Zelda: Breath of the Wild

 The more open world games I play the more I respect and love this game. On my first play through, when it was released, I was disappointed -- no classic Zelda style dungeons, no massive and epic Zelda style bosses, no triforce, no Ganon as a character, little story-line, few villages, all the things I loved weren't here. I wanted something like Link to the Past in 3d, and got this strange exploration wandering ramble game instead. I smashed through it in about a week, went "Huh," and parted ways. I liked it but was disappointed.

After an additional play-through on master mode, and yet another play-through on normal, and many tries at 3d open-world adventure games (Witcher 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, probably others) I can confidently say I adore this game, it's really one of the best, and I have no idea how they pulled it off. It's so good. All those other games simply can't compete, this game is tactile, patient, beautiful, respects the player, respects freedom, and respects PLAY as a concept for its own sake.

FREEDOM AND TRACTABILITY

These are two related concepts. A game that allows freedom of play is improved by posing scenarios and problems that are tractable. In Zelda, this freedom is provided to the player right off the bat, and then increased in ever increasing doses, until the full scope of the game is shown. The player is able to wander anywhere they like, so long as they are willing to endure or solve the many problems the world poses them. And as for the problems, nearly every problem is an environmental puzzle that can be solved from any number of different directions, and can be influenced and chipped away at by the player's many tools, depending on which of them they prefer to use. 

This is truly unique. So many games have a feeling of flatness to them, a sense that the world is made to be approached from one direction of the other. Zelda's willingness to accommodate player ingenuity lets the world be a true exploration. You're never just filling in the blanks. At every moment in the game--literally almost every moment--the player is given the freedom to choose how to move and what to do.

Even combat embraces this. Areas of monsters are bounded but open, they live in vertical tiered areas that give them advantages you can overcome with your many powers, they're surrounded by cliffs and exploding barrels, the grass can burn, lightning can strike and be manipulated, oftentimes you're greatly outnumbered but even this can be exploited with your bombs and wands and spin attacks and rune spells.

This is helped by the game's difficulty. Death happens quickly if you get hit by a powerful monster or fall in a swamp. Even on my third play-through, I find myself dissuaded by areas of higher difficulty. Towers of black moblins, lynels, guardian walkers, and so on, are too much for my measly six hearts one upgrade armor. By knowing the penalty for carelessness, the player is allowed freedom to avoid or mitigate these problems however they like. Climb a mountain to get around it, drink a stealth potion to sneak, drop rocks from above, pick them off with bombs from afar, or whatever. The game never pulls its punches.

My friend Nick, who introduced me to this concept of tractability in games, has this to say on the issue:

"If you've ever played a video game and been frustrated the hero can't try to climb over a fence, you've experienced intractability. A tractable world rewards you for paying attention to what the dm describes. 'Oh wait, i remember there was a big delicious looking ham with a big poker fork jabbed into it two rooms back. I'll bet we could use it to prop this door open." So when the world is tractable, you're rewarded for paying attention to the world, and you're rewarded for being thoughtful and imaginative about how to engage with it, and combine different pieces of it.

When the world is intractable, when the answer is "no, there's nothing you can pick up in the opulent dining room" or "no, you can't pull the curtains loose, they're stuck" or "no, there's no way to knock over the throne even though you have that scroll of 'knock over chair'" it punishes you for paying attention, or for thinking creatively, because you've wasted your own and everyone else's time by trying to do something other than hitting the orc with your axe. Because the energy you spent figuring out how to build a trap out of living room furniture could have been spent on looking at your phone, or just saying "sure, i'll look at that" about whatever the dm points you to. If you tell me it's a crudely constructed raft, don't be mad if i try to saw through the ropes holding it together while the villain is giving his speech

The things players think of to do to your perfect dollhouse world will almost always be dissonant with what you imagined, if what you imagined was a specific kind of story."

