The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo’s largest game world feels like a breath of fresh air.
The subterranean shrines that pepper Nintendo’s largest ever game world — serving as tutorials, pacing devices, fast-travel points, signposts, landmarks and puzzles — are by no means the sole expression of Breath Of The Wild’s desire to tax the grey matter.
See those mountains on the horizon? You can go to them, yes, but it’s not a simple matter of setting a map marker and following a GPS route. Heading to a mountain-top shrine, you find yourself divided from your destination by a large ravine. Do you cross it using the bridge on the horizon? Do you paraglide across? Could a cliffside tree be chopped down and serve as a bridge? Whichever route you choose, chances are you’ll get dragged farther off course along the way. There might be a bandit camp to clear out, a wild horse to break, a peak to scale, a traveller might hint at a nearby treasure, a bard may sing of a secret shrine that only appears under certain conditions. The next morning, you’ll saddle up, head off and, with any luck, remember what it is you came here for. This is a game where you always have somewhere to go, and sometimes even make it there.
We’re not quite sure how Nintendo has done it. A land this full of puzzles, secrets and distractions should feel contrived. Yet this colossal world has been given room to breathe, despite the volume of things in it. And for all its fantasy, it feels natural, albeit for the fact that cooking up monster parts yields an elixir that quietens your footsteps.
At some point, you’ll get around to taking on the main quest. Calamity Ganon has been sealed away for 100 years, but his power is growing; he’s taken control of the four Divine Beasts, hulking mechanical constructs that, corrupted, are causing merry hell in the regions they once protected. At the urging of the tribal elders, Link must free the Beasts of their corruption and return them to their rightful owners so they can assist him in defeating Calamity Ganon.
Nintendo has spoken of hitting the reset button on a series that had become too rigidly adherent to a decades-old dripfeed-style template. By the time you’ve completed four shrines in the Great Plateau starting area and used your reward, the paraglider, you’ll already have every power you need to go anywhere and do anything.
Combat can be a little unpredictable; the timing window for a dodge is either a tiny opening or a generous chasm. You’ll be hit by things you swore you’d dodged, and the camera position may interpret your backwards jump as a sideways one. But if the melee stuff is proving a chore, just chuck a bomb in there or pick them off with arrows.
Not since Ocarina Of Time have we set foot in a world that seems so vast, magical and intriguing. 19 years on, it’s still held up as one of gaming’s best-loved series. Now it may have to settle for second place.