After The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo should consider moving the franchise back to its traditional style and conventions.
Nintendo hit an absolute home run with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in early 2017 alongside the launch of the Nintendo Switch. It brought the franchise back to its dominance of the action adventure genre, and introduced an entirely new generation of gamers to the wondrous world of Hyrule. The new open world design and encouragement to explore and discover at one’s own pace was hailed as a breath of fresh air after some felt that Skyward Sword was an example of the formula becoming too tired. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will push the new look of the franchise forward as a sequel to BotW.
In just a matter of days, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will hit store shelves, and it’s already almost guaranteed to be a massive success. The game looks to have built upon nearly every aspect in Breath of the Wild and fine-tuned it to a near perfect degree. While this is undoubtedly exciting, there is the possibility that Nintendo may have perfected the open world style of The Legend of Zelda, with little wiggle room in terms of where to go next. At the risk of repeating the franchise fatigue sentiments surrounding Skyward Sword, the company should perform another stylistic refresh by going back to the series roots.
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In many ways, Breath of the Wild was already a return to the traditional and purest form of the franchise. The 2017 Switch game shared many similarities in design philosophy to the NES Zelda, released way back in 1986. In that classic title, the game just drops players in, with no guidance as to where the player should go or what objectives there are. Instead, gamers were taught to look around and discover the world, with no pressure of what tasks to complete and in no set order.
