Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games
of all time. Exploring the vast kingdom of Hyrule and discovering
everything it has to offer gave me a sense of joy, excitement and reward that only one
other title ever has and not so surprisingly it’s my other favorite game. Breath of the Wild is an incredible experience
and an important entry to the Zelda franchise, which was in desperate need of a shake up
after Skyward Sword had made it clear that the Zelda formula was being stretched a bit
too thin. And for me, above all else, it gave a clear
picture of the kind of game design I resonate with most: player-driven discovery where freedom
is king, and for that I will always hold it in the highest regard. With that said, it also has some stuff that’s
kind of bad. So, I thought it’d be interesting to look
at a few of the issues I have with Breath of the Wild and discuss what could be done
differently to make things more effective. My goal in this is to provide relatively small
changes that either add minor mechanics or repurpose already existing ones, so that I’m
not just pitching an entirely new game. Obviously, I am not a professional game designer,
so it’s quite likely my suggestions are a) outside of the scope of what would have
actually been possible and b) just plain bad, so grab your salt or whatever and let’s
start with the most hotly contested mechanic of Breath of the Wild. I’ll start by admitting that I actually
like Breath of the Wild’s weapon durability system. It creates exciting moments in combat where
you’re hit with the panic of what to do next when a weapon shatters. Do you keep cycling through your limited arsenal,
expending the valuable weapons you’ve discovered or do you try to outrun the bokoblin you just
smacked and grab his weapon before he can. Especially in the early game when inventory
slots are low, it keeps battles exciting and forces players to examine their environment
for any sort of advantage, whether it be a weapon lying around or something they can
drop on an enemies head. The system also encourages exploration in
order to replenish the player’s stock of weapons as well as finding korok seeds to
help them carry more. The game is designed and balanced around the
idea that weapons will constantly break, so even though players will destroy hundreds
of weapons throughout their playthrough, there will always be one just as good if not better
around the next bend. However, the fact of the matter is that players
don’t like losing stuff. I’ve talked in the past about my bad habits
with hoarding consumable items. I always have the irrational fear that there
could be a better, more important time to use an item, which causes me and a lot of
other players to hold on to stuff for far too long. No matter how many times games try to push
against that way of thinking, so many of us have been conditioned to save items until
the perfect moment, despite the reality being that that moment doesn’t exist. And this same sentiment extends to the weapons
in Breath of the Wild. There are a ton of difficult encounters to
get through, and even though the game is designed in a way where using up a weapon is not the
end of the world, players worry that it might be, which can encourage some unfortunate player
behavior. The worst of which is avoiding fights altogether
as to not break their most powerful weapons. There are certainly games where avoiding conflict
in order to not waste resources is really interesting, but those titles are designed
around that idea where Breath of the Wild really isn’t. It’s a game about expanding Link’s power,
not trying to maintain what is left of it, so players hitting a point of actively avoiding
fights just to hold onto their resources is kind of bad. So, what could fix these issues? The most common suggestion I’ve seen is
to simply add a repair feature, like how most games do it, but I feel like this kind of
takes away what makes Breath of the Wild’s durability system good in the first place. In other games when a weapon breaks or is
about to break, it doesn’t mean much to me. I either go to the weaponsmith or use an item
I bought in order to repair it. Neither of these have much of an effect on
how I approach the game aside from getting me to use up some resources or having to go
back into town. Furthermore, with games that have more permanent
weapons, the only time I get excited about finding a new one is when it has a slightly
higher number than whatever I’m carrying, which doesn’t happen the majority of the
time, often making loot gathering a slightly disappointing experience. In the early parts of Breath of the Wild,
anytime I came across a weapon, regardless of whether or not it was better than what
I had, I was excited to find it because I needed it to be viable in combat. This made those trips off the beaten path
almost always feel worth it. At it’s best, Breath of the Wild’s system
encourages players to explore, solve puzzles, and come up with creative ways to engage enemies
in order to get more weapons. So while I get why people want a way to hold
onto their strongest stuff, I think having a repair system would encourage players to
