The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was definitely one of the heaviest hitters at this year’s show, and with good reason. If the phrase “open-world Zelda game” doesn’t make you salivate, your childhood straight up sucked. The updated cel-shading is way less annoying than previous iterations, but the puzzles and exploration have maintained the difficulty and charm we’ve all grown up loving.
The area I saw was a snow-capped mountain, in which our HUD thermometer (next to the sound detector) read that it was cold enough to physically damage our hero. Luckily we had a few options to survive the harsh environment. First was to build a fire by dropping wood and flint from your inventory and striking it with your sword.
A more mobile option, however was to light a torch and keep “man’s red flower” with you along your travels. The only problem here is that there are goblins about, and despite what Aragorn would tell you, a torch doesn’t make the best weapon in an adventurer’s arsenal.
Enter the cooking system: a combination of foraging, looting, crafting and, well, eating. Picking and eating spicy peppers can give you cold resistance for a little while, but combining those peppers with meat to make a peppered steak can multiply your cold resistance time substantially.
The last thing I saw was Link’s sword getting brittle and finally breaking. Not exactly what fans were clamoring for, but the new mechanic will definitely make the new crafting system an integral part of the new Zelda experience.
The breadth and depth of this game are still widely unknown, but from everything we’ve seen so far, this is the game that’s going to make the WiiU a must-buy (at least after the next significant price drop/Zelda bundle / paycheck).
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier draft of this article failed to acknowledge the contribution of Miles Hamilton. Consider this a correction.
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