Alright, so after 120 shrines cleared, all sidequests completed, all memories found and about 180 hours spent playing the game it's time for me to articulate my final thoughts about Breath of the Wild. I'm going to post light spoilers so feel free to skip my ramblings if you're not done yet with the game.
A lot has been said already about BotW. The callback to the original Zelda game on the NES and the almost complete freedom given to the player to tackle the objectives. The great physics engine and all the fun ways you can use it to interact with your environment. The significantly higher difficulty compared to previous 3D entries of the franchise. The muliple influences from modern Western games. All valid comments obviously, but I'd like to take a different approach and talk about what, to me, defines BotW more than anything else and that's the fact it feels like the full realization of every previous 3D Zelda games failed ambitions, post N64 era.
Like The Wind Waker, it promises limitless adventure in a post apocalyptic world reclaimed by nature. Like Twilight Princess, it prominently features a majestic, derelict kingdom of Hyrule, a larger vision of the foundations established in Ocarina of Time. And like Skyward Sword, it sets out to blur the lines between overworld and dungeons and redefine an overly familiar structure.
In a game so focused on exploration nailing traversal mechanics is an absolute necessity and BotW unquestionably succeeds. Unlike in TWW with its tedious sailing and cumbersome wind controlling system, traversal in BotW is a pure joy. I can't stress enough how fun the simple act of moving around is in this game. See an elevated structure in the wonderfully vertical overworld, climb it, admire the scenery, spot a point of interest in the distance, paraglide down to it. Rinse and repeat. You're going to do that for dozens of hours and it never gets old.
There's something innately satisfying about Link's ability to climb everything everywhere only using his stubby muscles and then travel across great distances carried by the wind. It's wonderfully organic and perfectly integrated to the overall theme of living in harmony with the wilderness. BotW's movement options don't simply make previous Zelda games feel antiquated and stiff, they also make the « climb here » glowing rails so prevalent in big budget Western games feel laughably lazy and restrictive in comparison. I reckon the climbing mechanics will be the game's biggest influence on the industry in the next few years.
Traversal isn't the only way BotW surpasses TWW's attempts. The world design is simply on another level. Where the Great Sea only offered a quickly boring landscape only sparcely interrupted by bite sized, largely uninteresting landmasses, BotW gives us the most spectacular, varied, and simply awe inspiring version of Hyrule yet. Art direction in this game is an absolute triumph. I'll go as far as saying that if this game ran at a higher resolution it'd be a candidate for best looking game of all time, simplistic geometry notwithstanding. There's so many beauty in this world, whether natural or architectural, simply admiring it is a reward in itself, yet it never sacrifices interactivity for spectacle.
Much like what Twilight Princess tried to do a decade earlier, this new Hyrule feels like a far grander version of the world Ocarina of Time created. There was potential in TP's overworld but it was ultimately held back by the artificial feeling of the world design, with its corridors linking large plains together, its desert separated from the rest of the map, its lifeless towns and overall lack of activity. In comparison BotW's overworld is wonderfully alive and credible. NPCs travel between communities, camp in the middle of nowhere and react to monsters or the elements. Wildlife is everywhere and acts remarkably realistic. The towns and villages feel like places where people actually live, while details apparently as trivial as unique types of bed being exclusive to certain races show the amount of care that was put into crafting this world. Ultimately though TP only tried to emulate OoT and had nothing to propose other than « more of the same, only bigger ». It lacked a core concept that would have justified its scale and unified its disjointed mechanics.
That's where BotW truly shines and at the same time accomplishes what Skyward Sword tried to do. More than any other Zelda since maybe Majora's Mask, BotW truly redefines one of the main elements of the franchise, puzzle solving. Much like how MM took puzzle solving out of the dungeons to focus on NPCs, their behavior and habits, BotW takes advantage of its fantastic overworld and its emphasis on exploration to create the most natural and best integrated puzzles in the franchise yet. That's where the lines truly blur and also where the genius of Nintendo's game design manifest itself: puzzles become organic parts of the overworld but also sidequests and micro narratives.
You'll stumble across your bard bird buddy that'll sing an ancient song that's actually an environmental riddle for you to solve. You'll find the journal of an unfortunate sap who investigated a mystery he couldn't crack, maybe decades before your discovery. You'll talk to NPCs that'll tell you about these weird, awful places you should stay far away from so of course you'll go check them out and find out they're pieces of dungeons scattered across the overworld. You'll have to use the topography, the weather, the time of the day or even wild animals to solve BotW's puzzles. In an old Iwata Asks someone said that solving Zelda puzzles made you feel like a genius ; puzzles in BotW aren't nearly complex enough to do such a thing, but they do something even better : they make you feel like an adventurer, a discoverer, a pioneer. It's puzzle solving perfectly tailored, mechanically and thematically, to a non linear « open air » adventure.
That's not to say there's no more traditional puzzles in the game in the form of shrines or the divine beasts, and they also work remarkably well. Shrines act as actual beakons to visually orient yourself in the gigantic word, convenient fast travel tools near other points of interest, and tightly designed logical challenges that can be solved in a multitude of ways. Again it's hard not to admire how cohesive the whole thing feels. As for the divine beasts, they might not be appropriate successors to the best dungeons in the series, mainly due to how similar they are in terms of aesthetics and atmosphere, but I thought at least two of them had very clever mechanics and were a lot of fun to complete.
Does all this mean the game is perfect ? No, obviously not. The biggest flaw by far is rain and to a lesser extent snowdrops as they actively work against the previously mentioned genius traveral system by making climbing a pain and greatly limiting visibility. It's far too frequent and lasts too long and eventually becomes obnoxious. One could also mention enemy variety, underwhelming bosses, some areas lacking in interesting content and the game losing steam after uncovering the entire map and becoming familiar with its systems, but taken as a whole, in comparison with all the areas where the game succeeds this all feels more like petty annoyances than the game breaking flaws some people make them out to be. If anything, it's an exciting prospect as it gives the EPD guys things to work on for their next title. Also if you think weapon durability is a flaw you're wrong, I'm glad we could clear this up.
There'd be so much more to say. I could talk about how the combat is interesting for the first time in ages with actual defensive timing and signposting to learn and so many options to tackle any given encounter. I could mention some of the utterly brilliant action set pieces, reminiscent of the best work from genre specialists like Platinum, the genuinely funny writing with even Link showing a semblance of personality in his dialogue options, making him come off as a bit of an arsehole at times, or how simply awesome shield parrying lasers is, or the fact fucking Raoh's horse from Fist of the North Star is in the game and you can tame it and ride it. I could cite the dozens of wondrous, unsettling, exhilarating or simply entertaining moments you'll no doubt experience while exploring the world of Hyrule but this is already an overbearing wall of text so I'll cut things short.
Breath of the Wild isn't Aonuma and his team copying popular trends in the industry and churning out an uninspired me too product. It's the culmination of decades of ideas, fully realized in a coherent, modernized whole. It's Nintendo disproving the claim they're tone deaf and behind the curve while at the same time preserving and updating the identity of one of their most prestigious franchises. The result is their best game since Metroid Prime, the most important Zelda game since Ocarina of Time, and a fantastic achievement that shows that even three decades after its first entry, The Legend of Zelda retains this ability to fascinate people like very few other franchises can.
Here's to 30 more years of Zelda. I can't wait to see where the legend takes us next.