There is big news surrounding the Legend of Zelda franchise is “Breath of the Wild”, and we don’t cover a lot of Nintendo stuff ’round here it seems. I’m going to fix that with my thoughts below! Legend of Zelda is known for being a mostly linear game. You tend to need certain items to progress safely through areas. They aren’t generally required, but they sure help [Candle in Zelda 1, Fairy spell in Zelda 2]. Sometimes you DO need items like the ability to break boulders in Zelda 2, unless you are into glitching/speed running, in which case, to Hell with you.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is going to be completely open-world, where you can go anywhere and do anything in any particular order, if you can solve puzzles and such. You can go straight to the final end boss in Breath of the Wild from the start of the game if you want. But why the hell would you want to do that? I think it’s a breath of fresh air, if you’ll pardon the expression, and the downside is if you do that, you’ll have no idea what happened to bring Link to where he is and what he’s doing. That’s not a big deal for some people but to me it is! If/when I do get to play it, I plan on doing as much of the story as I possibly can. I honestly like this idea though. The goal of playing video games is to find what it does to entertain you. If it’s the story, you do the story missions/puzzles/et cetera.
If you want to figure out how fast you can beat the game, and shave time off every time? You can totally do that! Sometimes, franchises have to change. There are times when this is a brilliant change of pace that everyone loves. Then there are times when the franchise is buried forever. I feel like the idea is that this will create a LOT of replayability. Depending on what you do in the game, or don’t do, will reveal more about Link and his tale in this place. At the end of the day, you play what you want, why you want. And Zelda: Breath of the Wild will definitely let players do exactly that. I’m really looking forward to it in all sincerity.
