Breath of the Wild was a truly enamoring experience, for the first 15 hours anyways. The moment I flipped the mental switch from "fooling around" to "I want to see the end game", the game started to lose its magic. The dedication to a purely open world, one where "defeat Ganon" is possible from the start, also presents its limitations.

After a while, challenges and rewards start to feel stale and underwhelming. The first couple dozens of korok seeds make a big difference to quality of life. However, after increasing the inventory to a decent size, I am no longer as excited to flip over every rock, or solve every puzzle for 1/25th of a backpack slot. Similarly, the appeal of shrine waned. I found myself much less likely to deal with the annoying ones (combat trial, motion control) once Link's stamina was brought up to a mostly sufficient level. Even chests too often seemed like a waste of time, as I shake my head and walk away from the newly-found but inferior equipment. (Here we also have a web of problems. "Too many chests all dropping the same guardian sword? What if the sword you already have broke?" "Well if enemies drop even more boring stuff than chests why do I even bother using my sword?")

As the stalled reward ramp hurts game play, the strict open world formula also restricts the narrative. To a degree I sympathize with the developers. Because the 4 villages and their divine beasts can be visited in any order, their storylines are written to be isolated from each other, and the dungeon puzzles and boss encounters don't ramp up in any way. Because any location or quest can be ignored, there are no twists or revelations in the main plot. Because Link can arrive at a place in any direction, cutscenes have to be triggered by standing at a set spot in the form of collectible memories. Because the player should theoretically be able to defeat Ganon from the start, equipment or skills from each divine beast should not factor much into the final battle. The end result, however, is a hero's journey a bit more disjointed, repetitive, and unfulfilling.

This armchair dev has been sitting around wondering about BotW for some time. My fascination stems from how much the open world formula has been revolutionized by BotW. A vomit of quest markers, solved. Brain-dead driving across town, solved. Boring world and NPCs, solved. Yet the game's problems are still glaring (to me-- I of course acknowledge others may not be bothered at all, or even more. And for the record I have BotW at #4 on my GOTY list.). The questions are, if some "openness" of the world can to be sacrificed to improve the whole experience, and whether that would be received well by fans who prefer the purist approach.

Personally, I would have preferred each blight Ganon to be more powerful or have a larger move list than the last (Lore-wise it could be explained that Ganon is sensing Link's presence and increasing resistance), and if each champion would have a few lines of dialogue about other champions Link already remembered. But others might not like the idea of not seeing all bosses at full strength and dialogue content in one single playthrough. I would also rather have Zelda's story arc (or some other story twist) linearly fleshed out in a couple sequentially gated off buildings/areas (maybe Link gets some item or ability that is required to access the next one), but that goes against the freedom of the rest of the game.

I have no doubt the follow up will be improved by the wizards over at Nintendo, in ways I cannot imagine. At the same time, I am a bit worried about other games trying to chase the idea for the worse. (See ME:A trying to do skyrim + no man's sky)