With the release of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and it reaching 10 million sales within the first weekend of launch (making it the fastest-selling title in the series), I decided I would pull out my switch and the copy of Breath of the Wild that I only ever got a few hours into back when it came out. The plan was to finally play through BotW in preparation for playing TotK. I knew that my endeavor was going to be a major time sink as BotW has over 100+ hours of gameplay, but I figured that by now, with all the guides and advice for BotW, my journey would be easier than my last attempt. This was true to a degree, with maps to find all the korack seeds, shrines, and guides on where to go, but after 20+ hours into BotW, while the game isn’t terrible, I’m not having fun.
This is where we get to my central point; when I play a game my goal is to have fun above all, whether that means a relaxing casual experience, a tense challenging experience, or something else along those lines. BotW falls into a problem that is becoming all the more common in this day and age with big AAA games; game developers giving too much attention and credit to massive open-world games.
Sure, the worldbuilding aspect of an open world is amazing, but with my time in BotW so far, everything has begun to feel like a chore. Find this korack seed, and that temple, do this side quest, cook food, manage your inventory over and over again, climb that Ubisoft Brand Map Vision Tower™; all the while spending large portions of gameplay just running across the map from place to place doing nothing. At first, exploring can be fun, but then it becomes a chore that makes progressing and completing a game boring. I actually went deeper into the problems with open-world games in a previous article here.
While BotW and TotK are definitely great games, for me, the open world is actually a step backward in my enjoyment of the Zelda series. However, I can’t claim to be a huge Zelda fan or even an OG one. My first Zelda game was Phantom Hourglass and the first one I finished was Skyward Sword, after which I backtracked to Twilight Princess. What I can say is that for Zelda games like Skyward Sword that actually have a concept of level design and are more railroaded, playing them is actually enjoyable and never feels like a chore.
What's good about older Zelda games is that you never have to spend hours just doing chores to have fun. There's no maintenance or downtime, every moment of your playthrough is entertaining with no monotonous pauses between puzzles, combat, adventure, and story. Sure, the combat of Skyward Sword can be a mess, especially compared to BotW and TotK, but I never felt bored during my time with older Zelda games. I’ve definitely been bored playing BotW, and from what I’ve seen TotK is essentially BotW again with a different map and some small extras.
What my argument all boils down to is that the new direction BotW has taken the Zelda series in, is actually a decrease in the series' quality. If you think I’m wrong I'll ask you this, for all you dedicated BotW or TotK lovers out there, out of however many tens or hundreds of hours you’ve sunk into the game, how much of that time do think you actually spent playing the game and not doing chores? I’d be willing to bet more than 50% of the average BotW or TotK playtime is just doing chores or running through the map from place to place, and for me, at least, I don’t play games to do chores. What about you?
