The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

• 1. Introduction

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  The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had sold 34.51 million copies by March 2025. That made it the bestselling Zelda game and one of the bestselling video games ever. It is a 2017 action-adventure from Nintendo EPD, built for the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch. Its hero, Link, sets out to save Princess Zelda and stop Calamity Ganon from destroying the world. Yet the game gives remarkably few orders. Players explore the open world of Hyrule, collect items and tackle puzzles in almost any order they choose. This documentary asks how a team built a world that rewards curiosity over instruction. It asks what happened on the long road to release. And it asks why designers of other games still use this one as their point of comparison.

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• 2. A Century Asleep

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  An amnesiac warrior wakes inside the Shrine of Resurrection, a chamber on the Great Plateau overlooking Hyrule. The old man he meets reveals himself as the lingering spirit of Rhoam, the last king of Hyrule. Rhoam tells Link that he has slumbered there for a century, and then recounts the kingdom's history and Link's own past.

  Long ago, the Sheikah race had built Hyrule into an advanced civilization. Four enormous animal-shaped machines called the Divine Beasts protected it, along with an army of autonomous weapons called Guardians. When the ancient evil Calamity Ganon appeared, four warriors received the title of Champion. Each piloted a Divine Beast to weaken him. The princess of Hyrule, who carried the blood of the Goddess Hylia, sealed Ganon away while her appointed knight guarded her.

  Ten millennia later, Hyrule had slipped back into a medieval state. Its peoples read their ancestors' prophecies, recognized the signs that Ganon was returning, and dug up the Divine Beasts and Guardians. Princess Zelda trained hard to awaken the sealing magic, while continuing her own research into the machines. Link became her knight because he could wield the Master Sword. The new Champions were Mipha, princess of the aquatic Zora, and Revali, archer of the birdlike Rito. Daruk, warrior of the mountainous Gorons, and Urbosa, chief of the desert-dwelling Gerudo, completed the four.

  On Zelda's seventeenth birthday, Ganon struck. He seized the Guardians and Divine Beasts and turned them on Hyrule. King Rhoam and the Champions died, and Link was gravely wounded protecting Zelda. She unlocked her sealing powers to save him and had him carried to the Shrine of Resurrection. She hid the Master Sword in Korok Forest under the care of the Great Deku Tree. Then she used her light magic to lock herself and Ganon inside Hyrule Castle.

  Impa, a Sheikah elder who once served the royal family, greets Link after he leaves the plateau. She tells him to free the Divine Beasts. As he travels, he revisits places from his past and regains his memories. At the request of Hyrule's peoples, he boards each Divine Beast and cuts it off from Ganon. The spirits of the fallen Champions are then free to pilot the machines. Sidon, Mipha's younger brother, helps him, as do Yunobo, Daruk's cowardly descendant, and Teba, a Rito warrior. The young Gerudo chief Riju completes the group.

  With the Master Sword in hand, Link enters Hyrule Castle and confronts Ganon. The Divine Beasts weaken the enemy. When Link defeats him, Ganon transforms into Dark Beast Ganon. Zelda hands Link the Bow of Light, which weakens the creature enough for her to seal him away. Peace returns, and the spirits of Rhoam and the Champions depart to the afterlife.

  A player who recovers every one of Link's memories earns a post-credits scene. In it, Zelda declares that Hyrule must be rebuilt and that she and Link must begin the work by themselves. As they survey the land, she confides that her powers may have dwindled over time, but that she has made peace with it.

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• 3. Rules of the Sandbox

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  During a thunderstorm in Hyrule, metal objects attract powerful bolts of lightning. A careful player avoids carrying metal. A clever one throws a metal object at an enemy to draw the lightning down on them. This behavior comes from what the game calls its chemistry engine, which assigns physical properties to most objects and governs how they react to the player and to each other. It sits on top of a consistent physics engine, a first for the Zelda series. The kingdom has no defined entrances or exits to its areas, and the instructions are scant, so problems rarely have a single answer.

