It feels like pretty much everything that could possibly be written about Breath of the Wild has already been written, although people still seem to be finding new ways to do it all the same. Depending on who you ask, Breath of the Wild is either a genre-defining and genre-defying masterpiece or a joyless time sink that drops you down in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a bundle of rags, a stick, and no idea of where to go. The secret, of course, is that it’s both – it’s just that the people who call it a masterpiece enjoy wandering aimlessly while getting progressively stronger sticks. And please, no more weapon durability discourse. Please.
Personally, I really don't care for Breath of the Wild. I find it obnoxious in the extreme. You eventually figure out what you're doing, by which I mean, you randomly stumble onto something that vaguely resembles the blurry outline of a story, and the game keeps insisting on knocking your books out of your hand and giving you a wedgie. You go to the desert, and you die. Turns out, you need some fire potions, and you can only get those by catching fire lizards. Seems pretty much like a video game so far, right? You catch the lizards, all while slowly dying because they live in the area that's too hot for you to survive in, and you're all set. Kind of.
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Once you've made the first batch, you can buy the potions instead of constantly hunting for ingredients, but the potions only /reduce/ the impact of the heat, they don't stop it entirely. Again, seems pretty standard for a video game, but I really do just want to get on with it now babes. Am I done? All set? Aye? Mint. I buy a boatload of these potions, go off and fight the boss, then leave with quite a few potions left – still, better safe than sorry.
After aimlessly wandering again, having come to the end of one story thread and being back stuck in the middle of nowhere with no clue of what to do, I find another scrap of narrative. This takes me to a desert, but a different one. "It's too hot for you here," one of the NPCs tells me. Hey, never fear. Loads of fire potions in my bag. Tons of them. 17, I think. Wait. What's that? This is a different kind of heat? The wrong kind of hot, is it? And I need to go and catch some ice butterflies to make the potion this time? Nah. Nah, Hyrule can get fucked. Team Ganon all the way. See ya. Enjoy being traded in and never dropping in price.
No one who loves Breath of the Wild will disagree with a single thing I've said. They won't say I've missed the point, that I'm being obtuse, or that I'm playing the game wrong. They'll just say that all the things I think are crap are good, actually. Our own Kirk McKeand recently wrote about how the game features the best open world ever, because of the ways it guides you around obstacles and intuitively leads you to where you're meant to be. Likewise, I don't disagree – I just don't want to wander aimlessly all the time in the hopes that eventually the game will lead me to a cliff I can't ascend, meaning I travel west and stumble across a whisper of a story I'm probably hearing in the wrong order.
I hate to bring it up, but it's the same with the weapon durability. The arguments for and against it are identical. Namely, it forces you to grab weapons at random, falls apart a little when you try to hoard items, and changes the conventions of the genre. It's just the people who like it like it, and the people who hate it hate it. Funny that.
I don't like Breath of the Wild at all. It's the longest I've stuck with a game I've hated, and probably the deepest I've ever been into a game before eventually abandoning it, because I was convinced it would eventually get good. It did not. But here's the thing – I can see how important a game it was, and its influence is already making itself apparent. Genshin Impact and Immortals Fenyx Rising both borrow from it heavily – Aloy's traversal in Horizon Forbidden West seems to be very Link-like too.
For that reason, I hope I hate the sequel too. If it picks up where the first game left off, I'm pretty positive that I will – but I want it too. It's okay if there's a game I don't like, or a traversal system that doesn't click for me. Especially when it's helping shape games that tone down its most ambitious, frustrating tendencies into something I find much more enjoyable. Breath of the Wild 2 needs to pick up where Breath of the Wild left off. I'll hate it, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
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