Breath of the Wild Do you feel free in BotW?

[Spirit]

The idea for BotW was to make players feel free and for them to make their own choices.

True enough we can glide effortlessly over long distances, climb over almost any surface and tear it up on a motorbike if you have the DLC.

You could also do as much or as little as you wanted within the world and story...

But did any of this make you feel free?

Do you feel free when you're gliding over Hyrule?

Did you feel free when given the choice to reclaim the Divine Beasts?

How free did BotW make you feel?

 

[Dio]

I felt free from meaningful story content to pursue and a desire to go on besides the fact I had spent all that money on a console and game.

I don't think BoTW gives a greater feeling of freedom than any of the other hundreds of open world games that are already out there. Just more of a lack of purpose. I haven't found that other open world games have been restrictive enough to make me feel playing BoTW allowed me to do something which they were preventing me from doing.

 

[HeroOfTime]

I felt free in the sense that there was no lock-and-key system in the game. From the end of the Great Plateau, there was nothing that was unreachable, nowhere was off-limits, and that's the way that they made the game. I've never felt more free in any game since, including the famous Skyrim, a game that this was supposedly based off of.

However, the lack of a lock meant that there was no excitement of finding a key, nothing that ever opened up. I never felt like I was progressing in the game. The difference between five hours in and fifty hours in was some heart containers and stamina. The world began to feel static and bland, moreso than any game I've ever played. The sense of "adventure" that this game was supposed to embody was never really effective to me, I never felt like I'd found anything unique. Breath of the Wild, more than any other game, made me realize, at least in Zelda games, I don't WANT to feel free.

 

[DarkestLink]

To be honest, no. The areas where I felt free were small, meaningless, and what I would considered the bare bones of freedom in an Open World game. BOTW took a lot of inspiration from Skyrim and I felt a lot more free in Skyrim. Can I climb up any mountain Skyrim? Yes. Can I do anything in any order I want? With about the same limitations as BOTW yes. I don't really care about that though. I don't care if I can do the Dark Brotherhood quest before or after the Thieve's Guild questline. I'm more much interested in the fact that I can destroy the Dark Brotherhood or lead them. I find much more value in my ability to play with three distinct playstyles or use a hybrid of these styles. The fact that I have so much choice over how I make money makes obtaining it actually fun. The ability to play as a completely different character is also a significant freedom.

The only value to be had in doing things out of order is rewards or challenging yourself with harder content first. In BOTW, the rewards are all either insignificant or identical. In addition, everything scales and the enemies are the same difficulty regardless of where you go. This further removes value from already insignificant choices. This is why I don't care about the ability to do things out of order.

The ability to climb is frankly something I don't want. It removes the developers ability to present obstacles in the overworld, which is one of the reasons why BOTW's is so boring. I loved the Zora section where climbing was prevented and the entire goal is to navigate through a hallway of enemies.

Meanwhile I'm ticked off that I can't pick what weapon is my favorite and main it. Or use whatever weapon is the most appropriate for the situation instead of whatever I have on hand. I wish I had money making methods that didn't involve grinding. I'd love to be able to actually interact with NPCs. Or make up my own character choices instead of sticking to a contradictory character in a bare bones story. And why is the physics system so limited? Why am I not allowed to set off a forest fire? Or levitate myself using magnesis (without glitching). Climbing already removes any sense of obstacles. So why do I have to scale mountains using a method that's so slow and mundane? Why can't I ride around with magnesis and have fun?

EDIT: HeroofTime mentions the lock and key system...personally I think that, ironically, freedom would have meant something a lot more if the lock and key system stayed alongside dungeon items. Doing Dungeon A would grant you access to Area B sooner while doing Dungeon C would grant you access to Area D sooner. It's not much, but it's something.

 

[Azure Sage]

I absolutely felt free. What made me feel free more than anything else was the ability to climb any surface bar shrine stuff. Not having to follow the path was what really did it for me. There was nowhere I couldn't go and it was a great feeling. Games like Skyrim have nothing on the openness BotW offers. I really enjoyed discovering the story at my own pace, it made the adventure feel even more unique and trying to piece things together myself was fun. You even have freedom of choice in combat; you can hit things with a sword, spam bomb runes, or just flatten them with metal crates. You can approach enemies from any direction however you want. The freedom in nearly every aspect of the game is very present when you play it.

 

[Vanessa28]

Hell yeah I feel free in BotW. Yes there are some hints to tell you where to go but nothing is forced upon you. You can go anywhere you like. I love this. No reminders to nudge you into a certain direction.

