The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

It's hard to overstate the courage and conviction with which producer Eiji Aonuma, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and their team have rewritten their own work, and the size of the risk Nintendo has taken with a beloved property. Breath of the Wild isn't just the most radical departure from the Zelda tradition in its 30-year history, it's the first Nintendo game that feels like it was made in a world where Half-Life 2, Halo, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Skyrim happened. It's inspired by those greats and others, but it doesn't ape them any more than it rests on its own laurels. [Essential]

In this modern age of objective-laden open worlds, convoluted skill trees and tiresome hand-holding, that sense of real adventure – that you might find something that no one else in the world has seen – is all too rare. And a Zelda game may have been the last place in the world you expected to find it.

This is a game that will dominate dinner conversations. It’s a game that will lead to countless anecdotes, discoveries, and swapped stories. Already, colleagues and I have spent a great deal of time comparing notes and talking about how we solved major puzzles.

That's what makes this Zelda so special. For all that's familiar in the world and its inhabitants, the mechanics and the abilities they empower, there's one critical difference: Breath of the Wild sets you free. We've marched off to free Hyrule from Ganon's clutches time and time again, but this is the first Zelda game in which you can really, truly lose yourself.

Breath of the Wild has something that’s been missing from the series for years: surprise. Most recent Zelda adventures have become formulaic, abiding by a rigid and proven structure that offers nostalgia and familiarity, but little room for revelations, either big or small. Breath of the Wild is more open and natural than its predecessors, letting you discover things — like how lightning works — through experimentation. It isn’t always as curated and cinematic as other Zelda games, but the unpredictability makes it feel like a true adventure, where you’re uncovering your own path, instead of hitting your marks and following the script.

In marketing material, Nintendo has been calling this game an "open air adventure," the sort of unique genre description that is invented alongside so many big budget Japanese games. When I first heard that term, I rolled my eyes a little. The power of the term "adventure" has been diminished through use in the games industry. A term that once conjured a feeling of momentum and danger, intrigue and bravery has become generic. But Breath of the Wild managed to revive the term for me. For the first time in years, I don't just feel like I'm fighting enemies or searching for loot, like I'm "questing" or "exploring." I feel like I'm adventuring.