  Link can run, climb, swim and glide on a paraglider, though his stamina sets the limit. He collects weapons, food and other resources from the environment. Unlike in earlier Zelda games, weapons and shields wear down with use and eventually shatter. Many items have several uses. Wooden weapons can light fires, wooden shields can catch incoming arrows, and certain shields work as makeshift snowboards. Hunting animals, gathering wild fruit and taking parts from defeated enemies supply the ingredients for cooking. Combining them produces meals and elixirs that restore health and stamina or grant temporary bonuses, such as extra strength or resistance to heat or cold.

  The Sheikah Slate, a magical stone tablet, is Link's most important tool. It marks waypoints on the map and photographs materials, creatures and enemies. The photos are stored in the Hyrule Compendium, an in-game album that can help locate valuable items. The Slate also lets Link create remote bombs, manipulate metal objects, form ice blocks on water and briefly freeze certain objects in time. In combat, players can lock onto a target for precise attacks, and button combinations unlock advanced moves. Some enemies can be beaten without a weapon at all, for instance by rolling boulders off a cliff into their camp.

  Activating towers and shrines adds waypoints that the player can warp to at any time. Towers also reveal territory on the Slate's map, though place names appear only after the player explores the area. Shrines hold challenges that range from puzzles to fights against robotic opponents. Clearing them earns Spirit Orbs, and four orbs can be traded for extra health or stamina. Once Link has at least 13 hearts, he can reclaim the Master Sword in Korok Forest. It is the only unbreakable weapon, but it can run out of energy and then needs a 10-minute recharge. The Divine Beasts work as extended puzzles, each built around a unique animal and element. Small puzzles scattered across the land pay out Korok Seeds, which expand the inventory for weapons, shields and bows. Towns, villages and horse stables offer quests, sidequests and shops, while hikers and other travelers hand out hints and conversation.

  Scanning an Amiibo figure with the controller can even call Epona, Link's horse from earlier Zelda games, or Wolf Link from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

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• 4. Rethinking Zelda

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  Work began immediately after The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword reached players in 2011, and it lasted five years. Series producer Eiji Aonuma said the team aimed to "rethink the conventions of Zelda". Aonuma had heard from players who wanted a more interconnected map, one that let them explore the places between the main gameplay areas. In 2013, Nintendo tried nonlinear play in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, and many outlets praised it. At E3 2014, Aonuma said he planned to reform dungeons and puzzles. He also wanted to redesign the game so that players could reach the end without following the story.

  Nintendo had never made an open world on this scale, so the team studied The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Shadow of the Colossus. The latter has similar climbing mechanics, and its creator, Fumito Ueda, was a friend of Aonuma. For the art style, the team drew on Japanese anime they had grown up watching. They also redesigned Link, and Aonuma deliberately made him more gender neutral so that players could relate to him more easily.

  Before full development began, the team built a playable 2D prototype in the spirit of the original Zelda, to test physics-based puzzles. The finished game uses a modified version of the Havok physics engine. At the 2017 Game Developers Conference, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, technical director Takuhiro Dohta and art director Satoru Takizawa gave a talk titled "Change and Constant , Breaking Conventions with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild". They demonstrated the prototype there. Aonuma said the engine "underpins everything in the world" and makes things behave in a "logical and realistic way". He recalled one day in development when he entered a game area and found every object blown away by the wind.

  Some ideas did not survive. Early plans included "double hookshots", a variation on the series' classic tool that would let players swing "like Spider-Man". The team cut them after finding they gave Link too much mobility and broke the climbing mechanic. Earlier Zelda games had kept adding actions for Link, and the team realized that too many actions would clutter the controls. So they added more events for players to interact with in the world instead.

  Flying and underground dungeons were also on the table. The Wii U's limitations kept them out, and the team saved them for a later game.

