The next Legend of Zelda is a Breath of fresh air

LOS ANGELES—Thirty minutes with the newest Legend of Zelda game is enough to prove what a dumb idea it is to play such a huge, ambitious, and convention-busting game for only 30 minutes. Nintendo's Breath of the Wild, slated to launch in 2017 on both the Wii U and the unreleased Nintendo NX system, pushes the boundaries of what people should expect in a "Zelda" video game—or even what it means to be a "Zelda" game.

Before Ars' closed-door session at a private Nintendo booth, we'd all gotten a chance to watch the extensive preview footage that Nintendo had published during this year's E3. But watching video of a game is never the same as playing a game, and after putting in some controller time, we've come to realize that Breath blows up a lot of the Zelda series' archetypes. Our demo was split into two portions: a 15-minute "sandbox" session in the middle of the game's opening zone (which we started with more armor and weapons) and a 20-minute shot at the retail game's cold open.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild opens with a nearly nude Link being prodded awake in a mysterious mountain chamber by a mysterious spoken voice: "Open your eyes, Link." From there, our hero grabs a brand-new magical book, which he eventually uses to unlock secret doors and access distant worlds. But before that happens, a door opens in the chamber and reveals a massive new overworld for Link to explore.

The cold open gave us an opportunity to trade blows with a few bipedal warthog-like creatures. We also got to test the game's new movement systems, which include the ability to jump at will, along with tree and mountain climbing—so long as your stamina meter doesn't run out, at least. This new, spry version of Link can grab onto pretty much any surface (maybe he's grown serious talons in his fingernails or something), but if he doesn't let go by the time his stamina runs out, he'll fall—potentially to his death. Stamina also controls how long players can sprint around at full tilt, and it will presumably play into other mechanics later on.

Weapons are another major difference. Link has many more hand-to-hand weapon options this time around, from axes to staves to tree branches to swords, and he can switch between those weapons regularly both for damage-point boosts and for different attack speeds and animations. However, the weapons all have one thing in common: they're brittle. Rather than giving Link a default weapon he can always fall back on, the game's early implements fall apart after smashing only a few times into enemies, so players must constantly pick up new weapons. Thankfully, there are a lot of them, but this is a new thing to have to manage so frequently in a Zelda game.

Other series changes include the absence of collectible hearts and rupees; instead, players must collect food and either eat it raw or cook it at a fire to get more of their health back. Ingredients can also be gathered and eventually used to create items like potions. This may mean that the "rupee" currency as we know it is out the window, and players will instead have to find and create every item and upgrade they want, but that remains to be seen.

As you can see in the video at the top of the page, Ars Gaming Editor Kyle Orland was adamant that our demo snippet felt like it was "not a Zelda game." A game with this many changed systems, and this little connection to the series that came before it, could have provided a start to an entirely new franchise. Instead, Nintendo has stuck Link in a new world that's utterly lacking the familiar patterns and comforting structure of previous Zelda games. Comparisons to more modern series like Monster Hunter, The Elder Scrolls, and even the modern wave of "open-world survival" fare aren't entirely off the mark.

I'm a little more open to the "Zelda" name being attached to something with decidedly different systems, especially since this game's cold open reminded me so much of the very first Zelda game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Just like that game, this one opens with an unexplained push to adventure—even including a mysterious man in a dark cave prodding you along—and I got that same 1987 tingle in my bones when I first looked at an incredibly huge world that I knew I would soon get to explore. To me, Zelda games have always been about discovery, not whether I pick up a boomerang in the next dungeon, and I think it's high time the series reclaimed that feeling of the unknown and empowered players with cool, exploratory controls and abilities along the way.

I'm the kind of longtime Zelda fan who's grown weary of the same "find dungeon, seek treasure, solve specific puzzle, repeat" formula. I'm ready for a fresh Breath of the Wild. But Kyle may very well be right that Nintendo is throwing out too much in trying to reinvent what it means to be a Zelda game. We'll have to see just how Nintendo juggles all the layered levels of expectations with the final product when it launches "sometime" in 2017.

Listing image by Nintendo