It seems incredible to think it now, but The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was never meant to be a Nintendo Switch game. Developed first for Nintendo’s unloved Wii U console, it ended up being the first game available on the Switch when it launched in 2017 as Nintendo had nothing else ready to go.
Six years on, it is widely seen as one of the best games ever made; the Evening Standard called it “fantasy gaming at its finest”. It has won multiple awards, with downloads running to more than 30 million. With its a much-anticipated sequel, which is set to be released tomorrow, the Zelda franchise has never been more popular.
But this only scratches the surface. The franchise’s history stretches back 40 years, and with dozens of games released and several (dubious) TV adaptations, Zelda is a video game pioneer.
Humble beginnings
In the Eighties, computer gaming was in its infancy, Nintendo was still better-known for being a trading-card company and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. And in 1986, the first Zelda game was released.
Legend of Zelda introduced audiences to the character of Link, a humanoid hero dressed in green and wielding a sword, whose task was to collect the fragments of a mystical power called the Triforce, in order to rescue Princess Zelda from the clutches of the evil Ganon.
While the game made a splash for its graphics, writing and score, it was also notable for how innovative it was in the way it used gaming software.
“This isn’t a game where you’ve got a little guy who you press B to jump, and A to run with… this is adventure. You know, the second game is literally called The Adventure of Link,” video game historian Mike Diver says.
“It’s about exploration and self-discovery within a controlled space... And that kind of connects back to Shigeru Miyamoto’s childhood.”
Shigeru Miyamoto, the game’s creator, has often talked about wanting to give Zelda players the freedom he experienced as a child, exploring the forests and caves in the countryside around Kyoto, where he grew up.
Zelda was his attempt to do just that – with subsequent games sending Link across the fictional land of Hyrule, into the past, into the spirit world and even the parallel universe of Termina.
Importantly, Link has always been a blank slate – in fact, even his name was designed to reflect the “link” between the character and player. The character never speaks (barring one ill-advised 1980s cartoon TV series) and has a mysterious past; even his iconic all-green outfit has barely changed over the years.
“[Players want] discovery, exploration and a sense of wonder, I suppose in the fantasy of being a hero of some kind,” Diver says.
“Link’s great for that, because he doesn’t talk, you can dress him up in various different ways. He’s just a nice little blank vessel for our virtual adventures, without ever being too depressing.”
As the series (and years) progressed, Zelda games became more confident and more ambitious. There was Ocarina of Time, which released in 1998 and has been listed by several publications as the best game of all time (until Breath of the Wild stole its crown; the under-rated Wind Waker, which released in 2002 and has become a cult favourite; and A Link to the Past, which came out in 1991 and sold 6.5 million copies. Over time, it also became more influential in the way it inspired other games.
“One of the famous examples is a game called Åkami,” Liz Burton says. A long-time Zelda fan, she helps run the Zelda Universe fan-site around her full-time job; she is a fount of all Link-related knowledge.
“Basically, you play as a wolf, and go around this Japanese style world that was originally inspired by Zelda. What happened was in [the next Zelda game] Twilight Princess… Link becomes a wolf. That was inspired by Åkami. So it kind of had a chain effect where it was originally inspired by Zelda and then it inspired Zelda itself.”
For long-time fans like Diver, there are a few releases that stand out as game-changing. “A Link to the Past [in 1991] definitely felt a bit special. It was a game that even if you had SEGAs you were keen to go and check out it felt like a significant release,” he remembers.
“I felt that, ‘This is the game I need to play, and I will buy the hardware to do so.’ But then Breath of the Wild [is] just the Zelda game – the Nintendo game, really the big Nintendo game that was on the Switch when the Switch came out.”
The Breath of the Wild effect
It’s almost impossible to overstate the impact Nintendo’s 2017 game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had when it came out.
Set, for the first time, in an open world [one where players can explore freely, as opposed to within structured levels], players encountered a Link awakened from a 100-year slumber after a calamitous battle for Hyrule. Princess Zelda, meanwhile, was trapped in a never-ending battle with Ganon (here dubbed Calamity Ganon) in her castle at the map’s centre.
