The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

But it's also, it's got me, I'm also not really like an open world guy.

You know, I make exceptions from time to time, but it also has me thinking a lot about like, well, why is it that the Breath of the Wild open world map feels so good and this one feels so frustrating, you know? And so I'm also kind of thinking of that in relation to GTA 6 coming out, because that's going to be an open world that's also set in the city.

Rockstar, you can make the argument.

I don't know if it's entirely accurate, but I think it's plausible.

Like, I appreciate the Zelda games.

I've played Breath of the Wild.

That's the only one that I've played through.

Loved it.

They do have ranches in Zelda.

Lon Lon sounds like a character.

You ride a horse in the Breath of the Wild? Maybe that's it.

There's ranches.

As well as like experiencing...

this kind of thing for the first time, whereas I've played a number of other Zelda games, from Wind Waker to Breath of the Wild and Twilight Princess and all that, and they don't change up the stuff that much, make it that complicated.

So coming at it after playing most of the other games that came after it, much more than Ocarina of Time, definitely makes this feel like an easy game in retrospect.

And as far as I've seen, there's no difficulty options or anything.

Good, bad, and the ugly is the segment where we talk about good, bad, and ugly aspects of a certain element of video games.

Because we have been talking about this for a while now, including the new Zelda remaster of Breath of the Wild, or the Ocarina of Time.

And the fact that Nintendo has promised we're going to get a bunch more of these.

We're doing the good, bad, and ugly of remasters and remakes.

I wanted to approach this remake as its own game.

It's a phenomenal game in its own right, but it is not like the next step forward for The Legend of Zelda, like the original Ocarina of Time or like A Breath of the Wild.

So is it still an amazing adventure you should play? Yes, everyone should play this game.

Is this remake one of the greatest games of all time? That's like a more nuanced question for me.

Lots of minor changes throughout, but it's the same game at the end of the day.

Yeah, there's a real lack of novelty to it that I think was one of the reasons I gave it a four and not a five.

Well, there are probably a lot of younger gamers who only know Zelda as Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom.

Games you can go anywhere, climb anything, and solve a puzzle any way that you can come up with.

well for some reason.

You know that concept art from like, I think it's Breath of the Wild where they were toying around with like, which they did put in his DLC.

There's like those really gnarly early sketches of Link and he's like riding a motorbike and like the model looks all different.

And it clearly at one point they were thinking of like pushing it a bit into that realm.

Right.

Like it's not Elden Ring.

It's not even like Breath of the Wild, I would say, had like a lot of the boss fights were like pretty tough.

I was going to say, I guess the way it's all laid out is quite different, but doing the Divine Beasts, there were some genuinely tricky puzzles.

Also, I kind of skipped over all the other 2D Zeldas that I played, but I did play a lot of other 2D Zeldas in between all of that.

But as far as 3D Zeldas go, it kind of wore out the welcome, and then I kind of thought Breath of the Wild was an incredible way to get me back, but it also doesn't...

It is a Zelda game, but it also feels like a distinct... new thing in a way um that i guess also skyward sword kind of felt that way too and then tears of the kingdom was maybe a little also kind of lost me so i i would say i'm a little bit all over the map i spiritually like the idea of a zelda game quite a lot but um they don't always play to my taste basically and i feel quite particular as far as like what i actually want a zelda game to do

I will say Breath of the Wild is the one time in my seeing Zelda out there that I was like, I maybe should give that a shot because that looks pretty fucking cool actually.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's special, but it's not special.

Yeah.

And it doesn't demand a lot out of you.

And I love that for it because I think Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are two incredible games.

all time classic games, but they do ask a lot out of you.

There's a lot more things to manage.

Still got it.

And for me, one of the best stories of all the Zelda games.

Honestly, what I'd say from the outside looking in as my first time is that when I compare the pacing of the story to what I experienced in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, obviously they're going for two different things like you kind of alluded to.

But what I love is that you're never too far away from what matters narratively.

There's Link's hairband in Zelda's den in her little office, which is really cute.

So Link has a hairband in Breath of the Wild, like a little blue one.

And then yeah, it's in her, in her little office,

which is