Hands-on: ‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’

Hands-on: ‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’
Relative to its busy booth last year, crammed full of playable games and new amiibos on display, Nintendo really put all of its eggs in one basket at E3 2016. Fortunately, that capacious and expertly crafted basket is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it’s one of the most ambitious an...

Relative to its busy booth last year, crammed full of playable games and new amiibos on display, Nintendo really put all of its eggs in one basket at E3 2016. Fortunately, that capacious and expertly crafted basket is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it’s one of the most ambitious and epic games that the company has ever produced.

We were able to play a 35-minute timed demo on the show floor, and it was just as fun as the extensive Treehouse live-stream from earlier in the week made it seem. Our session was divided into two parts: First was 15 minutes in a wooded area in the middle of the game, to show gameplay once Link is more kitted out, and then 20 minutes starting from the very beginning.

Wide open spaces

Breath of the Wild‘s open-ended nature is its most immediately striking feature. After a compellingly science-fiction opening where Link wakes up from some kind of high-tech stasis bed, he is simply dropped out onto a plateau with no specific imperative other than to go out and be the hero that Hyrule apparently needs. In a lot of ways it actually harks back to 1986’s original The Legend of Zelda for the NES, where Link was similarly just sent off into a monster-filled world to find his own way without any sort of narrative context.

Related: 7 ways Breath of the Wild is reimagining The Legend of Zelda series

Technological advances allow for the world to be immediately more compelling this time around. Right outside the cave where Link awakens, he is treated to a gorgeous vista of the huge environment sprawling in front of him like the Serengeti kingdom promised to Simba. Rolling hills, mysterious forests, a smoking volcano, and crumbling ruins all invite exploration. If you’re the kind of gamer who sees an objective marker on the map and prefers to defiantly go everywhere else first, then Breath of the Wild is the Zelda game for you.

Crafting, gathering, and a far more extensive loot system than in any previous entry are the dangling carrot to reward you for this exploration. In our 20 minutes of exploring the game’s opening area, we went from having nothing to wielding a stick, a club, a spear, a bow, and two different swords. We don’t know the full extent of the loot that will be available over the course of play, but the impression from just this brief taste is that there will be quite a lot.

Bodies in motion

Adding to the sense that this is a huge, living world for you to explore — instead of a series of levels for you to complete — is a greater degree of physicality than in previous Zelda titles. Link’s newfound abilities to jump and climb changes the way to approach the environment. A cliff is no longer an obvious barrier, but is instead an opportunity for you to find out what’s on top. Maybe it will be too high for you to make it up before expending your limited stamina, but you won’t know until you try! The game’s play space is obviously still circumscribed ultimately, but the huge environments, added verticality, and expanded means of traversal creates an immersive sense of open-endedness that the series has never provided before.

The rest of the game around Link also benefits from a greater grounding in physics. Like in the streamed Treehouse footage, we found boulders to roll down cliffs onto unsuspecting enemies, and trees that could be chopped down. In the mid-game section of our demo we faced a boss-like enemy in the form of a giant earth elemental made of boulders. A smaller, dark rock jutted out of the creature’s head, which was its only weak point. At first we pinged away at it with arrows, but that was slow-going and we quickly drained our quiver.

Eventually we remembered that we could climb, and so ran around behind, jumped onto its back, and made our way up until we were standing on its broad head to slash at the weak spot directly until bucked off. The Zelda series has always had Link face off against giant foes, but the ability to climb up them in the style of Shadow of the Colossus adds a new sense of scale, gravity, and immediacy to them that’s especially exciting.

“If you’re the kind of gamer who sees an objective marker on the map and prefers to defiantly go everywhere else first, then Breath of the Wild is the Zelda game for you.”

In that middle section we also had access to a few more tools, including two types of bombs that were clearly designed to take advantage of the more robust physics simulation. Spherical bombs would roll around freely at the mercy of gravity, while cubic bombs resisted. Link could trigger both bombs on command, removing the need to time your throws and instead allowing for easier, more tactical application.

Also, where previous games had you buying or finding bombs with a finite carrying capacity, these were simply on a recharge timer. Their bright blue glow and remote detonation capability indicate that they are probably related to the advanced technology of the Sheikah Slate that Link is given at the start of his adventure. We also had the previously shown magnet with us, but weren’t able to find any metal objects with which to use it during the demo.

Mysteries abound

At the very end of our play session, we finally made our way over to the objective indicated on the map by our slate. (Fortunately, unlike the pestering Navi from Ocarina of Time, the game only bugged us once to go where it had asked us.) Finding a pedestal, we slotted our slate in, setting ancient machinery whirring to life as an enormous tower rose up from the ground beneath our feet. A brief montage showed similar towers springing up simultaneously all over Hyrule. What narrative or gameplay purpose will these towers serve? We have no idea, because the screen immediately faded to black, but we are eager to find out.

Breath of the Wild demonstrates remarkable confidence on Nintendo’s part, drawing from the Zelda series’ long history while also defiantly throwing half the playbook out the window to pull in tropes from other open-world RPGs and make them its own. The game doesn’t hold your hand. Instead, it just presents a rich and inviting world and trusts in your desire to explore it. Consider us hooked, Nintendo. We can’t wait to continue this adventure.

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