My tepid takes on Breath of the Wild ahead of new Zelda
Plus three other games I can't wait for in 2023...
The coming six months overfloweth with gaming treats.
There are four games that I reckon may threaten my all-time top 10, starting with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in exactly one month (May 12).
I’ll go onto the other three in a minute, but in anticipation of Tears of the Kingdom I’ve been replaying (pretty much non-stop) Breath of the Wild. And every extra hour nudges it higher and higher up my list.
Just like pretty much all other massive open-world games that I love, I’ve sunk at least 60 hours in without really getting near the end (see: Skyrim, Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, etc).
What makes me fall for these games isn’t the story or combat, but unique places to explore.
I’m a sucker for a stone dome outlined on the horizon, teasing you towards it - and Breath of the Wild does that better than almost any other game. Everything you explore has at least one surprising reward (incentivising you to explore the next one) and the way the world is physically mapped funnels you subtly to points of interest, one after the other.
You don’t think about where to go next, you just follow, almost without thinking, that faint mountain trail, that path carved into a valley, that momentary twinkle of light.
Tears of the Kingdom uses the same world as Breath of the Wild, but presumably adds lots of new stuff (I’m hoping up to and including new towns/villages), and floats a bunch of islands in the sky.
Here’s one reason I’m excited about that - and one that I’m not.
Grumpy one first, and entirely unoriginal, but: having the same map slightly — and I mean ever-so-slightly — reduces the chances of surprises. I’m less likely to follow a path through the mountains if I already know what’s at the end.
But the counter: if they’re able to add enough to the existing canvas it could be even more surprising than the original. Nintendo has a chance to subvert expectations in a way that they couldn’t with a brand new map. You think you know exactly what’s around the next corner - but when you get there you discover a giant crater, an empty chest, and footsteps leading in another direction.
My enjoyment will come from exploring, but that doesn’t mean I’m not excited by the much-discussed new abilities Link will have. Sticking stuff together seems to be the big one. Stick a stick to a stick to create a longer stick. Stick a “puffshroom” to your shield and when an enemy hits it, it will explode in a cloud of smoke. Stick three logs together and add some fans to build a raft. He’s Pritt Stick Link.
It’s all in the video below - there will be lots of ridiculously creative examples of what you can glue together flooding social media when the game releases, I’m sure.
What about those other three games I mentioned that could make my all-time 10?
They are, in order of excitement, Starfield (September - I grew up on an open-world Bethesda diet and I’m actually more excited for this than Zelda), Baldur’s Gate 3 (August - developer Larian is a real master of the old-school RPG art, see the Divinity: Original Sin games), and Diablo 4 (June - fantasy setting and loot galore).
Tears of the Kingdom, Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Diablo 4 - I can’t remember another time where four games so aligned with my tastes were coming out in this short a span. Expect to hear me talk a lot about them on here this year.
Speaking of: anyone here played Dredge, the new spooky fishing game? I’ve heard a couple of podcasters rave about it, and it sounds right up my street.
And please comment below: What games are you most looking forward to in 2023?
Cheers,
Sam
[Brief programming note: if this email came to your “promotions” inbox, could you drag/move it to your main inbox? It’d really help me out. Thanks!]