Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Players Can Go Straight to the Ending

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildproducer Eiji Aonuma reveals that the open-world nature of the game means that players can skip straight to its conclusion.

We’ve known for some time that game now officially christened Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would give players an open world to explore — but it wasn’t entirely clear how this would deviate from previous instalments. Now, producer Eiji Aonuma has given some more information about how this structure will affect the experience.

Yesterday saw Nintendo reveal the title Breath of the Wild, alongside hours of gameplay footage plucked from the new game. The open world being offered up by the new Zelda certainly seems togive players plenty of freedom, but according to Aonuma, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Apparently, players will be able to head straight to the end of Breath of the Wild from the outset, skipping the majority of the game if they see fit. “Whether you want to reveal the storyline and find out why Link woke up, or you want to just go straight to the goal, that’s an option totally up to the user,” said Aonuma in an interview with Polygon.

The producer went on to state that players could head straight to the end boss of the game from its opening moments, if that was what they wanted to do. However, Aonuma did note that this perhaps wasn’t the best way to experience everything that Breath of the Wild has to offer.

That said, it does perhaps give us some more information about the structure of the game. The word out of E3 is that the primary antagonist of Breath of the Wild is Calamity Ganon, a dark cloud that has taken over Hyrule Castle, and is seemingly some form of Link’s nemesis.

It looks like players will spend most of Breath of the Wild becoming strong enough to take down Calamity Ganon. However, unlike previous Zelda titles, there perhaps won’t be any skills or upgrades that are essential — players will seemingly be able to pick and choose what they do to prepare for the final showdown.

It remains to be seen just how a truly open world will affect the gameplay we’ve come to expect from 3D Zelda games — Breath of the Wild seems set to deliver an experience inspired more by the 1985 original than any releases from the past two decades. This is a big shift for the series, but all signs point towards it being change for the better.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is expected to release for the Wii U and Nintendo NX in 2017.

Source: Polygon