LACK OF INTERRUPTIONS

Accompanying this is a wonderful lack of cut-scenes. So many of these fully voiced open-world games feel like a stutter-stop slow-motion tv show. You're wandering, you're exploring, and then you meet a guy who wants to tell you about a quest, and the game turns into very low quality tv. And sometimes these strings of cut scenes last forever. I end up clicking through all the dialogue as fast as i can to get to the gameplay, as these games go on usually the story gets more and more muddled.

So not only are you able to go wherever the fuck you want, but also the game gives you very few interruptions.

Not to mention the tendency in these big AAA open world games to have the "interact vision." In Witcher its Witcher Vision, in Dragon Age its the L3 search scan, in Horizon its the I don't even remember what it's called, but you press a button and it highlights what you need to look at. It turns from a game of freedom into a game of treading the path the game has made for you. Press X to examine the campfire and hear a voiceover say something terse like "Coals are cold, they must have moved on", press X to examine the belongings and hear the voice say, "Blood on the cloth, but its not theirs..." etc etc. It's tedious, and more importantly there's not really anything for the PLAYER to do with this information.

In Zelda, when the game provides the player information, the vast majority of the information is useful and relevant. And what information is not useful or relevant, is beautiful, funny, strange, moving, and always, always brief. You can move on if you want.

IMMEDIACY

Every moment is immediate, your contact with the world and its contents are tactile and direct. You stand on a hill and see a distant landmark, you can immediately strike out for it, your vision reaches all the way across the map, the delay in starting your journey can be none if you want. The controls are quick and responsive, your paraglider snaps out very quickly, Link turns on a dime, his attacks are clean and executed immediately, and you can always tell where he is, somehow. He spins and twirls, he snaps to attention, he hops, he doesn't have the range of movement of Mario but there is still that feeling of smoothness and never having any doubt what he's doing or where he is. Maps open and close with no delay, your magic powers are conjured as fast as you can think them. When you select your weapons and tools, the game is paused or so slowed down as to be nearly paused, paradoxically this makes the game more immediate, there's no fumbling or needing to ready your tools before a fight, everything is at your fingertips the moment you need them.

Gathering resources too. You see a mushroom, it has its glinting spark to denote its status as resource, and as soon as you press the button it moves into your inventory, there is a little tune that plays to let you know it worked. So many of these open world games struggle with this. Some of them, you have to click to open containers, even herbs out in the world, and then move through a little menu to gather the item, even if it's just one item. Zelda avoids containers completely--the only containers in the world are chests, which are their own reward, beautiful little objects that click open, they always give you something pretty good. Everything else is just out in the world to grab. Weapons are lying on logs, propped in places where monsters can quickly grab them, or displayed for you. Sometimes items are hidden inside crates, but these are mostly inconsequential and rare enough that they are little bonuses: an apple that gets roasted by your bomb, an arrow or two, just a bonus really. 

Ambling over the landscape also has that sense of immediacy, I don't know how they capture it. You have a sense that you're really there, moving over the contours of the hills, drenched in rain, the clap of thunder. I guess it's an accumulation of concrete details. The grass parting as you move through it, insects and wildlife darting away from you, the sound of Link's footsteps (I read in an interview that they considered Link footsteps one of the most important sounds in the game, always present and always giving you information about where you are). If you need to get up a cliff, there's no delay in climbing it, vertical movement is just as natural as walking, if a little bit slower. Maybe part of it is the movement of the weather and the movement of the days, there is always movement around you, but there is always a sense of stillness, that you are at the center of something very huge and still and alive, and you are the main actor. It's remarkable.

PLAYER CHOICE AND DESIRE, AND CONNECTION TO SELF

Similar to player freedom. I find that this game works best when I'm connected to my own desires, and encourages me to be connected to myself. Do I want to go THIS direction or THAT direction? It feels like the game wants me to be present, wants me to play the game in the way that I want to play, and wants me to enjoy it. The more present I am with this game, the more pleasurable it is. Many games either ignore this element, or go in the opposite direction. They either guide the player at every moment, or create hard guard-rails to prevent us from moving to the wrong place, or like many games these days, try to hook us into cycles of addiction and gambling, like in Blizzard's games, or other games of chance, like the very excellent and recent Hades, which I loved but found I needed to fight against the impulse or repetition and gambling. There is none of that here, it is a relief.