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• 5. Between Two Consoles

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  In January 2013, during a Nintendo Direct presentation, Aonuma announced a new Zelda for the Wii U. The next year, at its E3 press event, Nintendo showed in-game footage in a high-definition, cel-shaded style. The game was once planned for 2015. It was delayed early that year and skipped that year's E3. Nintendo later confirmed a Wii U version would still ship, even as it developed its next console, the Nintendo Switch. A second delay came in April 2016, caused by problems with the physics engine. At E3 in June of that year, attendees played the Wii U version, and Nintendo announced the subtitle, Breath of the Wild. Several publications listed it among the best games of the show.

  The team had built and demonstrated the game with touchscreen features for the Wii U. Developers found that "looking back and forth between the GamePad and the screen" was a distraction. When the project moved to tandem development across the Switch and Wii U, those features were removed. The GamePad shaped the game in a quieter way too. Link had been left-handed in earlier games, but he is right-handed here, to match the GamePad's sword-swinging buttons on its right side. Docked to a television, the Switch version performs better than the Wii U release. Undocked, both run at the same resolution, and the Switch version has higher-quality environmental sounds.

  Breath of the Wild launched for both consoles on the 3rd of March 2017. It was the last Nintendo-published game released for the Wii U. On Switch, it came in limited Special Edition and Master Edition bundles. Both included a Sheikah Eye coin, a Calamity Ganon tapestry with a world map, a soundtrack CD and a themed carrying case for the Switch. The Master Edition added a figurine of the Master Sword. An Explorer's Edition followed on the 23rd of November, with a two-sided map and a 100-page book of story information. In Europe, the game used unique packaging artwork.

  A five-disc, 211-track soundtrack followed in Japan on the 25th of April 2018.

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• 6. Color, Voice and Piano

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  Aonuma said the art design was inspired by gouache and en plein air painting, which helped players read the vast world. Takizawa cited the Jōmon period as an inspiration for the ancient Sheikah technology and architecture, because of the mystery surrounding that era. The landscape was based on places in and around Kyoto, the hometown of director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. Monolith Soft, the studio behind the open-world Xenoblade Chronicles series, helped with the topographical level design. The starting area is a plateau so that players can see the expansive environments from the very first moments.

  Breath of the Wild was the first main Zelda game to use voice acting in cutscenes, although Link stays silent. Aonuma remembered how he felt the first time he heard a human voice from a game character, and he wanted to leave a similar impression on players. The team originally planned to record only key scenes. They decided instead to record voice-overs for every cutscene. Nintendo supplied voice-overs and subtitles in eight languages. At first, players could not mix the languages of voices and subtitles, but an update in May 2017 let them pick the voice-over language. When the game went gold, Nintendo held a wrap party. For the launch in Taiwan and South Korea in early 2018, a worldwide patch added traditional and simplified Chinese and Korean translations on the Switch.

  Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata and Hajime Wakai composed the original score. Kataoka had worked on the Zelda game Spirit Tracks, and Wakai on The Wind Waker. The music was written mainly for piano and leans on ambient music and sounds rather than the melodic, upbeat tunes of earlier Zelda games.

  Wakai said this approach added "authenticity" to the environments, and the rest of the sound team took it on as a challenge.

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• 7. Critical Welcome

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  On Metacritic, Breath of the Wild is the highest-rated game of 2017, and it holds the largest number of perfect reviews of any game from any year. The aggregator summed up the response as "universal acclaim". OpenCritic reported that 96% of critics recommended it, making it the site's highest-rated Wii U game. Only Super Mario Odyssey, also from 2017, ranks higher among Switch games. Several critics called it a masterpiece.

  Jose Otero of IGN described the open-world design as "a masterclass in open-world design". Edge called the world "an absolute, and unremitting, pleasure to get lost in". It also noted that being given every tool in the opening hour means a solution is always within reach. Digital Trends argued that climbing any surface and gliding across the map gave players a freedom of movement that pushed developers to think harder about vertical design. Critics contrasted it with "Ubisoft-style" games that fill the map with objectives. Here, players set their own goals, and their discoveries on the map become a record of what they have done. Kyle Orland of Ars Technica judged that the design reinvented the Zelda formula. Kotaku recommended switching off interface elements, praising cues such as Link shivering in the cold. Players also shared surprising interactions among Link, villagers, pets and enemies widely on social media. A tribute to Satoru Iwata, the former Nintendo president who died during development, drew praise as well.

