Several years ago, everybody loved Uncharted 2 and for good reason. It was a really enjoyable, tight, beautiful and cinematic experience. But some of those people started to go too far. They started praising it because "No other game blended gameplay and cinematics like this". They even praised the platforming. You couldn't tell them otherwise because they loved the game and thus it had to be the best in every categy. It was a masterpiece.
That's how I think people feel about BotW right now. As a total package, it's an unbeatable experience. It's the sum of several well polished parts--but almost all of those parts can be found in other games. Climbing, exploring, levitating, cooking food, gliding through the air, etc. From Just Cause to Red Dead to Psi Ops to Dragon's Dogma, everything probably came from somewhere else. And that's okay. It doesn't detract from the game as a whole.
There was a time when I was so far up Gears of War's butthole that you couldn't convince me that it wasn't innovative, even when you showed a video of Kill.Switch. I'd say "Yeah, but it didn't have a little mini game when you reloaded!" It took years... YEARS to admit that it didn't have to be the first cover based shooter or that Gears 2 didn't have the first "Horde Mode".
And that didn't hamper my enjoyment of the series one bit.
BotW is destined to be a timeless classic. It's a hell of a launch game for the Switch and a hell of a conclusion to the Wii U. It may be the best game on either console to this day and some may think it's the best launch game ever. It's all opinions. But at 40+ years old and with 3+ decades of gaming under my belt, I have a hard time thinking of things BotW did that doesn't exist in some other game I've played.