MORE ON THE DETAILS

There are so many of them, the character models and creatures, the items are so detailed, so carefully rendered. I'm always finding new details. You get the sense that this place has a real history, however, there is also a feeling that this was created by interested, compassionate artists. 

The characters themselves are a little strange and a little credulous, and quite varied. They want specific things, they are on specific missions, they seem to think and have opinions about themselves and the plight they're in, their world and each other. They're quite afraid of things that give you no pause. To Link, monsters are mostly speedbumps or puzzles, but to the people they are terrors. 

The world is full of so many details. Ruined columns, places, garrisons, villages that seem to have history. There's a good chance that someone you meet will comment on these places. I should note that there is not the level of detail in a Dark Souls game, those game builds its world with a level of concrete detail unmatched. I think Zelda is trying to build a somewhat less idiosyncratic world, more of a puzzlebox to crawl through than a harsh and menacing baroque dungeon. 

The landscape itself is varied, it contains a level of detail I have trouble understanding. Its contours are obviously deliberate, it moves to obscure and to suddenly open up, its folds contain secret chests and places (not to mention the shrines), it relaxes and then thrusts upwards into menace. And it's always inviting, even when there are obstacles (cliffs, heat, ice, lava) there is always the invitation to overcome them. 

LETS SEE WHAT ELSE

Hyrule Castle is one of the best open world dungeons ever executed. It embraces Zelda's open world design--it's inviting, large, dangerous, you can approach it from any angle at any time, it's full of secrets, details, and treasure, and you can use any number of your resources and tools to solve it. It has a variety of bosses and unique treasures, and a fascinating vertical design: the point is to get to the top.

The more involved and difficult quests are very fun, especially because there are only a few of them. Stumbling across puzzles out in the world is a surprise, and a good break from the core exploration.

What story there is, is fairly surprising. Zelda's misgivings and doubt are fairly compelling, surprisingly dark for the game you're playing. They don't quite manage to overcome the simplicity of the game world and the lack of detail about Ganon and the Calamity, but they're good, and even better than that, they're brief, and can be avoided or skipped if you don't feel like it.

A FEW QUIBBLES

The Shrines are pretty good but they are too short, for the most part. They don't satisfy my craving for complicated indoor place, for dungeons. I like finding them and stumbling across them but they are brief. They are supposed to be brief of course, and not to be too interrupting. But they are an interruption: the lengthy little cutscenes that play every time you enter and finish a shrine, I skip them every time because they are always the same. Also, every time I find a combat trial, I am disappointed. I've already done this! I don't need to be tested again. If you're giving me a combat trial, give me something new: a difficult string of enemies, a difficult combat situation, even a new boss. Fighting the same robot over and over with very small variations gets old.

Not the mention the Korok Seeds. They are fun to complete, varied enough that it doesn't get really old, easy enough that you don't have to struggle, that I'm never irritated. But... they don't serve enough of a purpose. Expanding inventory is a coveted power, but every time I find a Korok Seed I feel a twinge of disappointment. What else could it be instead? Dark Souls has shown that it could be a strange piece of loot, a new strange weapon, or a scrap of information about the world, or a spell. Ghost of Tsushima has shown us that it could be new customization options. I know the game wants to keep it simple, nevertheless that Korok Seeds have that sense of just filling in the blanks that the rest of the game manages to avoid.

While the sneaking is lots of fun, the stealth missions are trash. The sneaking in Zelda works when there is a soft fail-state -- being found means you have to fight. When failing at sneaking turns into a flat game over, like it does in a couple missions, the game gets bogged down, it turns boring and frustrating. I hate those missions. Luckily, there are very few of them.

