It has been five years since ‘Breath of the Wild’ (BotW) was released for the Nintendo Switch. And I have fresh thoughts now. First, that it is worth buying a Nintendo Switch to play just this game and its sequel when it releases. Second, all in-game deaths are hilarious to the point of eliminating any resulting frustrations. My additional thoughts are slightly less nuanced, but do read on.
BotW is an open-world game. It is also open in every other sense of the word. For starters, there is no big reveal that they save up for the ending. We know that we must ultimately defeat “Calamity Ganon”. This villain reveal does not make the journey any easier, because the map is massive.
When I say massive, I mean that exploration would take a hundred hours at the minimum for a newb completionist. Link, the protagonist best recognised when dressed in green, must complete an elaborate pilgrimage before he is close to ready to face “Calamity Ganon”. This pilgrimage involves talking to many people and worshipping at shrines. Shrines in BotW are a struggle—which is surprising, considering the lack of a long entry queue. Shrines are also the only “grindy” component of the game, but are sufficiently varied enough as to not frustrate us. The puzzles in shrines get more complex, but it is worth the challenge considering how convenient it is to have several “warp spots” across lands.
This brings me to my thoughts on cross-terrain traversal. Travelling is the worst part of most open-world videogames. I am certain that the number of rocks I have jumped over in games far exceeds the number of steps I have walked in real life. In my first 20 hours in BotW, I was annoyed by how difficult I found it to tame a horse. Paragliding could not help me fly upwards. As a result, I had so much I couldn’t see, and too much time spent walking. As it turns out, BotW can do no wrong.
The game’s clever physics allows for creative modes of transportation. For example, as a helpful YouTuber pointed out: it is possible to use the “stasis” ability to imbibe a boulder with sufficient potential energy to… make us fly with it! Provided I find a boulder, travel has no longer been an issue, so I conclude yet again, that BotW is a perfect game. I must confess that I have not yet finished the game. Legend has it that my version of Link would forever roam the lands of Hyrule, his “sheikah slate” constantly thrumming at a shrine that he cannot find.