I was a “lapsed Zelda fan” for lack of a better term. I loved the NES/SNES era, but not so much the Ocarina of Time era…
Don’t get me wrong, I think some of the innovations in the old style 3D games were quite fun when they first came out. But all that dungeon crawling along a critical path, and “find the key/switch/puzzle if you wish to proceed in this game” wasn’t my bag. It often felt like the game was about 2-5% exploration, and most of the rest just wandering back and forth to find the thing you needed to find… it was like an analogy for losing your keys over and over again.
Breath of the Wild brought back the focus to exploring a vibrant overworld full of wonders and secrets. And it did it in such a huge way. Truthfully though, it was Link Between Worlds, but that was just the appetizer.
And it’s not like many Zelda fans weren’t hoping for an open world experience where the adventure was the direction we took it, or dreaming of standing atop one of the game’s mountains and overlooking Hyrule. That iconic scene from Breath of the Wild wasn’t out of nowhere.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
