The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Description

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild follows Link as he awakens after a 100-year sleep in a ruined Hyrule and begins to understand the scale of the disaster that has reshaped the land. The story centres on his gradual recovery of memory and purpose, and on the slow re‑establishment of connections with the people and places scattered across the remains of the kingdom. Its tone focuses on solitude, ruined beauty, and the steady rebuilding of life. After a long development, the game was one of the last releases for the Wii U, while launching alongside the Switch launch.

The game presents broad landscapes that Link crosses by climbing, gliding, horse riding, and swimming, with weather and temperature affecting how he travels. Shrines provide short puzzle sequences that use physics, chemistry, and rune abilities, while larger dungeons appear as Divine Beasts that Link enters and reconfigures from within. Weapons and shields break with use, so players constantly adapt to what they find. Cooking endless combinations of ingredients produce meals and elixirs that support exploration, and the map opens through towers that reveal terrain rather than objectives.

These gameplay systems place it in direct conversation with other open world games of its era like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin’s Creed Origins, GTA V, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Watch Dogs 2, and Far Cry Primal / Far Cry 5. It stood apart as an open-world game because it gives players true freedom, allowing them to explore anywhere and approach objectives in any order. Instead of relying on map markers and rigid quests, it encourages curiosity through natural world design and interconnected systems like physics, weather, and chemistry. This makes exploration, problem-solving, and discovery feel organic, creative, and rewarding rather than scripted. Its later sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, builds directly on these mechanics. Comparatively, the prior entries of Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword followed a linear structure within their large or open worlds.

The scale of the world, the freedom of movement, and the variety of emergent interactions, has seen the game widely recognised for its influence on open world design and for the sense of experimentation it encourages. It has broadly been considered one of the best games of all time with near perfect review scores, major award wins, and ongoing influence on later games.