Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild grabbed the biggest attention at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo. Having the longest queue in the gaming industry conference's history, Nintendo offered a limited hands-on demo to hyper-excited fans and gave them a teaser experience of what's to come from the latest title from the Zelda series.
As reported by Eurogamer, the "Breath of the Wild may actually receive the distinction in franchise history as Nintendo's most technologically ambitious game to date. After years of long wait, Nintendo may now sit back and justify quite comfortably why it took them so long to release the game despite incessant public demand. While rival titles are sliding toward an "open world fatigue," Nintendo seems to have done something right as far as game design is concerned.
What makes the game unique from previously released Zelda titles? For one, the game is set in a huge traversable open world which has never been the case in earlier franchise games. To some extent, the game does have a striking resemblance to the original- the sense of freedom where players were allowed to run free and explore as they wish.
With an interesting approach to exploration and experimentation, "Breath of the Wild" seems to have overcome the problem often associated with open world games: the ease of navigation. In most open-world games, map designs are often so complex that players need have to mini-maps and a number of objective markers. But with "Breath of the Wild," the sense of discovery and freedom is matched by Nintendo's ongoing efforts to match it with technologically-advanced designs on Wii U and NX platforms.
While most industry observers use the term "open world," to describe the game, Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's Creative Fellow, begged to differ in his recent interview explaining why "Breath of the Wild is preferably more "Open Air" than an "Open World."
"I look at this game and I see a world that is fully integrated into the exploration and the adventure. It's not just a world that you're passing through. It's sort of a world that you're a part of. So much of the adventure and exploration is in this outdoor space, and the theme of wilderness collectively seemed like 'Open Air' was the right fit for it," said Nintendo Senior Product Marketing Manager Bill Trinen (via International Business Times).
In another Zelda-related news, ahead of the "Breath of the Wild's" release later this year, series producer Eiji Aonuma may have had dropped hints about what's to come. He is currently exploring how a multiplayer mode will play out in the series.
"I would like to take what I learned from Breath of the Wild and see if we can somehow fuse those learning points into another multiplayer Zelda," Aonuma told IGN at E3 2016. "For example, with Triforce Heroes, which followed a similar format of Four Swords, there was a multiplayer involved in that game."