engage less with the various mysteries of the world because they wouldn’t have as
much of a reason to. Korok seeds would lose a lot of importance
as players would care less about having a lot of weapons and more about gathering supplies
to maintain their favorites. I’ve heard the argument that a repair system
could still incentivize exploration by requiring players to gather rare ores in order to fix
their stuff, and while that’s not terrible reasoning it also feels a little grindy. To me, there is something way more exciting
about finding a hype new weapon in the wild than a rock that can fix one. Instead of finding ways to hold onto stuff,
I think the best approach to deal with Breath of the Wild's weapon hoarding issue would
be to give players a reason to want them to break. My proposed solution would be to have a material
that the player gets every time a weapon shatters. As the breaking animation has a similar aesthetic
to the various ancient items in the game, let’s call this Ancient Shards. So whenever a weapon breaks the player gets
an ancient shard which could be used for all sorts of things like for upgrades at the fairy
fountains, or as a component for more complex ancient items, or it could even be combined
with bugs and monster parts to make strong elixirs. The importance is that it would be a valuable
part of progression and give a sort of consolation for losing an item. To incentivize breaking stronger weapons,
there could be different sizes or strengths of shards. Like anything below 10 strength would net
a small shard, ones with 11-30 could be a medium shard, and so on and so forth. Larger shards would yield more effective items
and better upgrades, so in some ways, players would actually want their good weapons to
break so that they could get better stuff. And in the later game once players are pretty
sufficiently upgraded, the shards could be used to recharge the Master Sword, which would
allow it to be a bit more of a permanent fixture in the player’s arsenal while still giving
them a reason to use other weapons. I also think that this would help curb people
from using the Master Sword as an all-purpose tool for tasks like cutting down trees or
launching rocks because they’d actually benefit from their weapons taking damage. This in turn would hopefully lead to the Master
Sword primarily being used for cool things instead of gardening. No offense to gardeners. For this to work, I think they’d need to
change it so weapons don’t shatter after being thrown because otherwise it’d be a
bit too easy to just grind out shards. Frankly, I’d be all for changing how throwing
items works. If instead of breaking, it just did some extra
damage, it’d create an interesting moment of needing to pick up the weapon before the
enemy can, which would be cool Ultimately, rewarding players with a material
for breaking weapons wouldn’t disrupt any existing systems in the game. Upgrades and craftable items could all be
the exact same as they are now, just some of them would require ancient shards; really
the only drastic change would be giving the master sword an alternate method of recharging,
but given that it would have a cost, I don’t think it would harm the flow of the game. More than anything, adding the Ancient Shards
would change how players perceive durability by making it clear that weapons are supposed
to break all the time and hoarding them only will put the player at a disadvantage because
they miss out on finding new weapons and gathering a valuable resource. With that, let’s dive a little deeper and
talk about dungeons. Breath of the Wild’s design philosophy is
all about connecting hundreds of small challenges together in order to create its massive adventure.No
task takes all that long to accomplish, and it is one of the few open-world titles I’ve
played where I could jump in for only 15-20 minutes and still feel like I had made some
sort of worthwhile progress. The longest amount of time a player will spend
on any single challenge are the Divine Beasts and Hyrule Castle, and even those can be comfortably
completed in under an hour. This setup is pretty perfect for an open-world
game as there is a constant loop of challenge and reward, and every activity whether it
be completing a shrine or collecting a bug feels like it is building to the games main
goal of defeating Ganon, but of course, this isn’t just an open-world game. It’s a Zelda game, so a lot of people myself
included were a bit disappointed by the lack of traditional Zelda dungeons. And it’s tough because I do think that the
quick gameplay loops Breath of the Wild sets up are important for its overall pacing, but
it really could have used a few longer challenges with different rewards than korok seeds and
spirit orbs. While some people would look at extending
the size of the Divine Beasts, I don’t think that would really scratch the Zelda Dungeon
itch people felt while playing Breath of the Wild. Due to their non-linearity and open design,
they don’t really feel like a Zelda Dungeon, and And I think that is fine. The issue is that as they are kind of the
only thing in Breath of the Wild that resembles a typical Zelda dungeon in terms of scope
