery or infinite possibility, but the exact opposite: A world where you know exactly what you will find under every rock, inside every strange ruin, over every next hill. A completely controlled, sterile environment of utilitarian systems for the player to exploit. Completely antithetical to anything "magical".
I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that video games fundamentally cannot represent anything magical, emotional, or spiritual. Depicting anything in interactive form drains it of all sacred meaning, makes it a joke; it's the "press f to pay respects" problem. The tenets of game design stipulate systems and mechanics that are rational and understandable to players. That might be the biggest sin of video games as an artistic medium: taking everything unquantifiable and beautiful in life and reducing it to man-made systems for a single individual to exploit (For more discussion of this issue, play the Metal Gear Solid series).
This is felt especially harshly in a Tower game like Breath of the Wild, where an entire open world is reduced to a few classes of interactive activities. Progressing through a game like this is a process of total disillusionment with the entire world; spiritual death. It accidentally replicates the central theme of Ocarina of Time: the transition from idyllic childhood to grim adulthood. But Ocarina ends with Link confronting the darkness of adulthood and returning to a childlike state of play with his adult wisdom integrated. Breath of the Wild, though, is a state of permanent adolescence - it never goes anywhere, and simply decays over time. Eventually, you exhaust all of this life's possibilities and choose to finally, mercifully end it. Deciding to face Ganon isn't about bringing the story to a climax; it's the gameplay equivalent of taking a plane to Switzerland to get euthanized. And the game practically spits in your face after you defeat him, simply reverting to an old save before the final fight. There is no salvation, no redemption for this world. Only the ceaseless march of content.
Early on I said this game's reputation is a mystery, and I actually lied; there's a pretty simple explanation, one that I briefly mentioned:
People only pay attention to, y'know, the actual art: music, animation, visuals. The game itself can be anything, nobody really cares. The discourse surrounding games as a medium of art in themselves is mostly bullshit. People appreciate the traditional artistic aspects of a game (music, animation, visuals, acting performances, writing) and then project that sense of artistry onto the game design itself, where there is none (and in fact, there is a profound dissonance between it and those elements). That's how people process games as an art form. And that's why games like Breath of the Wild are held up as the pinnacle of games as art.
(I'll also say that I have no respect for any open world game like this after the release of Metal Gear Solid V (2015). It correctly portrayed this breed of AAA open world game as something that cannot be revived or rejuvenated as Breath of the Wild attempts to do; this is all salted earth. If MGSV had been properly understood, we would have seen it as the just and merciful execution of games like this.)
8 Comments
^ Good point actually. You could definitely say this is true to an extent in all art and even language in general. But to me there's a clear difference between, let's say a film about a romance and a dating sim, right? The medium of film might have limitations, ways it reduces real life to inferior imitation, or tropes that it tends to get stuck in. But like many other pitfalls when it comes to media, video games are just that, but even more so. I think any dating sim's portrayal of romance is much worse because a video game has to very unsubtly be this collection of systems exploitable by the player. The interactivity kind of turns it to shit imo. Despite what a lot of people say, I think games are the least immersive art form. But maybe this is just because video games are an underdeveloped medium that hasn't had time to figure out subtle portrayals of complex topics through interactivity. (I don't think video games are going to develop like film though, because that medium came up amid totally different material conditions that don't exist anymore; video games are far more commercialized, and this commercialization occurred at a much earlier stage in their development).
I also should say that games definitely are not incapable of having emotional meaning (I've talked about games that I think are good examples of that), maybe I worded it too strongly in my review. They're just typically much, much worse at doing that.
I also should say that games definitely are not incapable of having emotional meaning (I've talked about games that I think are good examples of that), maybe I worded it too strongly in my review. They're just typically much, much worse at doing that.