The Divine Beast dungeons really seem out of step with the rest of the game, to be honest. Here, the lack of variety in monsters and environments begin to show. They're made of the same material ("stone?") which strips you of one of your core powers--climbing; they all have the same robot monsters and eye-bats and slime and moblins and so on that the rest of the game has, and most egregious, they all have the same boss. Granted the boss' different forms and powers are varied, nevertheless it is the same creature, a personality-less elemental without a face, but bearing Ganon's signature shock of red hair, now so far removed of Ocarina of Time that it's stripped of its meaning. They are fun puzzle boxes, but have more of the feeling of needing to go through the motions to solve the puzzles than the rest of the game. I do like that you need to prepare for them like you do for the rest of the game: must ready potions and food and arrows, and if you run out or aren't prepared, it's going to be an uphill battle or you'll have to leave and come back.

I hoped for more classic Zelda dungeons, and I think they could be completed in a style more in line with Hyrule Castle. Giant lightning struck towers, swamp filled skulls, I don't know what else. A 3d literalization of the promise made by Link to the Past. You don't need to strip Link of the power to climb if the dungeons take place indoors underground, this is the power of dungeons! They could even use and exploit his climbing, I have to do this in Dungeons and Dragons because I know my players can and will climb anything. I get around this with bottomless pits, damaging slime, spike pits, vertical shafts, areas of antimagic, they could have got really creative with this. Hyrule Castle shows that they could have, and I wish they had.

Ganon's lack of personality does seem like a drawback. Hyrule's decline feels sudden and meaningless. What exactly is this ancient evil that it's grappling with? It doesn't have the marks of tragedy or evil, instead the Calamity feels just like something really bad that happened, like a war, or a virus maybe, except war has human meaning built in by the motivations of the people in power, and virus as we have learned has meaning by how humans respond to something truly alien and inhuman. I've always enjoyed Ganon as a person, someone with feelings and desires, and his various depictions in the games, particularly Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, have been a lot of fun. Here, they try to split the difference by depicting Ganon as a prophesied force, but still give him a name and a monstrous face. A game without a villain seems a little reduced. And his form as a robot spider demon is pretty absurd. Why does he take this form? What on earth is going on here? He's pretty fun to fight, I guess, but more silly than truly menacing, like Pennywise's giant spider-clown form. Did he inhabit some piece of machinery that Zelda was working on? Is he another Divine Beast? These details are never filled in. Ganon never does anything -- his victory is complete, so he is a static entity, and the only remaining threat is Zelda's death, which is like, she's been fine for a hundred years, it seems like she can handle a few more years.

Plus there's a lack of concretization to the drama alluded to. We're told early on that Zelda is in Hyrule castle, "battling" Ganon, or keeping him under control. But when you finally get there, there's no struggle really happening. There's no, like, crystal that she's contained in, or Zelda standing in front of a magic seal, or fighting him with her triforce mark, or whatever it could be. What exactly is she trying to accomplish, again, the whole time you're playing the game? Ganon has already won, the bomb went off and everyone died. The time pressure is not convincing. You fight Ganon's minibosses in his throne room, and then you fight his spider form in the dungeons, and then Zelda appears, or something? It doesn't make sense.

BUT WITH ALL THAT

The game is so relaxing, so beautiful, so big and beautiful, so immediate, so detailed, the music so good, the characters so full of personality, the landscape so varied and full of secrets, that simply playing this game is a joy. All you need to do is log in, point yourself in the direction you find most appealing, and you'll find adventure. I don't know any game that manages to capture this feeling of boundless exploration, of an entire world at your fingertips to explore, and to execute it honestly. After countless hours playing this game I'm still finding new secrets and new places and new details, and I'm still enjoying re-exploring the places I've completed twice before simply by virtue of how pleasurable it is to just play. Simply an exceptional game, one of the true best.