and reward, they end up being compared to them despite not being all that similar. In fact, as many have noted before, the design
of the shrines are far more aligned with what players have grown used to from previous games,
and that is where I would look in order to integrate dungeons into Breath of the Wild. So, here’s my pitch, which I imagine isn’t
all that far off from ideas some of you have had. I’d lower the number of Shrines from 120
to 90 and then change the amount of spirit orbs needed to get a health or stamina upgrade
from 4 to 3, so that the upgrade total doesn’t change. From there I’d take the puzzles connected
to 20 of the shrines and make two dungeons out of them. The 10 excess shrines would all be combat
ones that I’d just throw out of the game because there are far too many of them as
things stand right now. In these dungeons, ideally there’d be a
unique boss at the end of it, but as I think I have stretched my mission statement of “offering
relatively small changes” about as far as I can, I’d say variations of some of the
overworld bosses could fit well here. A massive stone Talus and/or a Molduga with
some sort of interesting arena could be good fits. Lastly, the reward for completing the dungeon
would be something big. My immediate thought would be to give players
the Master Sword equivalent of a Bow and Shield for completing each dungeon. So they’d be rechargeable and have some
sort of special ability. Maybe it could be a reworked version of the
Hylian shield that could automatically reflect lasers back at enemies and the bow could give
the player access to light arrows early that blind foes. This set up would especially help the late
game of Breath of the Wild. During my first playthrough I hit a point
where spirit orbs started to feel less valuable. I would still go after them and they were
useful, but the satisfaction I got from completing the first 30-40 shrines had worn thin by the
time I was up to around 60. I wanted something bigger, and there were
times where it almost seemed like the game was going to provide that. Like, there are three labyrinths spread throughout
Hyrule; seeing these massive structures filled me with so much intrigue about what they could
be hiding, so when it turned it to be a somewhat simple challenge that ended with a shrine,
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Having dungeons, even just a couple would
provide that bigger, more difficult challenge that players are looking for by the time they
are getting near the end of the game, and having a reward that is far more valuable
than the major collectibles would add a feeling of depth to Hyrule that’d go a long way. It is worth mentioning that Breath of the
Wild does have a pretty great area with a lot of shades of classic Zelda Dungeons, but
I think most players skipped over it. Hyrule Castle has a lot of really cool elements
to it. There are puzzles, fights, and obstacles to
avoid, but by the time most players get to it, they’ve amassed a huge pool of stamina,
gathered all the special abilities from the divine beasts, the most important of which
being Revali’s gale, and gotten the Zora tunic which allows them to swim up waterfalls. These three things trivialize the challenge
of Hyrule Castle, and on one hand that is awesome. Players are rewarded for the work they’ve
put in by being able to scale the castle in the quickest way possible, which feels pretty
good. The issue is it also has them skip over one
of the best areas in the game. I think the easiest solution to this would
be to add terminals like the ones in the divine beasts at various points in the castle. This would get players to explore each major
section and engage with it’s challenges while still giving them freedom in how they
move around. I don’t think formatting Hyrule Castle in
this way would give players who felt like Breath of the Wild was missing traditional
dungeons exactly what they want, as this setup certainly would feel closer to the divine
beasts, but I think it would have helped give a little more weight to the ending and feel
like a structured gauntlet for players to overcome. Lightning Round Before moving onto my final major section,
I wanted to go over some smaller things that I have less to say about but are still important. First, while each of the divine beasts have
unique designs from a mechanical perspective, visually they all look pretty samey. It’d have been nice if each had unique innards
that weren’t boring and kind of ugly. Also, the bosses all sort of blend together,
which I get is sort of the point as they are extensions of Ganon’s corruption, but I
think Nintendo missed a really good opportunity to both differentiate the design of the blight’s
and push forward that feeling of Ganon’s spreading threat by having each of the bosses
incorporate elements of the corresponding hero. If each of the blights were combined with
one of Link’s old friends, they’d have been far more visually distinct and disturbing,
creating a more memorable fight. Next, there should be some sort of limit on
how much Link can eat or drink. Either there should be some sort of cooldown
after ingesting something or eating should happen in real-time so that players have to
