The Breath of the Wild: The Secret of Open World Design

After quite a long break Matt Lees from Cool Ghosts returned with another epic video about the new Zelda game. But really it’s a video about the main questions that most modern games fail to answer. And it’s closely connected with the open world and navigation – two of things we love so much on 80.lv.

So, basically, Matt believes that modern games (Horizon: Zero Dawn, for example) fail to attract the player’s attention to the right thing. Instead of enjoying this incredible world around you, you need to follow the yellow marker and always be in a hurry. It breaks the immersion and kills the fun of the game.

The Breath of the Wild solves this problem, by removing a lot of that unnecessary clutter and letting you just, you know, explore the place. Find out, what’s around the corner. Some people even turn off all the visual interface aids on the screen and let themselves roll in this world on their own, without any help. And this makes the whole thing feel like a proper adventure.

For me personally, the last time I did had this feeling of adventure, real discovery in the game was when I was playing Dragon Quest VIII, and maybe Fallout 1 before that. Those games didn’t try to guide you, didn’t want you to hurry up (well, Fallout kind of did, but it doesn’t matter). They just let you be. Let you stay and explore this world at your own pace. And maybe this is why we still have such fond memories of these games.

Thanks, Cool Ghosts, for reminding us about the power of these simple things!