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Instead, you are given the bare minimum you need to complete the main quest, a pile of pins, and a blank map just begging you to fill it in yourself. There is an enormous amount of stuff to do and see, and if you were handed a checklist of waypoints to methodically clear off right away it could easily feel overwhelming rather than exciting.

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BotW has influenced countless other games since its release in 2017, but one of the most important lessons that very few of them seemed to learn is that a blank map can be more powerful than a full one.

It’s not storytelling on the level of a game like God of War or anything, but it can be a legitimate high point instead of simply the entertaining background flavor it was mostly relegated to in BotW.Įxploration is the lifeblood of the recent Zeldas, though, and doing so is still an absolute delight in Tears – especially when the new building system empowers you to slap together custom cars, boats, and flying machines that truly let you navigate its world however you want. I’m still a bit amazed Nintendo decided to go the way it did, and the freshness that surprise provides helps Tears stand out amongst your typical Zelda plots. Sure, it’s about stopping some evil jerk (welcome back, Ganondorf) and saving Princess Zelda as usual, but the direction that familiar shell is taken is buck wild at times in the best possible way. This still might not be the best storytelling structure over the course of such a large game, as it leaves you without much direct interaction with its central characters for most of your time playing, but that’s very easy to forgive when the story itself is so dang cool. The bulk of the cutscenes and big story moments are also once again collected at specific spots around the map, shedding light on the history of Hyrule and the source of the “Upheaval” – a bombastic event at the start of Tears that opens up menacing chasms, causes the ruins of an ancient civilization called the Zonai to appear floating in the sky, and peppers the surface with new structures and strange anomalies. You can even march right to the finale of the campaign if you know where to look, though that’s not quite as straightforward to attempt this time around (which is probably for the best, as I do not recommend it for anybody but the inevitable speedrunners, whom I proudly salute).

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From there you are free to do whatever the heck you want. The initial structure is a very familiar one: you start in a masterfully crafted introductory area where you learn the ropes and get a new set of powerful abilities, then dive into the open world with a main quest marker that quickly splits into four. I can safely say people who enjoyed BotW will almost certainly like Tears, partly because of just how similar these two games are. Things that are as simple as being able to climb nearly any wall or glide as far as your expandable stamina will take you, or the concept of shrines acting as self-contained puzzle chambers you can solve to boost your abilities are things I don’t have time to get into here simply because there’s so much new to cover. Tears looks even smarter and more expansive when you know what came before it, but many of the recognizable basics shine just as brightly. On top of that, you’ll likely want to have played BotW to fully understand much of what I’ll be discussing here – not to mention because it’s an incredible game and you’re depriving yourself by skipping it. Read the full The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review I’ll easily spend 50 to 100 more trying to track down its fascinating moments. And even after I’ve spent more than 50 hours searching the far reaches of Hyrule, I still manage to come across things I haven’t seen before.

I’ve had so many adventures in Breath of the Wild, and each one has a unique story behind what led me to them, making them stories on top of stories. It presents a wonderful sandbox full of mystery, dangling dozens upon dozens of tantalizing things in front of you that just beg to be explored.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterclass in open-world design and a watershed game that reinvents a 30-year-old franchise.

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