^ To be more specific about why the "collection of exploitable systems" thing is bad, I think that basically takes the player out of the experience and into a more cerebral, detached, strategic mindset. This can be great for portraying certain things, but not something like romance imo
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Not much of a Breath of the Wild fan, but I'd disagree that no one has been able to explain its appeal- most of its (rational) advocates pretty clearly like it because of its physics/chemistry system, which I would go as far as to say is revolutionary, yes. I get the distaste for Youtube essayists, but I'd recommend Matthewmatosis's video on context sensitivity, or at least, the BotW segment of it, for a concise explanation on its value from someone who obviously loves the game. Definitely agree that its structure doesn't at all take advantage of its mechanics, but I don't think it's unfathomable that many are able to ignore the former because of how enamored they are with the latter.
Would it have made this much of an impact if it didn't have 'Zelda' in the title, though? Anyone's guess.
Would it have made this much of an impact if it didn't have 'Zelda' in the title, though? Anyone's guess.
I agree with the point about dating sims - ultimately that's sort of a problem endemic to the genre, that it's inescapably about putting "get a girlfriend or partner or what-have-you" as the win-state for the program thus reducing the human element of interaction. And of course I've also felt the cerebral, detached mindset overcoming immersion in some games I've been playing as well, but I also feel as if immersion can be achieved through systems - Dwarf Fortress for example is really nothing but systems and the human element is imparted onto the generated worlds by the player, but it's something you can still get lost in and be moved by to an extent.
I think the whole reason I commented was because I found the statement in your review interesting to try and respond to or to see what your response was, since essentially something I've been thinking about and working on game development-wise is the conveyance of spirituality in a game and game narrative - it's ultimately not truly possible since A) nothing is more immersive than real life and thus B) you can only convey those sorts of emotions and ideas you'd experience in real life systems-wise in limited ways. BUT, in a lot of ways human behavior can be reduced down to a lot of if_then statements (a simplified way of viewing human behavior, obviously, but essentially it reduces down to that, stimulus-response). And people's emotions and lives themselves have arcs and mini-narratives and such that operate in relation to that system of stimulus-response. So the idea of games being unable to truly convey those things is something I've been working on formulating a coherent rebuttal and thesis statement to in regards to expressing what video games could be. And obviously you think they are capable of expressing emotions and whatnot, though I may disagree that they're any worse than other art forms in portraying certain emotions or ideas, it's just a matter of how the individual pieces are assembled. I also agree that games won't develop like film, though the commercialization aspect for film was there from the beginning (Nickelodeons, for example, and how cinema was itself treated as a frivolity for a long time before it ever really developed into an art, I think the same is true for games, though the commercial aspect is holding it back in that regard.
Didn't mean to go on but your response was also something I've thought about too and have felt frustration with.
I think the whole reason I commented was because I found the statement in your review interesting to try and respond to or to see what your response was, since essentially something I've been thinking about and working on game development-wise is the conveyance of spirituality in a game and game narrative - it's ultimately not truly possible since A) nothing is more immersive than real life and thus B) you can only convey those sorts of emotions and ideas you'd experience in real life systems-wise in limited ways. BUT, in a lot of ways human behavior can be reduced down to a lot of if_then statements (a simplified way of viewing human behavior, obviously, but essentially it reduces down to that, stimulus-response). And people's emotions and lives themselves have arcs and mini-narratives and such that operate in relation to that system of stimulus-response. So the idea of games being unable to truly convey those things is something I've been working on formulating a coherent rebuttal and thesis statement to in regards to expressing what video games could be. And obviously you think they are capable of expressing emotions and whatnot, though I may disagree that they're any worse than other art forms in portraying certain emotions or ideas, it's just a matter of how the individual pieces are assembled. I also agree that games won't develop like film, though the commercialization aspect for film was there from the beginning (Nickelodeons, for example, and how cinema was itself treated as a frivolity for a long time before it ever really developed into an art, I think the same is true for games, though the commercial aspect is holding it back in that regard.
Didn't mean to go on but your response was also something I've thought about too and have felt frustration with.
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lol
First of all, thank you for writing this very sincere essay. I sympathize with a lot of what you say here, because I have struggled to make sense of my reaction to Breath of the Wild in memory. At the time I played it, there was no way I couldn’t give it full marks. But when I try to hold on to tangible details, I get stuck on many of the same mechanical truths that you touch on here.
