Zelda fans have been asking for a more free-form entry in the series for a long time now. 2013’s The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on 3DS offered more freedom than the series has seen in years, allowing players to tackle dungeons in any order they chose, by offering use of all of the game’s puzzle-solving tools from the outset. But most Zelda games follow a more rigid structure, where players are free to explore but must tackle temples and objectives in a certain order to progress the story.
In an interview with Polygon, producer Eiji Aonuma revealed that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may be Link’s most open-ended adventure yet.
“Users are able to go to the very end goal without revealing why Link woke up the way he did and where he did,” Aonuma said. “Whether you want to reveal the storyline and find out why Link woke up, or you want to just go straight to the goal, that’s an option totally up to the user.”
After he was asked for clarification, Aonuma confirmed that the player can, indeed, run straight to the final boss from the outset of the game. He was careful to add these words of caution: “Anybody who can go straight to the goal without doing anything else – there’s two possibilities: Either they’re a really good gamer, or they could be somebody that’s a little bit crazy. But it’s not impossible, I created the game like that.”
Sounds like a challenge, to me. Breath of the Wild is shaping up to be quite the bold new direction for the Legend of Zelda franchise. We’ll find out how it all comes together when the game launches in March 2017 for Wii U and Nintendo NX.
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Written by Brittin Shauers
Brittin literally grew up with Link, Mario and Samus. These three characters and their worlds collectively capture everything that he loves about video games.
