Power.

Freedom is the very core of Breath of the Wild. Go anywhere, do anything. However, this also becomes the game’s greatest downfall. Having the ability to complete this game in any way, in any order, causes a multitude of problems with the progression, story, puzzles, and other central game mechanics. The inability for the developers to regulate and curate a definitive player experience leads to a jumbled, shallow, mess of a game that, while entertaining, lacks the depth of previous games in the Zelda series. The idea of a full world to explore sounds fantastic, and for many, it is. However, freedom is not definitively better than linearity. A massive open world produces many extended periods of time with simply nothing happening. However, exploration and discovery are still key parts of this game, and they’re great… right? Well, it’s not that simple. Exploring the world of Hyrule does lead to a lot of discovery— of the same thing. A shrine. Or a Korok seed. See, a major problem with the exploration in this game is that, no matter what, there are almost no surprises to what one actually discovers. Oh, a hidden cave inside of a mountain? It’s a shrine. A massive skeleton of an ancient beast? It’s a shrine. A forest cursed by some overbearing darkness? It’s a shrine. No matter what, any exploration and “discovery” leads to the same thing. The joy quickly dissipated from finding anything new as I realized it would always just be another shrine. Knowing exactly what will happen— that’s not really a discovery, is it? There’s another problem. The progression. In typical Zelda games, the player becomes more powerful throughout the game as they discover more key items that expand their moveset and abilities. In Breath of the Wild, everything is given to the player at the start of the game. The only progression in this game is obtaining more hearts and stamina, along with more powerful weapons. This creates an inherent problem with the progression— there isn’t really much at all. Nothing changes, and the game isn’t given a chance to introduce new mechanics and ideas. Personally, I feel this makes the flow of the game much less interesting and fun. Abilities aren’t ever-changing and dynamic, they are introduced at the start and become static. In fact, that’s how a lot of this game goes. The beginning is a condensed explosion of new discoveries, mechanics, and unfamiliar situations. As time goes on, however, the game becomes predictable, shallow, and boring. Some of it, unnecessary, even. Combat in this game is fun. However, it is superfluous. Other than miniboss shrines and the four painfully underwhelming dungeon bosses, fighting is almost never required. That would be fine, if fighting was at least worth doing, but it’s not. Engaging in combat results in the damaging of weapons and using of resources, all for what? The chance to obtain a single mediocre weapon from a chest? It’s just not worth it. In previous games, fighting was necessary, whether an enemy was blocking your path, necessary to kill to unlock a room, or a unique boss for a bombastic dungeon finale. In Breath of the Wild, it takes no effort or resources to just walk around encounters. Or, if you do decide to fight, just pause and heal as much as you want. There is no reason to fight, and it is, for lack of a better word, lame. Just like a lot of this game, it presents itself as a deep and engaging mechanic, when really, it is shallow and redundant.

Wisdom.

What defines the Zelda series? To some, story. To more, exploration. To me, puzzle-solving. Both inside and outside of dungeons, I believe that every aspect of the world should be looked at with a critical and creative eye to see solutions to problems. Breath of the Wild is not that. It attempts to incorporate puzzles into its open world by including shrines that dot the landscape. These shrines contain bite-sized puzzles to spice up the normal flow of exploration. Once again, though, there is a fundamental problem with this idea. Due to the fact that any shrine can be done in any order, and the requirement that they must be short, all of the shrines with puzzles inside are incredibly shallow and simple. Because of the game’s open nature, the puzzles are not able to build upon themselves and flesh out the ideas presented by the challenges. They remain as surface-level 2-minute romps that feel unsatisfying and are unable to scratch the itch I have to be stumped by a confusing, intertwining labyrinth. “But what about the divine beasts?” I hear you ask. The Divine Beasts are some of the worst excuses for dungeons in the entire Zelda franchise. The complaints that I often hear with them is that they look too similar and there are too few of them. I agree with this sentiment, especially that they all look and feel much too alike one another, creating no strong sense of identity or uniqueness with them. However, there is a much deeper problem with the Divine Beasts that I rarely hear anyone bring up: terminals. The way Divine Beasts function is that there are five separate consoles that must be activated in any order to fight the boss and finish the dungeon. In any order. That’s a problem. These terminals are just five disconnected mini-challenges that, like shrines, don’t allow for any depth or building upon of ideas. Divine Beasts don’t become more challenging or thought-provoking as time goes on, they just continue the trend of short and shallow puzzles that provide no sense of challenge. It is frustrating and disappointing. In the overworld, there are small puzzles that result in the earning of a Korok seed. 900 of them. This, of course, means that there are only a few challenges that are copy-and-pasted ad nauseam to pad out playtime. My problem with these, as well as shrines, in the world is that they are an excuse to say the world plays out like a puzzle with constant thought around every corner, when in reality, that is not the case. They are small, self-contained bits that require little thought. In fact, the world is not designed like a puzzle. Past games, yes, those games had worlds that required even a puzzle-minded brain in the overworld, because those worlds played out similarly to dungeons, even if they were not presented as such. In Breath of the Wild, the player never has to think about how to explore, rather, they just do it. There’s always a way around everything and a simple solution that does not require thought to execute.

Courage.

