“Why Zelda Needs to Return to Open World Exploration”

Zelda’s open world exploration has always been a memorable gaming experience ever since Nintendo implemented the technique into its very first title of the series. Open world exploration maintained itself throughout Zelda titles released in the 90’s and onward through to The Wind Waker and The Minish Cap in the early 2000s. Yet, according to an article at Zelda Universe, the open world exploration method is starting to vanish from all recent Zelda titles and is starting to create a lack of excitement to replay the newer games in the series. They state that Skyward Sword, Spirit Tracks, and Phantom Hourglass are all victim to this lack of fun exploration.

More details after the break!

The Zelda Universe article asserts that after 23 years since The Legend of Zelda was released Spirit Tracks had turned the exploration into a “mini-game” which leads you to puzzle after puzzle without allowing you to do your own discovering and free-roaming. He states that the train introduced into the game did not allow you to have any freedom considering you had to stay on the rails. Phantom Hourglass also played the devil by forcing you to draw a path to sail your boat to your designated destination. They make a clear point that exploration would have been a much better experience if you could steer your boat by yourself without needing to draw any path such as in The Wind Waker.

The article goes on to state that while Skyward Sword stepped back to allow the overworld exploration to feel similar to past games it still did not allow enough free-roaming. They feel that Ocarina of Time had such an enjoyable exploration style because Nintendo allowed most areas to be accessible from the start of the game. You could explore the final area (Ganon’s Castle) before you were even ready to head there. They feel Skyward Sword was too limited and direct because of the bread crumb trail-type story it left for you to follow.

The article has quite a few more points for your reading which you can view by clicking here.

What do you think of the viewpoint presented in the article on modern Zelda open world exploration? Are there other points you have that lead you to different thoughts about the exploration in modern Zelda titles? Is the open world exploration of Zelda as much fun as it used to be?

Source: Zelda Universe