But I think you are making a few fundamental attribution errors here to justify your relationship with this game. Any time any reviewer says “no player”, they are hiding a conflation and generalization of their approach to a game as universal. And for Breath of the Wild in particular, I have myriad counter anecdotal evidence to the type of mindset that gets hung up on your critiques.
Because yes, there are multiple people who use those Sheikah Slate tricks on the respawning camps hundreds of hours in. Because they spend the whole game avoiding combat as much as possible, so the world never gets stronger. Their focus is on cataloging every type of horse, finding all the photographed memories, amassing a giant hoard of cooked dishes, furnishing their house with matching weapon types, or experimenting with dyeing clothes. They never have strong weapons on hand, because weapons are a reward for combat.
For these people, the recycled content of korok seeds and shrines doesn’t matter, because that’s not the draw, the content that they are engaging with. The shrines and seeds function as intended for this playstyle, as discovered distractions that add optional texture along some other player-directed objective.
If you are asking why this game is different from Assassin’s Creed, why it was the game of the decade before Elden Ring, and sincerely answering with “vibes,” I think you are doing yourself a disservice by not further examining the factors that go into making a “vibe.” Just because the lay person does not have the language to articulate the reasoning behind their preferences does not mean their intuitions are arbitrary or shallow.
If the tangible details of animation, music, color palette are enough to create a vibe and win game of the year, and that gameplay doesn’t matter, then all of BotW’s success, prestige, and cultural impact would be a valuable lesson on their importance. But when it comes to gaming, I don’t think the tenants of other mediums are sufficient for creating a “vibe” alone. Instead, BotW’s game design is addition by subtraction - the lack of direction from the UI, with the variety of self-directed tasks one can create within the game space, give equal legitimacy to anything the player can conceive of doing. The fact that the player could be fighting monsters, climbing towers, getting stronger, and instead are making crepes and cross-dressing is very much integral to BotW’s “vibe.”
I think the “joy of discovery” and “sense of childlike wonder” that people ascribe to this game relates to not being told they are stupid for wanting to try something. Because video games are terrible about doing this. Hell, I remember playing the Ratchet & Clank 2016 remake, when I tried killing enemies with melee attacks to get a sense of attack patterns. A giant image of the PS4 controller popped up, taking up 1/4th of the screen, yelling at me to press the shoot button. The commercialization of video games that you touched on in the comments means that creative decisions are made by non-creatives who are terrified of players missing out on “content” by not adhering to a checklist’s idea of a game experience.
Breath of the Wild is very gentle with not wanting you to see or do everything. There is no in-game indication of how many korok seeds exist. I was pretty content with the 60 or so I found. There is no incentive for completing shrines besides getting the master sword, but cooking can make them entirely unnecessary. I certainly didn’t do all of them before I fought Ganon and ended my time with the game.
I think the youth of the medium also means we are still adjusting to where emotional connections are forged in games compared to other media. Intentional emotions at specific beats are very hard to curate in interactive media. However, games can provide broad emotional landscapes in which certain emotional experiences are possible. In that regard, I think Breath of the Wild’s influence is so wide-reaching because so many ingredients are present for impactful emotions to exist. Sometimes they are highly comedic, like failing to cook a frog (that lands in the fire beneath the pot (that then, on fire, hops towards you and lights you on fire)), and sometimes they are as simple as the reward of a beautiful vista resulting from the random confluence of the day/night cycle and when you happened to finish an unexpectedly daring climb. If the art wasn’t good, if the colors weren’t good, if the music wasn’t good, if the possibilities didn’t feel numerous for the other ways you could be spending your time in this game space, those emotions wouldn’t be possible.
Basically, I’m saying that if you can see the success, the prestige, the cultural impact of this title, yet feel that its fans are missing the point, perhaps there is more digging to be done to unearth what the “point” actually is. Again, really respect your perspectives, and appreciate that they helped inspire me to think about the enigma of this game’s true worth.
But I think you are making a few fundamental attribution errors here to justify your relationship with this game. Any time any reviewer says “no player”, they are hiding a conflation and generalization of their approach to a game as universal. And for Breath of the Wild in particular, I have myriad counter anecdotal evidence to the type of mindset that gets hung up on your critiques.
