Game news The Legend of Zelda Breath of The Wild: 5 years later, a look back at the contemporary open world revolution
Five years ago to the day the Switch was released. Nintendo’s mobile console, the manufacturer’s third greatest success, was accompanied at the time by one of the greatest critical successes in the history of video games: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. Link’s latest adventure takes us into a poetic and intoxicating open world that has completely reshuffled the cards of the genre. Back to an extraordinary formula.
Summary
- A real revolution for the open world
- A legacy still tangible
A real revolution for the open world
Originally, The Legend of Zelda : Breath of the Wild is a game designed for the Wii U. Launched at the end of 2010, the project is slowly taking the form of an open world, a choice motivated both by the desire to redefine licensing conventions and to go back to basics by once again placing exploration at the heart of the experience. And if at the time the open worlds began to really emerge with the advent of titles like Skyrim, Zelda, by its fame and its history, must bring its stone to the building. But rather than simply offering Link a huge arena in which to follow objectives accompanied by markers that make everything directive, the ambition of the development teams is to offer an open world with real consistency in its interactions: the open world thought of as an end in itself.
When the title was released in 2017, critics were unanimous: Breath of The Wild is a masterpiece. It joins the very closed group of titles to reach the Metacritic score of 97 (while he receives the maximum mark on JVa feat). The combination of Level Design which wonderfully encourages exploration, the feeling of escape and freedom reinforced by the absence of a real HUD and finally the gameplay which is both demanding during combat and completely permissive in terms of interactivity and scalability of the in-game elements together form a coherent whole, and above all devilishly enjoyable. This formula has completely changed the face of the contemporary open-world, so much so that today many productions make direct reference to Breath of The Wild.
A legacy still tangible
The real strength of Breath of The Wild lies in its ability to constantly renew the interest of the player at the turn of an environment, an encounter or a confrontation, and to offer in-game elements at the service of his creativity. . It is not insignificant that regularly players still discover features allowed by the BOTW physics engine. But more than qualities of Game Design, Breath of The Wild represents above all a true philosophy of an open world without concession, coherent, with few beacons or directives to progress.
If this formula appears more or less explicitly in productions released over the past five years, the last two representatives to date are undoubtedly Horizon : Forbidden West
and Elden Ring. The first, which obviously remains quite interventionist, offers much more interaction and coherence with its environment than its first opus, published just a few days before Breath of The Wild. Aloy benefits from a whole panoply of tools and skills allowing her to take full advantage of the different zones to be discovered, while said zones are full of resources useful for crafting and progression.
For its part, Elden Ring offers an experience as libertarian as it is demanding. The game, completely in line with its singular conception of the difficulty and the involvement of the player, hardly hinders the course of the latter. This freedom nevertheless comes at the expense of a certain clear and direct narration. Elden Ring encourages (or forces) to travel every corner of its world, from in search of equipment, spells and skills to overcome a Boss crossed at the bend of a cave, a castle. In a similar way to Breath of The Wild, Elden Ring allows almost total freedom in its approach to exploration.
If Horizon and Elden Ring are the two most recent representatives of this heritage, it was obviously possible to quote Ghost of Tsushima, Death Strandingthe last Assassin’s Creed since Origins,
Immortals Fenyx Rising or Genshin Impact and several indie games like A Short Hike Where Sky : Children of the Light. If Breath of The Wild has definitely left its mark on the open-world genre, we can’t wait to find out what Nintendo has in store for us with its sequelstill very secret.
By SengsunnWriting jeuxvideo.com
MP