Breath of the Wild is among the greatest video games ever made.
Nintendo took all the great things from the long line of Zelda entries, added modern gameplay and set things in an open-world — a very large one at that. Aside from a story that feels re-hashed, it’s pitch perfect — scaling up difficulty and exploration as you go along.
Exploration is key here. Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, producer Eiji Aonuma and team advance the story while providing almost complete freedom. Game Maker’s Toolkit has a great video that shows off how they did it.
The other thing is how zen it can be simply moving through the world.
Craig Mod picked up the game over the pandemic and eloquently captures how incredible it is just to walk around, and then some.
I also played the game again over the course of 2021-2022 and that is about the highest praise I can give any game. That so rarely happens (unless a game has an HD remake).