Because yes, there are multiple people who use those Sheikah Slate tricks on the respawning camps hundreds of hours in. Because they spend the whole game avoiding combat as much as possible, so the world never gets stronger. Their focus is on cataloging every type of horse, finding all the photographed memories, amassing a giant hoard of cooked dishes, furnishing their house with matching weapon types, or experimenting with dyeing clothes. They never have strong weapons on hand, because weapons are a reward for combat.
For these people, the recycled content of korok seeds and shrines doesn’t matter, because that’s not the draw, the content that they are engaging with. The shrines and seeds function as intended for this playstyle, as discovered distractions that add optional texture along some other player-directed objective.
If you are asking why this game is different from Assassin’s Creed, why it was the game of the decade before Elden Ring, and sincerely answering with “vibes,” I think you are doing yourself a disservice by not further examining the factors that go into making a “vibe.” Just because the lay person does not have the language to articulate the reasoning behind their preferences does not mean their intuitions are arbitrary or shallow.
If the tangible details of animation, music, color palette are enough to create a vibe and win game of the year, and that gameplay doesn’t matter, then all of BotW’s success, prestige, and cultural impact would be a valuable lesson on their importance. But when it comes to gaming, I don’t think the tenants of other mediums are sufficient for creating a “vibe” alone. Instead, BotW’s game design is addition by subtraction - the lack of direction from the UI, with the variety of self-directed tasks one can create within the game space, give equal legitimacy to anything the player can conceive of doing. The fact that the player could be fighting monsters, climbing towers, getting stronger, and instead are making crepes and cross-dressing is very much integral to BotW’s “vibe.”
I think the “joy of discovery” and “sense of childlike wonder” that people ascribe to this game relates to not being told they are stupid for wanting to try something. Because video games are terrible about doing this. Hell, I remember playing the Ratchet & Clank 2016 remake, when I tried killing enemies with melee attacks to get a sense of attack patterns. A giant image of the PS4 controller popped up, taking up 1/4th of the screen, yelling at me to press the shoot button. The commercialization of video games that you touched on in the comments means that creative decisions are made by non-creatives who are terrified of players missing out on “content” by not adhering to a checklist’s idea of a game experience.
Breath of the Wild is very gentle with not wanting you to see or do everything. There is no in-game indication of how many korok seeds exist. I was pretty content with the 60 or so I found. There is no incentive for completing shrines besides getting the master sword, but cooking can make them entirely unnecessary. I certainly didn’t do all of them before I fought Ganon and ended my time with the game.
I think the youth of the medium also means we are still adjusting to where emotional connections are forged in games compared to other media. Intentional emotions at specific beats are very hard to curate in interactive media. However, games can provide broad emotional landscapes in which certain emotional experiences are possible. In that regard, I think Breath of the Wild’s influence is so wide-reaching because so many ingredients are present for impactful emotions to exist. Sometimes they are highly comedic, like failing to cook a frog (that lands in the fire beneath the pot (that then, on fire, hops towards you and lights you on fire)), and sometimes they are as simple as the reward of a beautiful vista resulting from the random confluence of the day/night cycle and when you happened to finish an unexpectedly daring climb. If the art wasn’t good, if the colors weren’t good, if the music wasn’t good, if the possibilities didn’t feel numerous for the other ways you could be spending your time in this game space, those emotions wouldn’t be possible.
Basically, I’m saying that if you can see the success, the prestige, the cultural impact of this title, yet feel that its fans are missing the point, perhaps there is more digging to be done to unearth what the “point” actually is. Again, really respect your perspectives, and appreciate that they helped inspire me to think about the enigma of this game’s true worth.
Not gonna try to go through the whole of your review (cause of how long it is), but if it were just the “vibes” that people loved, I highly doubt it would’ve endured for as long as it has, not would people like me have found it such an amazing title.
