Disclaimer: This probably won't make any sense...
BoTW has been almost universally lauded by game critics for the freedom it granted players. From the moment you start it up, your only limit is the great plateau, and from there, the opportunities are endless!...
Or are they?!?
I would argue this understanding largely misconstrues what BoTW does and what its greatest accomplishment is. (If you don't like philosophical discussions, this may not be for you)
First, BoTW doesn't really grant you that much more freedom than previous Zelda games. To understand this, we have to determine what freedom means. Beginning with Kant, philosophers have often conceptualized freedom in two distinct senses. Isaiah Berlin did an excellent job drawing the distinction and coined the first type as "negative liberty." Negative liberty (I'll refer to liberty as freedom) is the kind of freedom we experience when there are no limits or restrictions on our actions. The other kind, Berlin called "positive liberty." Positive freedom is a little more difficult a concept to grasp, but it essentially means that there are certain things unattainable without certain limits, restrictions, or preconditions that have to be to enjoy or obtain certain things. Additionally, the preconditions for positive freedom are inherently in conflict with negative freedom.
This distinction can be demonstrated by the following example. A young child with no guardian or person to prevent them from doing whatever they want could be said to have a great deal of negative freedom. After all, nobody is stopping them from going left, going right, or jumping about like a crazy kid. Still, the freedom that young child can experience seems less than that of an adult who has gone through a full education, perhaps has a career, and has the advantage of other elements of a structured society that grant him more options and greater access to those options than the child is able to enjoy. To acquire these additional options and therein freedom, the adult has submitted herself to certain limits or had/has certain restrictions imposed on her which in turn grant positive freedom. (I'm not the best at explaining this, so if you have further questions check out Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty.)
So, what does this have to do with BoTW? It has everything to do with BoTW!!! BoTW claims to grant you freedom, but what it actually does is grant you negative freedom. Sure, it's still a kind of freedom, but is it really more free than having a balance of positive freedom and negative freedom? By leaning toward negative freedom, BoTW substantially reduced the amount of meaningful choices a player could have had in lieu of granting them near infinite variations of essentially the same limited types of choices. What this means is that while you can go anywhere and do anything on the map, there's less value in doing those things than if there were additional components that are required for positive freedom. Additionally, there may be things you don't have on the map as options precisely because you haven't subjected yourself to certain restrictions or limitations. In other words, BoTW grants you options A,B,C and D, but you can't do X, Y, and Z, because you don't have the structure that is necessary for X, Y, and Z. For an even more illustrative example, imagine BoTW as it currently is compared with BoTW with a few additional full-on dungeons (some optional others required). Give the game to two different people, and ask yourself, which player has more options, which game has more value, and ultimately which player has more freedom.
Second, BoTW's greatest accomplishment is its ability to hide the limitations it places on the player in such a way to make them think they're free. While old school Zelda games required either the acquisition of an item, the unlocking of a door, or the completion of a dungeon/temple to progress, BoTW merely replaced the item/dungeon dynamic with the stamina bar (s), hearts (h), player skill level (p) and the expansion of negative freedom talked about above. The result was a bigger world where you could immediately go just about anywhere so long as s, h, or p didn't get in the way.
But how are the obstacles associated with s, h, or p any different from any other obstacle presented in previous Zelda's? The answer is that these kinds of obstacles allowed for an illusion to be created that made it appear like were no limits or obstacles. This is largely because players have never been granted this kind of negative liberty in a Zelda, and that my friends, is exciting.
Under this illusion, Zelda was exciting and breaking new ground! But, there are some questions for the future. Will the illusion wear off? What will happen if it does? Will people be happy to replace the old obstacles with the new ones on a more recurring basis? Will Nintendo return to form or try a hybrid approach?
Only time will tell, but I'm excited to find out.
BoTW has been almost universally lauded by game critics for the freedom it granted players. From the moment you start it up, your only limit is the great plateau, and from there, the opportunities are endless!...
Or are they?!?
I would argue this understanding largely misconstrues what BoTW does and what its greatest accomplishment is. (If you don't like philosophical discussions, this may not be for you)
First, BoTW doesn't really grant you that much more freedom than previous Zelda games. To understand this, we have to determine what freedom means. Beginning with Kant, philosophers have often conceptualized freedom in two distinct senses. Isaiah Berlin did an excellent job drawing the distinction and coined the first type as "negative liberty." Negative liberty (I'll refer to liberty as freedom) is the kind of freedom we experience when there are no limits or restrictions on our actions. The other kind, Berlin called "positive liberty." Positive freedom is a little more difficult a concept to grasp, but it essentially means that there are certain things unattainable without certain limits, restrictions, or preconditions that have to be to enjoy or obtain certain things. Additionally, the preconditions for positive freedom are inherently in conflict with negative freedom.
This distinction can be demonstrated by the following example. A young child with no guardian or person to prevent them from doing whatever they want could be said to have a great deal of negative freedom. After all, nobody is stopping them from going left, going right, or jumping about like a crazy kid. Still, the freedom that young child can experience seems less than that of an adult who has gone through a full education, perhaps has a career, and has the advantage of other elements of a structured society that grant him more options and greater access to those options than the child is able to enjoy. To acquire these additional options and therein freedom, the adult has submitted herself to certain limits or had/has certain restrictions imposed on her which in turn grant positive freedom. (I'm not the best at explaining this, so if you have further questions check out Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty.)
So, what does this have to do with BoTW? It has everything to do with BoTW!!! BoTW claims to grant you freedom, but what it actually does is grant you negative freedom. Sure, it's still a kind of freedom, but is it really more free than having a balance of positive freedom and negative freedom? By leaning toward negative freedom, BoTW substantially reduced the amount of meaningful choices a player could have had in lieu of granting them near infinite variations of essentially the same limited types of choices. What this means is that while you can go anywhere and do anything on the map, there's less value in doing those things than if there were additional components that are required for positive freedom. Additionally, there may be things you don't have on the map as options precisely because you haven't subjected yourself to certain restrictions or limitations. In other words, BoTW grants you options A,B,C and D, but you can't do X, Y, and Z, because you don't have the structure that is necessary for X, Y, and Z. For an even more illustrative example, imagine BoTW as it currently is compared with BoTW with a few additional full-on dungeons (some optional others required). Give the game to two different people, and ask yourself, which player has more options, which game has more value, and ultimately which player has more freedom.
Second, BoTW's greatest accomplishment is its ability to hide the limitations it places on the player in such a way to make them think they're free. While old school Zelda games required either the acquisition of an item, the unlocking of a door, or the completion of a dungeon/temple to progress, BoTW merely replaced the item/dungeon dynamic with the stamina bar (s), hearts (h), player skill level (p) and the expansion of negative freedom talked about above. The result was a bigger world where you could immediately go just about anywhere so long as s, h, or p didn't get in the way.
But how are the obstacles associated with s, h, or p any different from any other obstacle presented in previous Zelda's? The answer is that these kinds of obstacles allowed for an illusion to be created that made it appear like were no limits or obstacles. This is largely because players have never been granted this kind of negative liberty in a Zelda, and that my friends, is exciting.
Under this illusion, Zelda was exciting and breaking new ground! But, there are some questions for the future. Will the illusion wear off? What will happen if it does? Will people be happy to replace the old obstacles with the new ones on a more recurring basis? Will Nintendo return to form or try a hybrid approach?
Only time will tell, but I'm excited to find out.