be strategic when they decide to scarf something down. It’s a little goofy that Link can just eat
20 apples when he’s in danger; it makes things a little too easy. As for climbing while it’s raining; I actually
like the rain mechanic a fair bit as having weather affect things players can do forces
them to be more creative with how they approach an obstacle, but it’d be a lot better if
Link only slid like half the distance he does. Rain should make things inconvenient, not
impossible, and if the solution to a problem is to just sit there and wait, that is a boring
solution. The fast travel system needs to be reined
in. It does a good job by having set locations
to travel to that the player has to discover first, but it also allows people to fast travel
when right next to enemies and even while falling, which just feels weird. Fast Travel should be a convenience option
to get places quicker, not be a way to bail players out of bad situations. I like the idea of Flurry Rush, but it is
way too easy to pull off and it kind of trivializes normal attacks. This might be a little too involved, but I’d
say the best bet would be to add a meter that builds up everytime Link pulls off a dodge,
and once that is filled all the way, then he can use Flurry Rush. This would make it so fights weren’t disrupted
by bullet time nearly as often and it would give more importance to other ways of attack. Lastly, you should be able to pet dogs. Now, let’s talk about the ending. One of my favorite things about Breath of
the Wild is that at any point after the introduction, players can walk into Hyrule Castle and attempt
to defeat Ganon. Doing so early on will be a hell of a task
as getting to the top will prove difficult without various upgrades and abilities, and
not only does the player have to take on Calamity Ganon, but they also have to take on any of
the blights that they didn’t face in the Divine Beasts. Essentially the game frames itself in a way
where the more things they do around the world, the stronger they will be and the fewer obstacles
they will have to face once at the top of Hyrule Castle. If the player has completed each of the Divine
Beast, they will unleash a massive strike that takes out half of Calamity Ganon’s
Health. In a lot of ways, this idea is great. It presents a nearly impossible task that
only the best and most patient players will be able to get through and then through the
various quests Link completes he and the player gain the skills and power ups to defeat Ganon. There is something really satisfying about
powering up a character to the point where they can squish the final boss, and Breath
of the Wild definitely follows that idea. However, the way the final fight is framed
for players who have completed the main quest is a little underwhelming. Aside from being able to breeze through the
castle and avoid additional fights with the blights, if the player has beaten the divine
beasts, Ganon gets zapped at the start of the fight and loses half his health. I like getting an advantage in the fight for
doing various quests, but watching his health bar get drained didn’t feel like my own
accomplishment; if instead of hurting Ganon, the Divine Beasts shot powered up either the
Master Sword or really any of Link’s weapons, I think the fight would have felt a lot better. Like, consider the fierce deity's mask in
Majora’s Mask. Instead of presenting it as Majora becoming
less powerful, it elevates Link to a god-like status, and even though it turns what is normally
a complicated and difficult fight into just mashing B, it feels really good because the
player gets to be the one who rinses through the final bosses health pool instead of it
happening in a cutscene. So while having Link’s attacks against Ganon
do twice as much damage as they already do would essentially be the same thing as just
lowering his health bar , it lets the player feel like way more of a badass because they
have control. Of course, even with this shift in framing,
I think it’d be nice if there was a way to have Calamity Ganon still be a worthwhile
challenge for players who do nearly everything the game has to offer. I’d say for starters, it would benefit from
always having the Blight Boss gauntlet before the Ganon fight, regardless of whether or
not the player has finished the divine beasts. These versions could be slightly altered ones
that are no longer connected to the corresponding hero, and they could even add a new layer
where Blights switch in and out periodically so the player always has to be on their toes. On top of that, I would do the Hollow Knight
thing where if the player has done pretty much everything in the game, they unlock an
additional final boss that provides a much greater challenge and a more satisfying ending. My thought for this would be to have the true
final boss be tied to completing the Divine Beasts, getting the Master Sword, clearing
the 2 dungeons I made up to get the special shield and bow, and finding all of the memories
spread across Hyrule. If the player faces Ganon before doing all
of these things, I’d have the game end after beating his first form. His presence would be extinguished from Hyrule