Sure, it does a whole bunch of things that other games like Assassin’s Creed have done, but the twists that the game makes on things like the towers are what make it stand out. Things like those are made more like a puzzle to be solved, rather than just another thing to climb. Heck, sometimes things like the Shrines are more the reward you get for the puzzle (hence why some just hand you the Spirit Orb as soon as you enter them). You may not think it good enough, but I found it incentive to try out all the many challenges presented, which required a bit more thought than just checking them off a box. And there were more than just Shrines and Korok seeds to find in my playthrough, ranging from bits of environmental storytelling, sights like the Dragons, side quests, and new characters. Sure, some of them repeated, but I found nearly all to have a special twist or flavor that made it exciting to explore.
And what stands out about it compared to games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, at least from my experience, is the freedom given to the player in terms of how they can interact with the world and the combat. Yes, it is a viable tactic to just use the higher tier weapons and the like, but even then, that is sometimes not the best choice, even on the higher tier enemies. Using environmental weaknesses and physics manipulations I found to still be effective even late game, especially against the harder enemies. And sure, other games may have similar traversal mechanics, but not all in the same way used here. Heck, the climbing is free form rather than restricted to ledges. That’s what makes it different from those games, and why I find it more creative.
Sure, you do get ways that make things easier like Revali’s Gale and more effective recipes. But I just saw that as you progressing and finding better methods the more you go. Not sure why that is an issue. And even so, you still have to go and actually find the resources to do that, and things like Revali’s Gale aren’t always going to be active to use.
I also find it rather condescending that you claim that someone finding the experience magical to them as you wondering if they had a childhood in a laboratory or enjoying mundane tasks. I’ve played many games that are in the same genre and out of it, and have enjoyed those as well, including the Metal Gear series. But I still found BOTW to give me a sense of wonder and excitement.
The rest of your review is more philosophical talk that is all subjective alongside discussing the medium, so I won’t go into a song and dance about that. All I’ll say is that, while the vibes of the game are a part of the reason I love BOTW, it is the freedom and twists placed on the then tired formula of the open-world genre that make it a favorite of mine.
Sure, it does a whole bunch of things that other games like Assassin’s Creed have done, but the twists that the game makes on things like the towers are what make it stand out. Things like those are made more like a puzzle to be solved, rather than just another thing to climb. Heck, sometimes things like the Shrines are more the reward you get for the puzzle (hence why some just hand you the Spirit Orb as soon as you enter them). You may not think it good enough, but I found it incentive to try out all the many challenges presented, which required a bit more thought than just checking them off a box. And there were more than just Shrines and Korok seeds to find in my playthrough, ranging from bits of environmental storytelling, sights like the Dragons, side quests, and new characters. Sure, some of them repeated, but I found nearly all to have a special twist or flavor that made it exciting to explore.
And what stands out about it compared to games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, at least from my experience, is the freedom given to the player in terms of how they can interact with the world and the combat. Yes, it is a viable tactic to just use the higher tier weapons and the like, but even then, that is sometimes not the best choice, even on the higher tier enemies. Using environmental weaknesses and physics manipulations I found to still be effective even late game, especially against the harder enemies. And sure, other games may have similar traversal mechanics, but not all in the same way used here. Heck, the climbing is free form rather than restricted to ledges. That’s what makes it different from those games, and why I find it more creative.
Sure, you do get ways that make things easier like Revali’s Gale and more effective recipes. But I just saw that as you progressing and finding better methods the more you go. Not sure why that is an issue. And even so, you still have to go and actually find the resources to do that, and things like Revali’s Gale aren’t always going to be active to use.
I also find it rather condescending that you claim that someone finding the experience magical to them as you wondering if they had a childhood in a laboratory or enjoying mundane tasks. I’ve played many games that are in the same genre and out of it, and have enjoyed those as well, including the Metal Gear series. But I still found BOTW to give me a sense of wonder and excitement.
The rest of your review is more philosophical talk that is all subjective alongside discussing the medium, so I won’t go into a song and dance about that. All I’ll say is that, while the vibes of the game are a part of the reason I love BOTW, it is the freedom and twists placed on the then tired formula of the open-world genre that make it a favorite of mine.
Addnime
1 year ago