Link’s job, in this new game, was to travel the land finding his and Zelda’s old allies, to mount a final attack and defeat Ganon for good.
That was the premise. In reality, the game was all about exploration: mini-dungeon ‘shrines’, quests and fan-favourite monsters were dotted across Hyrule’s landscape, as well as tiny settlements, villages, hostile terrain and forage-able items.
The player had complete freedom to go wherever they wished, with minimal hand-holding; the game was a mega-hit, selling 30.7 million copies by the end of 2022. For context, that makes it one of the best-selling Nintendo games of all time.
Why was it so popular? For Burton, Breath of the Wild is the culmination of Nintendo’s constant desire to push boundaries and innovate with every technological advance.
“They’re constantly trying something new… like Ocarina of Time [the first 3D Zelda game, released in 1998]. Obviously that was mind blowing for 3D. But since then they did things with Twilight Princess with the motion controls, which was… totally unheard of until the Wii,” she says.
“Breath of the Wild totally changed the game with making it open world. But they did it so well. They did it really, really well... everyone wanted to do open world - they really nailed it. And a lot of games since have been trying to replicate the style of Breath of the Wild.”
Key to that, according to Diver, was the game’s simplicity – and lack of rules. “I just love the feeling that you could, rather than have a map that was full of waypoints, you could open it up, drop a waypoint on it, and just go and see what was there… you just set your waypoint, get on your horse and off you go and it might be nothing there. Or it might be you know, a treasure chest, it might be some enemy.”
Since then, hit franchises like Dark Souls and Elden Ring have taken Breath of the Wild’s approach to world-building, letting players discover the map for themselves rather than being directed by a series of consecutive quests.
“I think what works with Breath of the Wild, which doesn’t necessarily work in an Elden Ring or a Dark Souls game is that… you don’t run up against too many pain points. If you haven’t got the equipment or the skills to do something yet, you can backtrack, you can find another way,” Diver says.
“Zelda has always been about finding the right tools for the task at hand. You go to one dungeon and you unlock a piece of equipment that’s then used in the next dungeon. But you can also find other points in the world that you couldn’t access before. So it’s about learning as you go. And using that knowledge you acquire on the way to then go back… and find something new.”
Zelda today
With Tears of the Kingdom about to make its long-awaited debut, the first Zelda game since Breath of the Wind, expectation is at fever pitch – as is speculation on how the game will expand Zelda’s legacy and lore.
That means expectations and hopes concerning Tears of the Kingdom also differ. With many column inches in national newspapers already devoted to Link’s new abilities (he possesses brand-new telekinetic powers) and the new game’s world (trailers have teased that some of the action will be taking place in islands floating in the sky), fans have been busy dissecting what that might mean come its launch on May 12.
“From what you can see from the trailer, there’s going to be a bit of a war and you could see some of the Gerudo, some of the Zora race, they’re coming to fight with Link. And that is going to be really interesting, because I can’t think of past games where there’s that alliance,” Burton says.
“I would like to see a shift backwards towards [the older games], at least in terms of the style,” Lack Attack adds. As a Twitch streamer specialising in the Zelda franchise, Lack has thousands of subscribers who tune into watch his speed run-throughs of both older and newer games.
“I think the gameplay is amazing. I think the world is amazing. And graphically it looks super good. I just want to see some more dungeons that kind of go back to that classic Zelda formula.”
With Tears of the Kingdom about to launch, it’s clear there is about to a strong response from fans. The cool thing about Zelda is that everybody has a different experience with it. You know, because it’s not like a Mario game where your experience is almost the same as everybody’s,” Lack says.
“There’s more exploration, you’re experiencing the story, you’re experiencing the music, the feel of the game and the dungeons… I think that everybody brings their own experience when they watch it. And then they like to share that experience. And that constantly grows.”