and peace would return to the land, but Zelda would seemingly vanish with him. I think this would be a satisfying enough
ending for people who are just ready to be done with the story, but give those that want
to have a more satisfying resolution a reason to keep playing. So, if the player faces Ganon after doing
all of the prerequisites, they would get a memory or something that shows Link how to
both defeat Ganon and save Zelda that would then unlock the true final boss: Dark Beast
Ganon. And the most important part here is that I
would make Dark Beast Ganon not lame. As it stands, Ganon’s final form isn’t
all that challenging. I do love how it requires players to do a
slow motion arrow shot while falling to finish the fight, but the rest of it is mostly just
waiting around, taking pot shots at a distance. I really feel like they should have just dedicated
to the Shadow of the Colossus thing and had the Dark Beast Ganon fight be about climbing
to weak points on his body and taking them out. While the Taluses are far smaller in size,
it is obviously a mechanic they’re able to pull off so I don’t know why it’d be
impossible here. The fight could consist of shooting Ganon
with the light arrow to make him safe to climb on and then taking out weak points that maybe
are defended by some mini blights as to still have traditional combat. The dream would be to have Dark Link form
out of the malice that makes up Ganon, but again, I think I am stretching my “small
changes” clause a bit further than I should. This loop would repeat a few times until the
final weak spot is exposed, and then yeah do the cool arrow thing. All in all, I think this could be a far more
engaging and difficult fight that tests both the players ability to navigate dangerous
terrain and duel powerful foes, providing a solid challenge for the most dedicated of
players. Finishing this fight would unlock the same
ending you get when you collect all the memories, but as an extra reward, I’d have Zelda herself
be playable after unlocking this ending. I don’t think it has to make sense in the
canon, and she could still mechanically be pretty much the same as Link, but I think
it’d be a nice little reward to players who went the extra mile. Anyway, that's all of it. At least all of what I’m interested in actually
talking about. I’ll be honest, it feels weird to critique
Breath of the Wild in this way. Obviously I think it has lots of room for
improvement, but at the same time, I don’t know that I’d feel all that differently
about it if everything I laid out in this video had been in it at release. Of course, it could just be that my ideas
aren’t that great, but more than anything, it’s that when I think about Breath of the
Wild, I think about the first time hearing the piano kick in while riding a horse; I
think about scaling Lanayru mountain and being awestruck at what sat atop it; I think about
how I constantly wanted to see what was around the next corner and always being pleasantly
surprised by whatever it was. While Breath of the Wild certainly could have
been a better game, I didn’t really need it to be any different than it was. I hope that Breath of the Wild 2 properly
addresses the weaker points of the original--which by the way, Nintendo, if you’re watching,
feel free to use any of the ideas I came up with. All you need to do in return is put a paper
bag headpiece in the next game. Thanks. Honestly though, I want that less for players
like myself and more for the ones who couldn't get into Breath of the Wild for whatever reason. I understand that some people just will never
vibe with certain games, but I genuinely wish that everyone could feel the way I did when
playing Breath of the Wild for the first time, and I think that is why I’ve spent the last
20 minutes talking about potential fixes to the game: even though nothing I say here will
change anything, I like imagining a world where my favorite game worked for everyone. And while we’re talking about things that
work for everyone, let me tell you about this video’s sponsor, Audible. I’ve said many times on the record that
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I’m driving, working or playing games that don’t need as much attention and my go to
thing to listen to are audiobooks, as I like my stories. The reality is finding time to just sit down
and read has become tough as every year I found myself busier than the last, so audiobooks
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for free. While you should really just go with what
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sure there will be something you’ll like Anyway, thanks to Audible for sponsoring this
video. To all of you still watching, gosh dang are
you sweethearts. Thank you to all of my patrons, I really couldn’t
do all this without your support, and a special thanks to The Meaning of NERD for joining
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and/or night, and I will see you in the next one.
I haven't been able to play the game yet (I wish the price of the Switch would just go down already!), but I love the "unlock Zelda as a playable character" reward idea. Nintendo, you cowards, let us play as Zelda!