Breath of the Wild was easily my favorite game of 2017, so on its 1 year anniversary, I thought it would be cool to release a video talking about why I think it's so amazing. The game felt revolutionary in a time when open world games began to feel a little stale. And I think Breath of the Wild's map is really what set it apart from other open world games. I remember Best World being a heated point of discussion during GB's 2017 GOTY awards (partly because people were confused as to what the award actually meant), but in my personal opinion, I think it ultimately went to the right game.

I hope to continue making even more video essay analyzing games in the future, so stay tuned! Thanks everyone!

The Best World category in GOTY was a hell of a thing. Excellent video. I think if I buy a Switch in 2018, the main motivation will be Breath of the Wild.

@htr10: Thanks! And yeah, BOTW is totally worth picking up a Switch for. That, and Super Mario Odyssey.

Great video man! You articulated your argument very well for less cluttered maps in games and how it was a major strength for Zelda BotW. I thought The Witcher 3 also did a good job in making the player want to explore the maps by having areas to find without having guidance markers for all of them.

@bedouin: Thanks, I really appreciate it! And yeah, the Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games in the past few years as well. Although I think exploring the world is little bit more fun in Breath of the Wild, you really can't beat Witcher 3's story and characters.

@wumbo3000: Totally agree.

Hey nice job on the video. You did some good work! Unfortunately I'm going to have to disagree with a part of what you're saying:

The first thing is that large numbers of open world games nowadays give you filters to turn off the icon clutter. It's really becoming less of an issue than it was when games were figuring this out, so I don't think this point is as valid as it would have been years ago.

The second thing, which is the bigger issue, is that BotW trades one problem of cluttered open world maps for a new one: vistas & landmarks with little point. Sure you can scale a mountain or stroll through dense brush to get to something that looks unique compared to the vast expanse of nothing, but you're almost always rewarded with one of two things: yet another korok seed or a Gary's Mod-esque physics puzzle of a shrine.

Let's look at those two rewards. Korok seeds, while useful in upgrading your inventory size, aren't exciting to get. There are over 900 of the darn things I don't think anything can be interesting when you collect that much of any one given item. I'll be honest I thought the first 10 were interesting, but then I just started to: see a vista, see a rock I had to push over, get a seed, then throw it into the large bag of seeds I had. Now lets look at the shrines as a whole, since they're the other most common reward for exploring vistas. Shrines come in two flavors: fight the 1 thing, which doesn't seem to be favorable among anyone, or use your rune tools to solve a puzzle. Unfortunately these puzzles tend to be gimmicky, physics puzzles that do more to remind me of the Wii shovelware-era of gameplay than reminding me I'm playing a Zelda game. For crying out loud you wave your controller around to lead a marble through a maze in one of them. This expanse of puzzle types really is benefiting greatly from having the Zelda brand slapped on it than any game I've seen in recent years.

So in summary I'd say that the map in BotW fails players once the allure of travelling wears off, due to vistas with uninteresting rewards and activities. Take the interest out of the vistas, then you're left with 3-4 pillars of light leading you to the core quests of the game.

@joedangerous: I like the discovery aspect of BotW’s map. Just because you can toggle markers on or off in a game, you’re still being told “there’s something here” which, to me at least, takes away that sense of “just happening upon something”. The lack of pre-populating the map in Zelda is what really appealed to me. Totally respect your point of view on this though. Was a nice read :)

I own Breath of the Wild, and I appreciate it, it just didn't have the effect on me that I see from others.

I totally agree that it is an amazing game, but no where near the level that I have seen from most reviewers - now I didn't grow up with a Nintendo so maybe I don't have that childhood joy/reverance that a lot of people have.

I enjoyed my time with BOTW, but just kind of bounced off of it after a while of just meandering around. I much preferred Horizon, which might be considered blasphemy to some, due to the compelling story, the combat, and the environment. BOTW just felt to me like it was extremely aimless, with minimal pathing - I would constantly return to the game and have no idea where I was, what I was doing, and where I was going. The fact that the pathing tool didn't appear till DLC was a little odd.

I know this is bad to say, but would BOTW have gotten as great of reviews if it hadn't been a Zelda game? I can't say, I recognize the quality of it, but it just didn't hook me.

@joedangerous:Thanks for such a detailed response! Although I agree with you in how most of the rewards were usually Korok seeds or shrines, I think the way you actually discover them was more interesting than other open world games. There was usually a puzzle/minigame with a Korok seed, and finding a shrine felt like an adventure in and of itself (the mazes come to mind, in which you have to solve the maze to get to the shrine. I thought those were really cool) And I totally agree with you about how some of the shrines' puzzles were lame; I also HATED that tilting/marble ones that made me tilt the Wii U tablet (yes, I played it on the Wii U). But in my opinion, the vast majority of the shrines had some really interesting puzzles and challenges, so finding one was always exciting for me.

@bmccann42: That's a good point, I'm really curious to see how the game would've been received if it was a brand new IP with no Zelda name. I'd like to think I would've loved on its own merits, but who knows? Also, I need to get back to Horizon cause I know people (like yourself) really love it, but I was kinda the opposite of you. I ended up falling off of Horizon faster than I would've thought. Definitely gonna go back and give it a shot eventually though.