Breath of the Wild - Guide to Filling a Map

 Open world games are known for many things, exploration, traversal, world building and being empty with nothing to do in it. I haven’t played enough open world games to be able to give my opinion on open world on a whole and if they suck or not, but I can talk about how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was able to fill it’s map so no matter where you we’re and at what point of the game, there’s was always something that caught your eye.

 

  Korok seeds and shrines are how Breath of the Wild rewarded exploration.  There are 900 korok seeds scattered in the world which makes sure that every nook and cranny has something for you. If you look at a tree, you get a korok. If you take a step, you get a korok. You probably get a korok just for turning on the game. These korok seeds are turned in to Hestu, in exchange for inventory space which makes these seeds rewarding but not overpowering or game breaking.

 

  Shrines on the other hand, are the games way of replacing dungeons and the actually bread and butter of the game. 120 of these are put around in the map and are either puzzles inside the shrine, a battle or a puzzle outside of the shrine. The battles are basically filler since they are repeated around 20 times. The puzzles inside the shrine are perfectly fine but can be hit or miss. The real star are the shrines that are found through shrine quests. Shrine quests are given to you from NPC’s and are like normal side quests but with the reward being shrines. These range from finding a landscape that looks like a bird to finding hidden orbs and placing them in front of 7 statues of warriors. These not only help build the world, but familiarize the player with the landscapes and map. I honestly would’ve preferred if all the shrines came from shrine quests instead of just stumbling onto a shrine out of no where.

 

 Mini bosses and enemy camps are also scattered across the map with a reward if you defeat all the enemies. These are well placed across the map making sure to cover a lot the map but one thing I do have a problem with is the boss variance. There are only 4 different types of bosses and with around 100 mini bosses being scattered across the map, it can get pretty old. The amount of times I’ve fought a rock with arms is just mind boggling.

 

 Breath of the Wild probably has some of the best landscapes ever with an art style that’s probably timeless. If you look at the Great Plateau alone, the starting area of the game that’s just 1 piece of the huge map, you’ll see so much variance from snowy mountains to swamps to forests. The whole map has deserts, volcanoes, lakes, ruins, canyons and the list goes on. The diversity of the areas helps keeps everything fresh and because they’re so beautiful, you want to explore them even without an incentive. I often boot up the game just to ride my horse around map and yes, I know that makes me sound like a hugging fucking loner.

 

 Not only are the areas diverse, but the sub areas within the areas are filled with diversity. They may have remnants of the past hyrule, a town, NPCs, temples and so on. I remember the first time I saw a dragon at the top of a snowy mountain with a goddess statue and I was just in awe with how beautiful yet atmospheric everything was. Mountains in this game even have a greater purpose than usual, letting you jump off and paraglide to discover new things. The whole environment is so beautiful and masterfully crafted that I can you can years of content just exploring.

 

 I can talk on about every single little thing in Breath of the Wild that makes map feel full and diverse but because I only have so many word space I can use, I’ll have to stop here.  My final thoughts are that, if anything, Breath of the Wild is one of those special games that feel like every single piece of it was hand made by God, and yes I am talking about Eiji Aonuma.