Throughout the Zelda series, something, or rather, someone, has always tied it together. Link. The protagonist is an essential part of this franchise, one who represents the struggles of living up to expectations and fulfilling prophecy. Link in this game is, needless to say, underwhelming. Starting off, he has amnesia at the beginning of the story, already an overused trope that can be made interesting if done properly, but in this game, it is not. What this does for Link’s character is infinitely more harm than good. He has absolutely no real intrinsic motivation that pushes him to become the hero that he is. He saves Hyrule because he’s told to by the dead king. He’s told he’s a legendary hero, but as he is now, he’s not one. He’s just an emotionless, distant character that has no personal connection to the story itself. And yes, he rarely shows any emotion that allows the player to understand and connect with him more. Compared to the last big 3D game that came directly prior, Skyward Sword, where Link had personal relationships with the other characters and had a real desire to do what he did, showing his pain when terrible things happened, his joyousness when able to bask in happiness with his loved ones, his surprise at unexpected moments, it allows his character to be much more fleshed out than just a blank nothing. In Breath of the Wild, there are themes that would be great to explore and flesh out, like the isolation of being in a collapsed society all alone. But we never see that. Link never displays any sign of internal suffering or introspection, and the supposed themes of this game are never taken very seriously because it seems that multiple cultures and societies are still flourishing. On top of that, the full story is lacking any and all pivotal moments that progress things forward. Because the game is so open, and can be completed in just over 20 minutes, it is devoid of story beats that make a game interesting. Link is told that Zelda is in trouble by the former king of Hyrule, and that’s about it. We are told, not shown, that Link was a great hero who tried to stop Ganon before. Most of the “story” takes place in flashbacks to events long passed. These don’t change anything, because they already happened. The story of this game is so incredibly minimal and lacks the unique charm that previous games had. What else is lacking is the respect and love for the franchise as a whole. The Master Sword is completely irrelevant, as it is apparently no longer necessary to seal the darkness, despite that being its main purpose. The triforce is also not important, as it’s shown in one flashback being used by Zelda and never once mentioned again. There are lore inconsistencies, surprising omissions, and changes to series staples that makes me just disappointed as a longtime fan of this series that desperately wants this game to be a special celebration of progress, rather than an abandonment of identity.

Light.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild suffers from a numerous amount of problems. It wants to be a free, open-world game, while still retaining the puzzles from Zelda games of old. This causes a split in that the game is unable to fully commit to either side, thus leaving both aspects of its identity shallow. I could go on about my nitpicks with this game. I feel its art style is not the most pretty to look at, especially compared to previous titles. It has a forgettable and disappointing soundtrack that leaves much to be desired. The side characters and NPCs are not nearly as interesting or fleshed out as past games. However, these are not the fundamental flaws that make Breath of the Wild what it is to me. In fact, there is enjoyment to be had playing this game. Breath of the Wild is addicting. I can spend several hours playing it and it only feels like minutes have passed. The act of simply playing the game was enjoyable. It wasn’t a game that tired me out or left a sour taste in my mouth, somehow. This game is addictive. Like, really addictive. When I tuned out all of my negative feelings about the game, I was able to actually enjoy it. The sound design is absolutely stellar. The gameplay loop is satisfying, albeit incredibly superficial. Is Breath of the Wild a terrible and offensive game? No. Is it a masterpiece? Not even close. Breath of the Wild is a hooking but shallow experience that, while feeling fresh and new, abandons the ideas that made Zelda so great in the first place. It is unable to go all the way with its new identity, and feels conflicted about its existence. What will this game mean for the future of the series? I can’t say. It is a foggy and concerning path that the franchise is heading down for me, but I will be there every step of the way.

Goodbye, Breath of the Wild.

so i feel like i have to justify my rating to this game because everyone always questions it.

so breath of the wild. "the definitive open world experience."

so some positives before i shit all over this game. the art style is nice, looking at the large empty fields of this game is made more tolerable by the nice artstyle. you have a lot of choices in how you approach situations, which is always great. anyway,

the fact that you have this option means nothing when the most viable option is almost ALWAYS to do it normally. sure, there's a lot of imagination you can have but the problem with not building scenarios out of imagination itself rather than leaving them open, is that you really don't encourage people to take the time to do something interesting when it's always a blank slate with the most convenient option is to do the same exact shit every time. i see people compare this game to mgs V all the time and i dont really think thats fair, because in mgs V the worst option is almost always the most convenient and easy to think of one, actively making you think "ok how could i creatively do this faster."

the open world is extremely empty, with the only real things filling it being meaningless side quests, stupid korok puzzles and boring shrines. lets talk about side quests first.

so the thing about the side quests is that minus the one where you build a town they're all boring fetch quests where you get extremely subpar rewards. you aren't encouraged to do them because there aren't any real upgrades you can get from them. often time the reward is just ruppees or something else stupid. so you never really feel encouraged to do any of them.

the korok seeds basically all boil down to "oooooo out of place rock?!??!!??!" i dont feel like i need to explain myself here because i feel like this is something most people already know.

the shrines are probably the most defendable parts of the game. there are plenty of interesting ones, like the twin shrines, or the ones with really elaborate, out of the box puzzles. however most of the shrines aren't like this, and are either "duplicate shrine of another shrine but HARDER" or "puzzles where you use one of your abilities twice." rarely do you actually have to use your brain for these puzzles because they're all so obvious on how to solve them.

so if the world is empty, the engagements are uncreative, what about the main story?

well, the main story is probably one of the worst parts about the game. actually doing the quests before the divine beast you're currently going for can be interesting. however, the divine beasts themselves are literally the same dungeon repeated 4 times with the same art style as every other shrine in the game. the story itself is bland and forgettable, especially compared to the wild creativity of other Zelda games. actually beating the game gives you nothing. the ending is weak and pathetic.

i hope ive given a somewhat decent summary on why i despise this game. anyway if you disagree with me you're wrong and fuuuck you.

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.)