The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

In the modern game industry, it making games into open world adventures seems to be all the rage. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it was obviously just done to hop on the bandwagon, so there's obviously a lot of oscillation in the quality of each open world. That being said, it could be argued that The Legend of Zelda series was the pioneer of open world games, which makes it all the more interesting that the developers are keen to not refer to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as an open world adventure.

IGN recently caught up with Shigeru Miyamoto and Bill Trinen and they talked a bit about why the game is being called "open air". Ultimately, it seems to be another case of Nintendo doing something different just because. Miyamoto had this to say on the labelling:

We want to use the technology and the techniques that are available to make what we want to make. What's important is to really express how we use that to make our experience unique. We didn't want to just make a game where you can do anything, but we wanted to make sure that we make a game where the player is able to do anything, but it's also a form of entertainment. It's fun to do all of those things.

As for Bill Trinen's stance, he largely agreed, explaining that there's more to it than your typical open world adventure:

I look at this game and I see a world that is fully integrated into the exploration and the adventure. It's not just a world that you're passing through. It's sort of a world that you're a part of. So much of the adventure and exploration is in this outdoor space, and the theme of wilderness collectively seemed like 'Open Air' was the right fit for it.

What do you think? Do you think Breath of the Wild is really special enough to deserve its own label? What's your favorite open world game? Drop us a comment in the section below.

[source ign.com]