Only some news are available in English. We will endeavor to the entire site in your language.

The Feeling of Freedom in Breath of the Wild

Video-games have been trying to give the best feeling of freedom as they could for a while. Today, two games are facing each-other, but even if Horizon Zero Dawn is graphically higher, in a realistic way, it’s Breath of the Wild, on Nintendo Swicth, and its powerful personality that win the fight.

Written by on
Temps de lecture : 7 min

Video-games have been trying to give the best feeling of freedom as they could for a while. Today, two games are facing each-other, but even if Horizon Zero Dawn is graphically higher, in a realistic way, it’s Breath of the Wild, on Nintendo Swicth, and its powerful personality that win the fight.

Going everywhere, whenever you want

This is the bet of the brand new Zelda game, and if a only saw a third of the map, I have no feeling of restriction whatsoever. The game advices me to follow a specific path, but I don’t have to. Therefore, I could have decided to go and fight Ganon right at the beginning of the game. But I chose to explore and find sanctuaries, villages and any interesting place.

No corridor

One of the limits we often have, it’s corridor spaces, especially in FPSs. You just have to follow a precise direction can’t deviate from it, and often, you can’t go back because a wall or a tree or a truck or anything just fell on the way back… That kind of gameplay doesn’t give any feeling of freedom. In past Zelda games, 2D or 3D, we had some corridor moments (forest path, ravine). And even if I still put Twilight Princess in my personal top 5, I must admit that some parts of it are corridors, just like in the beginning in the village where you wake up.

But even without speaking of physical corridor, linearity is a king of narrative corridor. Things have to be done in a precise order and in a precise way before you can fight the boss. And this is very common in most games today.

In Breatf of the Wild, from the beginning, this feeling of restriction disappears. Yes, the beginning of the game is limited to one specific area, but even then, you are not told to absolutely do anything, and you are just guided without any hand holding you. You can find sanctuaries in any order you want. And in your own way, you are going to go through this tutorial, maybe without noticing this is one. The game wants you to learn by yourself. You won’t be told how to do things. You will have to understand how to cross a ravine by chopping a tree, or how to light a fire. You won’t have the choice to learn if you want to enjoy the game. And when you learnt the basics, all the remaining parts of the map are available. Now, you can go absolutely anywhere.

No hidden door, nor invisible wall

In order to understand what a hidden door is, you must have played a Metroid game (Metroid Prime!). So, you are in a kind of open-world, but some places are impossible to visit because you don’t have the right object to cross the “hidden door”. In Metroid, you often need to have the right missile. In Zelda, you usually have to get a specific item. An invisible wall, it’s simply when you walk and you don’t move : you’ve hit the invisible limit of the game.

Those two elements prevent a game from truly being an open-world. I haven’t explore everything yet in Breath of the Wild, but in two weeks, I have not come across any invisible wall, nor hidden door. Not even one unclimbable cliff. We can go on any inch of the game, and that’s feel fantastic! Okay, The Windwaker already had some kind of open-world, mais definitely not as huge, and it was closed by invisible walls. For now, I know that the eastern par of Hyrule Kingdom is bordered by the sea, so I can’t leave because I would drown. Indeed, Link got a stamina bar, and this bar is your only limit. That’s the smart trick. The only limit to exploration is your own stamina, your physical capacities. This and your health. And you can improve both stamina and health by praying the goddess after finishing four sanctuaries.

This new upgrade system is more interesting that the hunt for pieces of heart. The reward seems a bit more legitimate, and it gives strength to the game mythology. And it makes you want to explore more to improve your capacities by finding the sanctuaries.

Conclusion

Breath of the Wild, through its incredibly beautiful universe, invites us into a reverie, a journey and exploration. Its gameplay is thought in that way, and we drift from the storytelling quite easily to enjoy and admire the sumptuous locations of Hyrule. The astounding gigantism of the map and the complete freedom we have doesn’t just make us play a game, we depart for a long, beautiful and initiation journey. In a boring society where work leads our lives, this game invite us to a life with nothing but the wild. Perfect for the hybrid aspect of the switch! Nintendo offer us a masterpiece. Its visual style gives it a unique personality and dig the gap with a reality we try to escape. Nintendo chose the opposite way from Sony and Microsoft which are in a “visual realism” race. Nintendo chose to escape reality. It’s an invitation to a voyage on a world where everything is only “luxe, calme et volupé

Next : the storytelling in Breath of the Wild


The article contains translation errors?

Did you like this article? Share it with your friends


Commentaires

comments powered by Disqus
PauseGeek.fr