 

[Thicc God]

Truly Breath WILD makes me free to unleash my creativity eneryyg, it makes me feel the sense of adventure and exploration that no other game in 2019 so far has given me, it does not have very many narrative gates - the few that exist are there solely to tell the story of the land and they don't really bar game progress and that is my loved feature. It is exactly like Legend of Zelda for the NES. The few red herrings they give like the story of Link's life and so on, are told in journal entryes and that is my favoured

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Absolutely. The removal of the lock and key system usually barring the rest of the world from the player felt like a breath of fresh air. Zelda hasn't been about exploration for a long time, so it was wonderful being given free reign to venture where I wanted without a Navi or a Fi or a Midna to pop out and tell me I was going in the wrong direction. It felt like an adventure.

 

[DarkestLink]

I absolutely felt free. What made me feel free more than anything else was the ability to climb any surface bar shrine stuff. Not having to follow the path was what really did it for me. There was nowhere I couldn't go and it was a great feeling. Games like Skyrim have nothing on the openness BotW offers.

How? You can literally go anywhere, climb any mountain, and have no invisible walls in Skyrim at all beyond the boundaries of the game itself. To be honest, that's the main reason why the ability to go anywhere didn't have much of an impact on me. Besides the fact that Hyrule Castle is the only place of relevance, this is basically the bare bones status quo you see in Open World games. I can go anywhere? Well of course. It's an Open World game. I don't even have to ask. I'd be more surprised if I couldn't go anywhere.

 

[Azure Sage]

How? You can literally go anywhere, climb any mountain, and have no invisible walls in Skyrim at all beyond the boundaries of the game itself. To be honest, that's the main reason why the ability to go anywhere didn't have much of an impact on me. Besides the fact that Hyrule Castle is the only place of relevance, this is basically the bare bones status quo you see in Open World games. I can go anywhere? Well of course. It's an Open World game. I don't even have to ask. I'd be more surprised if I couldn't go anywhere.

The gameplay of Skyrim is trash compared to BotW. Exploring felt like a chore and wasn’t fun at all. The minute the incline became steep you had to find another way around, whereas in BotW you can just climb it. I preferred to fast travel rather than explore in Skyrim, which is very bad for an open world game. In BotW, I go several hundred hours without ever feeling a need to fast travel anywhere.

 

[DarkestLink]

The minute the incline became steep you had to find another way around, whereas in BotW you can just climb it.

Or just summon Arvak and climb it...I mean I know this is mainly due to messed up physics rather than being integral design but it's no secret horses are climbers. IIRC Bethesda even added several "secret landmarks" that can only be reached by horse climbing. And not only that, but there's no rain to stop you, you get to your destination in seconds rather than minutes, and you aren't inhibited by stamina.

Now personally I prefer not to do this for the most part. I mean just climbing over the Throat of the Worlds like Link does to meet the Greybeards straight after Whiterun kinda kills the adventure. It's just cutting through the land rather than moving with it naturally. You miss out on the actual journey like getting shook down by bandits, running into Thalmor and their prisoner, finding caves, discovering a giants camp, and reaching Ivarstead the first time. Of course that's just one way to go. You could also go from Riften, meet the shady characters there, flee on a horse after getting caught planting false evidence on a merchant, have a Dark Brotherhood assassin come out of nowhere to kill you, etc. Kinda why I don't like the idea of climbing at all tbh. And having it built in just discourages developers from giving you content to make your journey into an adventure. Why bother if we'll just end up skipping it?

But that said, preferences aside, the option is still there and due to summon and other horses following you in fast travel, I'd even say it's more convenient.

 

[Azure Sage]

Or just summon Arvak and climb it...I mean I know this is mainly due to messed up physics rather than being integral design but it's no secret horses are climbers. IIRC Bethesda even added several "secret landmarks" that can only be reached by horse climbing. And not only that, but there's no rain to stop you, you get to your destination in seconds rather than minutes, and you aren't inhibited by stamina.

Now personally I prefer not to do this for the most part. I mean just climbing over the Throat of the Worlds like Link does to meet the Greybeards straight after Whiterun kinda kills the adventure. It's just cutting through the land rather than moving with it naturally. You miss out on the actual journey like getting shook down by bandits, running into Thalmor and their prisoner, finding caves, discovering a giants camp, and reaching Ivarstead the first time. Of course that's just one way to go. You could also go from Riften, meet the shady characters there, flee on a horse after getting caught planting false evidence on a merchant, have a Dark Brotherhood assassin come out of nowhere to kill you, etc. Kinda why I don't like the idea of climbing at all tbh. And having it built in just discourages developers from giving you content to make your journey into an adventure. Why bother if we'll just end up skipping it?

But that said, preferences aside, the option is still there and due to summon and other horses following you in fast travel, I'd even say it's more convenient.

I would honestly prefer to skip all that stuff because most of that was not fun for me. Skyrim’s content could barely keep me entertained for 75 hours, whereas BotW kept me going for ten times as long. There’s a huge disparity in the fun that goes with the content. Exploring BotW was a fun adventure, climbing and all. Exploring Skyrim was not.