I have a lot of cynical opinions, and one of the ones that continuously gets the most backlash and surprise from people is when I explain how this year’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was not that outstanding to me. When that game release it was suddenly the best game ever for a lot of people, and I can kind of see why. The industry is large and brimming with tons of good games and it’s easy to get used to seeing the same formulas, so having a game that drops a formula entirely to adopt something completely new is extremely refreshing.
Where the path branches out is in that to me the new of Breath of the Wild is not entirely a positive change, nor a refreshing one for me. While there are a lot of tiny things to pick at and comment on, ultimately for me it’s a matter of the feel of the game failing to truly create a lasting impact. Which is what leads to the common comparison I make with Xenoblade Chronicles X, the game that set pretty high standards.
Xenoblade Chronicles X was an open world RPG that released in the holiday season of 2015. The developers, Monolith Soft, had managed to create an astounding RPG during the Wii era, Xenoblade Chronicles, which was greatly received due to its story, world building and battle mechanics. Personally, I still have not played this original game, due to lack of time most of all, but I am somewhat familiar with how it functions.
In X, the developers set out to recreate that sense of world more than anything, and changed gears from having a highly story-focused RPG that follows a specific set of characters to a more open world set-up where the player creates their own character and explore the world as they see fit. Naturally, there is still progression and there is still a story, it just isn’t the focus as heavily as it was in the previous game.
It’s this open world set up that I want to talk about mainly, because ultimately what makes this game and breaks Breath of the Wild for me is that. The world. Just like how a platformer lives on its movement and a horror game lives from its pacing and tension, an open world game to me basically needs a living, breathing world to remain interesting. Because otherwise, what is the point of exploring an empty husk? Sure, there’s achievements and incentives and missions and quests and collectibles and gear and… well, a lot of random incentives to keep people playing. However, if it isn’t fun to be in that world or traverse it, at least to me it just winds up becoming a job.
I’ve done a lot of set-up at this point, so I guess it’s fair to go ahead and jump on the topic now. First, take a look at the following videos, first from the beginning of Breath of the Wild:
And then from early in the prologue of Xenoblade Chronicles X:
To state the obvious, neither of these videos are mine, but I do want to clarify that in preparation for this post I did go through both games for one hour each to really experience the beginning and iron out my thoughts more clearly. The reason for this is that ultimately it’s that first hour or so of the game that should REALLY make it clear and obvious what I can expect from the rest of the game, and if it is not instantly clear what that is, then I feel it’s justified to just stop playing (at least in an ideal world that ignores the logic of “I just paid $60 for this game, I’m gonna keep playing it even if it isn’t fun so far”)
Just in the beginning of Breath of the Wild, the set-up is clear. First of all, you are Link, and this Link starts with a completely clean slate. The first rooms makes it clear that you can gather gear and equip it (or not), that you can use your Sheikah slate to activate pedestals, and that you can climb in order to overcome obstacles. Most players will also discover more basic things as well, like running, lifting items, throwing items, jumping, and the variety of menus available. But then after this mini-tutorial comes the real pitch of the game: you step out and you see the entirety of this world, and you can almost hear Eiji Aonuma, this game’s director, seductively whispering in your ear “you can go anywhere; this is your world!” as the game’s title flashes on the screen.
The glory of Breath of the Wild lies in this promise being true. You CAN go anywhere that you see. And to a lot of people that’s already a success. Ten out of ten. Best game ever.
But, if I look deeper at this cut-scene, admittedly with prior knowledge of what the game does offer, there’s also something very clear: it’s my world. Later on you find out there’s a Ganon entity in the castle, and Death Mountain is being troubled by a giant Salamander robot, and there’s deadly robots (Guardians) roaming around laser-ing things into dust. But from looking at the world none of this is apparent. The game tells you eventually that there’s danger, that there’s life being threatened… but in terms of what the player actually sees from the beginning and onward, there emerges this very obvious disconnect between what the exposition wants you to believe (that you are there as a savior of a living world) and what you are actually experiencing in the world (that the world is your playground.)
