I enjoyed it for what it was but couldn’t help thinking it learned the wrong lessons from Breath of the Wild. Ubisoft is as responsible as any company for codifying conventional open-world game structure with series like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, and despite all appearances, Immortals fits firmly in that category. The same is true for Ubisoft’s Immortals: Fenyx Rising, a Greek mythology-themed adventure that, for all its qualities, feels like a bargain-bin knockoff. But the minute-to-minute experience of playing Genshin is completely different - it’s more of a conventional action RPG and doesn’t adopt anything about Breath of the Wild’s world design. Genshin Impact is the obvious example, an extremely popular free-to-play game that lifts the aesthetic, glider, bow-and-arrow combat, and a few other elements. It’s not like games haven’t attempted to imitate Breath of the Wild in various ways, but the similarities tend to be superficial. Open-world games take a lot of time to create even when society hasn’t been derailed by a pandemic, of course, but in a design sense, Breath of the Wild still stands alone. Once you feel ready, you can take on the final boss - or put it off forever because, hey, simply existing in the world is a joy unto itself.īreath of the Wild is undoubtedly a landmark game, but five years on, I’m surprised it hasn’t had more impact on the genre at large. You get more powerful in Breath of the Wild by exploring the freely traversable world for yourself and mastering its emergent systems. Unlike typical open-world games that overwhelm you with endless quests and icons on the map, Breath of the Wild told you the endpoint right from the start and trusted the player to make their own way there. But what really made it resonate was its revolutionary approach to open-world game design. When Breath of the Wild was released five years ago today, its rapturous reception didn’t just happen because of how it represented a long-overdue revamp of the Legend of Zelda series’ stale formula.
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