  James Stephanie Sterling was harder to please. They gave the game 7/10 and criticized the difficulty, the weapon durability and the level design, while praising the open world and variety. Other criticism targeted an unstable frame rate and a resolution of 900p. Updates fixed some of these problems.

  In Japan, the Switch and Wii U versions sold a combined 230,000 copies in their first week. In the United States, it sold more than one million copies in its launch month, and 925,000 of those were for Switch. That outsold the console itself. Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima called the Switch attach rate "unprecedented". In the UK, only Horizon Zero Dawn outsold it in its release week. By December 2025 the Switch version had sold 33.64 million copies, and by December 2020 the Wii U version had sold 1.70 million.

  At the Game Awards 2017, it won Game of the Year, Best Game Direction and Best Action/Adventure Game. The 21st Annual D.I.C.E. Awards also gave it Game of the Year. According to Metacritic, it topped 18 lists of the best games of the 2010s, more than any other title. In a 2021 TV Asahi poll of more than 50,000 Japanese people, it was voted the best console game, ahead of Dragon Quest V. A 2023 GQ poll of journalists across the industry named it the best video game.

  In 2025, IGN and Nintendo Life ranked it the second best Nintendo game, behind only its own sequel.

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• 8. Life After Launch

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  Two packs of downloadable expansions arrived through an expansion pass in 2017. The Master Trials, released in June, added the Trial of the Sword, in which the player faces three trials of twelve, sixteen and twenty-three rooms. Players start with no equipment and lose all progress on a game over. Each completed trial raises the Master Sword's attack power by ten points. By the end of the third, the sword has doubled in power and glows blue. The pack also added Master Mode, a harder difficulty. It added the Hero's Path feature, which draws the player's route on the map, and a hidden Travel Medallion that saves one waypoint to teleport to. New items included the Korok Mask, which alerts the player when a Korok is nearby. The Champions' Ballad came in December 2017 with a new dungeon, more story, new gear and extra challenges. Completing its quest line also earns the Master Cycle Zero, a motorcycle-like vehicle. A complete edition with all the expansions on the game card was released only in Japan, on the 8th of October 2021.

  Benjamin Plich, designer of Assassin's Creed Unity and For Honor, predicted soon after release that developers would borrow its freedom to experiment. Damien Monnier, designer of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, said it brought classic open-world mechanics together without relying on them to steer players. Screen Rant called its reactive physics sandbox "a revelation for the open world genre at large". PC Gamer wrote that it set a new standard for the genre. Genshin Impact, Ghost of Tsushima, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Elden Ring, Halo Infinite and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are among the games whose developers have cited it as an inspiration. Critics have also noted similarities in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Sonic Frontiers and Horizon Forbidden West.

  The game even changed a corner of the emulation world. Its success sparked interest in Cemu, a Wii U emulator, and within weeks of release its developers had updated the software to run the game at a steady frame rate. Running it in an emulator led to a thriving modding scene.

  The spinoff Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity reached the Nintendo Switch on the 20th of November 2020. It is a hack and slash game in the style of the Dynasty Warriors series, set 100 years before the events of the original. In October 2025, a 16-side vinyl boxset of the soundtrack was announced, along with a shorter 4-side set, both due in June 2026.

  The sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was released on the 12th of May 2023, with Fujibayashi returning as director. It grew out of the planning for the expansions. The team came up with more ideas than they could fit, and some ran into technical limits, so those ideas became a new game. The sequel is inspired in part by Red Dead Redemption 2.

  An enhanced Switch 2 Edition launched on the 5th of June 2025, beside the sequel. It offers improved resolution, a higher frame rate and HDR support. It arrived as a standalone game, a paid upgrade for Switch owners, or a free upgrade for subscribers to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack. It also connects to the Nintendo Switch Online app for Zelda Notes, which provides a full overworld map and real-time voiced navigation to collectibles and secrets. In that feature, Princess Zelda herself narrates Hyrule's characteristics.

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