1. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
There was never another option. This is not just the greatest video game of this decade; it's one of the greatest pieces of digital media ever created.
Miyamoto conceptualized the original The Legend Of Zelda in 1987. He was inspired by his childhood treks through the woods outside Kyoto and the childlike sense of adventure that they invoked. Though he was limited by the NES' hardware, he and his team made a game that was a turning point in gaming itself. People saw for the first time that a video game could be a grand, sprawling adventure, and not necessarily a linear one.
Breath Of The Wild is the original The Legend Of Zelda untethered. It's a visit back to the original 1987 vision of Hyrule, but instead of much of the imagery and adventure having to come from the player's imagination, it's now presented in full life. We can visit the sweltering Gerudo desert, or the rainy forests and plains that surround Lake Hylia, or the snowy peaks where the Ruto live, or the scorched, volcanic Death Mountain, all in immense detail and without any loading screens. Hyrule extends in every direction that surrounds you, and as long as you have the stamina, the clothing, and sometimes the weapons, you can go anywhere you can see.
It is that exact feeling that truly recalls the first game in this series. When you boot The Legend Of Zelda, you're presented with a short prompt that tells you that you have to recover eight pieces of something called the Triforce that were stolen by an evil entity named Ganon. You're then placed in South Hyrule, and that's it. You just have to walk around and start investigating to see what's accessible.
Breath Of The Wild works almost exactly the same way. You awaken on a plateau in central Hyrule and have to start walking around to collect and investigate. You're obviously given significantly more prompting than in the original game, but the spirit of adventure is maintained. By the time you complete your initial objectives, you absolutely cannot wait to get out and see what else is in this land.
Your first few objectives also serve as a tutorial for Link's toolkit, which is brilliant in its simplicity and versatility. You're given the ability to produce two different kinds of bombs, to attract and retract metallic objects, to briefly freeze objects in place, to grow ice blocks in water, and to paraglide. Mastering each of them is essential to your success in the game's challenges.
Speaking of the challenges, they are numerous. I have over 150 hours in this game and I feel like I'm nowhere close to completing all that it has to offer. I'm not sure that I ever will, either, as you can only run one save file at a time without making a second profile on your Switch (and if I had one lone complaint about this game, that would be it).
The main quest tasks you with toppling four ancient beasts, each of which culminates in a thematically-related bossfight. Doing so will make your final task - defeating Calamity Ganon - a less daunting task. In the true spirit of the free-will nature of this game, though, you don't even have to do that if you don't want to. That's right, if you're feeling extra froggy, you can head straight for Hyrule Castle immediately after leaving the plateau and see how you fare against the beast himself.
There are also 120 mini-dungeons called shrines throughout Hyrule, each of which is either a puzzle for you to solve, a battle with enemies, or both.
The guardian and boss enemies are somehow both organic and mechanical; it's honestly remarkable. They move with the durability of an insurmountable steel foe, yet they ooze with the primordial purple and black glowing muck that is their lifeblood, adorned across their frames in the aesthetic of everything else you see.
The art, dungeon design, and enemy design in this game are astounding. The aesthetic permeates literally everything you see, and yet it never makes things seem boring or repetitive in the slightest; rather it serves to guide you on your adventures, serving as a silent indicator that you're doing the right thing or doing the right way.
As I said when I wrote about Super Mario Odyssey, thinking about where this series goes from here is kind of strange, because this too feels like a culmination of 30 years of knowledge, skills, and design. Nintendo announced that a sequel is being developed, and that's fantastic, because I'm ready to spend more time in this version of Hyrule.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go put on my Hylian Hood.