Seasoned Breath of the Wild players might be ready to call out that I’m wrong. That there’s squirrels and bunnies and horses and monsters and Falco playing an accordion… and it’s true, there ARE beings in this world outside of yourself. That said, I personally felt they were very few in between, and worse of all they all very obviously exist for Link’s purposes. I was outright excited when I was near a town and I ran into a ghost-like projection of a bunny… before discovering that it was actually a super common thing in that area that you use to harvest a specific material. I was excited when I discovered there were bears and mountain goats and all these different animals… but in the context of this gigantic map these animals just outright barely exist.
Ultimately the other discrepancy that develops is that if I ignore the story completely, if I simply go about and do my own things… the world actually feels natural, fine and beautiful. This is a great thing in a way: the artists and designers designed a world that feels and looks great. But how does that work in the context of a game that’s telling me it needs ME in order to survive? I’m slowly entering more and more into the realm of how the story in the game doesn’t work, so I won’t go much further, but I just want it to be clear that what the game tells you about the world and what the world actually is are very VERY different things. One has consequences, stakes, life in danger, LIFE… the other is a sandbox, a beautiful, expansive, sandbox.
This is where we should go ahead and talk about Xenoblade Chronicles X. That cut-scene I highlighted, something I just refer to as the “World” cut-scene, has the same exact function as that opening one in Zelda: It shows you what the world is, and it establishes that promise of what you can do. X is naturally a different genre so it has its differences: you have a character outright telling you things as opposed to silence; you have epic music and moving shots. Most importantly, there’s the fact that this cut-scene doesn’t happen until decently into the prologue.
However, what this game lacks in subtlety it completely makes up for in terms of narrative. The core principle of this game is that the last of humanity is marooned on this unknown, alien planet. This cut-scene gets to that entire experience by first showing: the world and where home is relative to all of it; the creatures that live in it, from the gigantic to the small; the player that is free to traverse that world as long as they are aware of the consequent danger of their choices.
So there’s two things here I already love. The first is the fact that the world, despite being built for the player, exists outside of them. All these animals, all these creatures, seem to exist outside of the personal quest of the player. Yes, I do know it’s an illusion. Ultimately, most of these animals will exist as ways to harvest materials, that I can use to develop or invest or sell or a multitude of other “game” behaviors. But in their design of the world, in how they built it, the people at Monolith Soft evidently took great care in making the world a world greater than the player.
The next thing to love is something more personal: the fact that the game takes great care to touch into the nuance of how we interact with other beings. We all understand that in early gaming it was just a matter of a main character killing enemies to rescue something, usually a princess (because of course.) And despite the fact we talk about how revolutionary games are getting, how deep and involved and artistic they can be… isn’t it weird that we are still highly limited to the notion of walking around killing everything because it’s good?
Xenoblade Chronicles X is not different in a sense. Throughout your experience you will go around with guns a blazing killing everything and anything you wish. But I can appreciate, even if slightly, the fact that the people writing this game made it clear that there’s thought behind that choice. That part of the experience is discovering how to CO-EXIST, not dominate. And later, cut-scenes clarify that not everything needs to be killed, and that there’s a line between self-defense and aggression. Sure, aggression and battle are still the main form of navigating the world, and are very often shown as splendorous and awesome, but the thought of this game establishing nuance by questioning basic mechanical actions goes a long way in terms of narrative and furthers how the players sees this as a world and not just a playground.
This is what I love about this game. It’s a game that is very clearly tailored towards a specific type of fun, but along with that it took very obvious care to make the world real and living. The game has a lot of complicated mechanics and systems to the point where I consider myself terrible at the game and can even understand the notion of people feeling intimidated by it (which is ultimately where I think Breath of the Wild succeeds, by remaining highly accessible and open). But what brings all those mechanics together is a world that is carefully designed to be beautiful, dangerous and extremely fun to explore. Just to gush for a bit, despite not playing this game as much as people who truly liked it, it is extremely hard for me to ever forget the feeling of walking into caves and discovering gigantic monsters, or thinking I know a continent to then discover a completely different and beautiful area I never thought could exist. Or more importantly, the glory of being granted the ability to fly to then discover that even familiar places had even more layers of danger and beauty to them.
And with that in mind, I’ll leave you guys with what actually IS the title cutscene of Xenoblade Chronicles X. A scene that further brings home the scale and size of this game’s world and narrative, and my last attempt in this entry to get you to play this game if you haven’t.