Zelda has revolutionized gaming time and time again It’s not too important to the actual gameplay, but it’s kind of interesting to look at for superfans: The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia via Zelda Wikiīut it’s the gameplay, and not the story, that is Zelda’s biggest selling point. Plot-wise, what ties the games together is a fairly absurd timeline. Similarly, Link’s Awakening doesn’t take place in Hyrule or feature Zelda or the Triforce. Majora’s Mask, for example, doesn’t involve Zelda at all instead, Link travels to another world that is about to be destroyed by a strange mask-wearing creature and a very angry moon. However, some of the games in the franchise veer into different territories. This plot line reflects the “legend” referred to in the series’ title - a mythology in which a hero, reborn time and time again, rises to vanquish an evil, also reborn time and time again, with the help of the powerful Princess Zelda and the Triforce. Each Zelda game follows a similar arc: Link typically obtains a sacred sword, maybe collects pieces of the all-powerful Triforce (which grants wishes), and obtains other powerful artifacts to become strong enough to defeat the evil and save the day. That is the basic plot outline of most (but not all) Zelda games: Link, a commoner, is suddenly thrust into a mysterious, magical quest in the kingdom of Hyrule to save the princess, Zelda, from one evil or another. And the young hero - a swordsman - is charged with saving her. Zelda’s premise is one we’ve all heard before: A princess is in trouble. The Legend of Zelda is actually about a boy named Link
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While the basics of the game are clichéd - it’s fundamentally about a brave swordsman saving a princess - the series goes much deeper than that.
To understand why, it’s important to first understand what Zelda is. The game is important not just to fans of the Zelda franchise, but to the health of one of the most well-known companies in the gaming industry. After the Wii U failed to ever take off and the 3DS handheld console struggled to become as much of a smash hit as its predecessor, the DS, Nintendo has a lot riding on the Switch’s - and Breath of the Wild’s - success. And let’s be clear: Nintendo desperately needs the win. Breath of the Wild is the big game the company has banked on to boost the initial success of its new console, the Switch.
IGN did too, calling it “a masterclass in open-world design and a watershed game that reinvents a 30-year-old franchise.” GameSpot and GiantBomb also gave it perfect scores, and Kotaku described it as “open-world perfection.” As of Friday, it’s the fourth-best-reviewed game of all time, according to Metacritic.įor Nintendo, this is an impressive - and necessary - achievement.
#ZELDA BREATH OF WILD REVIEW FREE#
That makes the series an important part of how roughly 1.8 billion people around the world spend at least some of their free time.īased on the overwhelmingly positive reviews Breath of the Wild has received so far, the franchise is poised to once again change gaming. But it’s hard to imagine the gaming industry existing as it does today without Zelda, which has literally revolutionized gaming multiple times over several generations of games. Video games are now a $100-billion-a-year industry, growing massively over the past few years with the mainstream rise of games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild finally came out on Friday for both the Wii U and Nintendo Switch, the company’s newest console. One of the biggest video game franchises in the world has a new entry.