Though it feels like a decade, it's actually only been about three years since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A lot of things have, obviously, happened since then. On a personal level, my mom died just a few months later, and more recently and less individually, the world has been rocked by a devastating pandemic, which has killed more Americans than the Vietnam War in just a couple months (revisiting this post in a year or so, that number may even seem surprisingly low.)
This is a game that got nearly universal praise, critical acclaim, and I believe outsold Ocarina of Time, the "Seven Samurai" of video games (because it's frequently and not terribly controversially considered the greatest example of its medium of all time) by a factor of two.
And I didn't really like it.
Don't get me wrong: the game is beautiful, and I played it for many hours, enjoying the various things I could do in it. But I also always felt as if it had succumbed a bit to the "open world curse" - namely, that by filling a massive map with myriad things to do, the game suffered from a sort of sameiness in its challenges. Going to a new location like a sun-baked desert or a snow-covered mountainside, you still found all the same sorts of things and the same sorts of monsters. To me, it killed some of the excitement of cresting that next hill or delving into that distant forest because, well, I know all that I would face there would be more of the same. And the interchangeability of the various puzzle shrines was, similarly, a reason for me to be less invested in discovering what lay within.
So I find myself wondering why, to so many people, this was a transcendental, mind-blowing, legendary experience. When so many people are enamored with something, you start to wonder if the problem is in you.
Growing up, I didn't actually have a video game console until I was 10, saving up allowance money to get myself an SNES. The next year, I did the same for a used N64 (I think I might have convinced my parents to come up with other tasks for me to earn the cash for them.) Ironically, the only video game console I ever got as a gift from a parent was a Nintendo Switch in 2018, when I was 32.
So the first Zelda game I ever got was Ocarina of Time (I remember having to convince my mom that it wasn't too violent for 12-year-old me when it came out). I'd later get Majora's Mask, and then A Link to the Past, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and eventually Breath of the Wild, and then the recent Switch remake of Link's Awakening. To me, Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past were the really formative ones, and I loved Twilight Princess even as reviews had been sort of underwhelmed by it.
I remember one of my big accomplishments in Ocarina of Time was that I got all 20 heart containers, which I also accomplished in A Link to the Past. Zelda games tended to have these collectables - you didn't have to get every last one to beat the game, but you'd feel a certain sense of accomplishment if you managed it.
And I suspect that might be part of what didn't work for me with Breath of the Wild.
There's a sense that you can get in some games when it comes to these "extra credit" accomplishments. Take a totally different game: The Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within. Playing through the game, it's relatively linear, but you can occasionally find little hidden puzzle/obstacle course areas that will increase your maximum health (not unlike heart containers.) Throughout the game, you are hunted by a monster called the Dahaka - an embodiment of time that wishes to punish you for messing with the flow of time in the first game in that trilogy (The Sands of Time). In Warrior Within, you eventually fight against the... Lady of Time? Priestess... I don't remember what she's called, but she's the final boss, and by killing her, you find a way to change time or something. But what I hadn't realized when playing through it is that, if you got every health upgrade, you'd get the Water Sword, which then allowed you to save the priestess lady and instead fight the Dahaka itself - leading to a totally different ending.
My feeling after realizing that wasn't so much that I'd beaten the game and that there was more that I could get in an earlier playthrough, but rather that I'd actually failed the first time, and that I'd gotten the "bad" ending.
I've definitely got a perfectionist streak in me. And unfortunately, that makes me feel that when I don't do things quite perfectly, it's a failure.
Going back to Zelda, then, I think perhaps part of what I didn't like about Breath of the Wild was that, ultimately, I was just not going to get to do everything in it. Sure, I beat the four bosses in the corners of the world, but the game seems to resist allowing for "perfection." You can get the absolute best weapons and shields, but you're not going to be able to hold onto them, as they'll break eventually in an unrecoverable way.
Items are meant to be used up, chewed up, and replaced in Breath of the Wild, and it's hard for me to accept that on an emotional level. Accomplishments are temporary, for the most part.
Now, I stand by my criticisms about the sameiness of the monsters and the shrines, but I do wonder if I'd enjoy it more going in with fewer expectations. Letting the game be what it is, and not getting bogged down by what I feel I should be accomplishing in it.
There is a Breath of the Wild 2 coming, though I think we could see a different name (unlike Final Fantasy, I don't see Nintendo getting really into sub-series for Zelda) and I wonder if I'll do better approaching that with a new attitude.
At the same time, though, I also hope that we'll see some Zelda games more in the vein of Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess again.
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