Breath of the Wild excels at nothing. More specifically, it excels at creating empty, peaceful moments with no combat, no countdown timer, no stress. Just running through a grassy field with the breeze rustling your hair, watching the sun set, listening to the birds and insects around you. White space. [This is possibly borne out of the “aspect to aspect” tendency in Japanese storytelling– for more, see Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud or Nerdwriter1’s video on Ghost in the Shell on YouTube] How does this differ from many other open world games with rich environments, such as Skyrim, RDR2, or The Witcher 3? I believe it has to do with the fact that, in most cases, you can actually insert yourself (or at least Link) into whatever vista you can see. This has implications beyond, as others have suggested, existing as a mechanical novelty.
The world doesn’t push back against your attempts to navigate it– in other games, this pushback may manifest as having to repeatedly bunny hop to scale a mountain, or your character not grabbing on to a ledge that appears to be graspable if it existed in real life. Instead, BotW has refined and intuitive navigation mechanics, making movement feel more similar to a game like THPS than Ocarina of Time. Paragliding to the back of your horse, then dismounting your horse to slide on your shield down a hill, then jumping off your shield to scale a cliff can all be strung together in an essentially unbroken chain. In short, the “physical” world of Hyrule is welcoming in a manner that is central to the video gaming experience itself, which is moving through space.
There’s one other thing that BotW excels at, which is presenting the player with an environment within which they can explore a series of (mostly) compatible systems. It does this extremely well with the exception of multi-enemy combat, where it could’ve benefitted from some improvements to the camera and targeting mechanics. Other people have discussed this at length so I’ll end my comments on the matter there.
Unfortunately, it was clear pretty early on that the story in BotW was going to be Extremely Nothing– no character development, no challenging questions, no provocations. I tried really hard to come up with a generous reading, and the best I could do is that it’s a parable about the dangers of weaponizing artificial intelligence? I guess? But even that is a secondary, almost incidental aspect of the main storyline so I’m not assigning it that much significance. The heart of the story is really about good versus evil full stop. This is a small tragedy, because given how beautifully the game deals with movement and environment, Hyrule as a place in time could have been more thematically significant, such as the Forbidden Land in Shadow of the Colossus. As it is, BotW is a product of what Nintendo does best, which is making toys.
The world doesn’t push back against your attempts to navigate it– in other games, this pushback may manifest as having to repeatedly bunny hop to scale a mountain, or your character not grabbing on to a ledge that appears to be graspable if it existed in real life. Instead, BotW has refined and intuitive navigation mechanics, making movement feel more similar to a game like THPS than Ocarina of Time. Paragliding to the back of your horse, then dismounting your horse to slide on your shield down a hill, then jumping off your shield to scale a cliff can all be strung together in an essentially unbroken chain. In short, the “physical” world of Hyrule is welcoming in a manner that is central to the video gaming experience itself, which is moving through space.
There’s one other thing that BotW excels at, which is presenting the player with an environment within which they can explore a series of (mostly) compatible systems. It does this extremely well with the exception of multi-enemy combat, where it could’ve benefitted from some improvements to the camera and targeting mechanics. Other people have discussed this at length so I’ll end my comments on the matter there.
Unfortunately, it was clear pretty early on that the story in BotW was going to be Extremely Nothing– no character development, no challenging questions, no provocations. I tried really hard to come up with a generous reading, and the best I could do is that it’s a parable about the dangers of weaponizing artificial intelligence? I guess? But even that is a secondary, almost incidental aspect of the main storyline so I’m not assigning it that much significance. The heart of the story is really about good versus evil full stop. This is a small tragedy, because given how beautifully the game deals with movement and environment, Hyrule as a place in time could have been more thematically significant, such as the Forbidden Land in Shadow of the Colossus. As it is, BotW is a product of what Nintendo does best, which is making toys.