Five Things Breath of the Wild Can Learn From Skyrim

The year 2011 was a great year to be a gamer. I seem to remember an avalanche of games that I wanted to play all seemed to be coming out at the same time and I barely had time to keep up. How could I not play Assassin’s Creed: Revelations after that awesome trailer? I was definitely gonna make time for Arkham City, me being a lifelong, diehard Batman fan. What? They’re releasing three Metal Gear Solid games in HD? Ultimately, something was going to get left behind, and that something turned out to be The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Now don’t get me wrong, I thought it looked cool and it seemed like the type of fantasy style that was right up my alley. I had also heard from some of my closest friends (who weren’t really gamers either) what an awesome experience it was. But it was ironically The Legend of Zelda that did Skyrim in for me back in 2011. Releasing one week after Skyrim was Skyward Sword, and there was no way I wasn’t going to drop everything I was doing to play that. So I ultimately said about Skyrim “I’ll get to it later.”

Well, later turned out to be five years later, but better late then never as they say! Maybe it’s because I feel like there’s some kind of Link (punny) between Skyrim and Breath of the Wild; Breath of the Wild looks to clearly have been inspired by Skyrim, they both featured prominently in the Nintendo Switch reveal, and they’ll even be re-releasing next to each other again (we hope). All of those made me feel like the time was right to finally play Skyrim.

And so I have been. I’m nearly a hundred hours in and think I have a pretty good idea at how the game thinks, works, and what it’s strengths and weaknesses are. And since I see that connection between the newest Zelda and Skyrim, I wanted to give some observations that I hope Breath of the Wild picks up on. Here are five things that Breath of the Wild can learn from Skyrim:

1) When it comes to side quests, less is more.

Now, this is a problem that not just Skyrim has, but most open world games struggle with. It’s nice that there’s a seemingly endless amount of quests to do, but the developers never stop to think that these quests maybe aren’t ones that anyone wants to do. In my recent play-through of Metal Gear Solid 5, in my quest to platinum the game, I probably did the same basic 12 Side Ops (as they’re known) a hundred different times. Nintendo is guilty of this as well, for as great as Xenoblade Chronicles X was, running errands for people doesn’t inspire me to finish my side quests queue. Instead of this bloated system, make the side quests count. Unless I’m going to unlock Link some cool FedEx armor, I don’t want to be delivering messages all over Hyrule. Have a few well thought out and unique side quests instead of a lot of redundant ones that are a chore to get through.

2) Auto-Saving is the Devil.

Skyrim, and Bethesda games in general, have a reputation for being full of bugs. I think we can all agree that there isn’t anything more frustrating than clearing a quest, only for your game to freeze. This has happened to me a few times in my time in the province of Skyrim, and since every time it’s happened has been when the game is auto-saving, I’m choosing to single that out. I can live with a few bugs, but game freezing is something that just makes me not want to play. Now I have every confidence that Nintendo knows what it’s doing and takes the making of its games seriously, but they’ve never developed a game of this scale by themselves before, so just a word of caution.

3) Voice acting helps, but not when everyone sounds the same.

And for that matter, looks the same. Look, I know we all want fully fleshed out voice acting in Zelda, but if it’s not done right, I’d rather have text. Now I’m not saying that Skyrim didn’t do voice acting right, but either the Nord in Falkreath has at least two identical brothers in every town, or they used the same voice actor on 50+ characters. It’s noticeable and takes me out of the game for at least a moment. Now I suspect that Nintendo will go in the middle here, having voices for the main story characters and text for any NPC’s, which is probably the right move. The one thing Breath of the Wild has an advantage over Skyrim in is that that Zelda characters can be a bit more zany and over-the-top, making them more visually unique. But unless the citizens of Hyrule are gonna walk around talking about arrows and knees, I’d rather have the voice acting kept to a minimum.

4) Strike that fine line between awesome music and tranquil ambience.

One of the things I like the most about Skyrim is the music that plays when you’re just wandering around. It gives you that nice feeling of wonder, but it also knows to ramp up when you’re engaged in battle or near a Shout. Now from everything I’ve seen of the Breath of the Wild gameplay videos, there seems to be this same quiet sense of ambience, but not really any music. Now (and I don’t think I’m alone in saying this) the music in Zelda has always been one of my favorite parts of the series, and to see it go completely in favor of nature sounds is a bit disappointing. We’ve only seen one area of the game so far, so hopefully Nintendo can find that sweet spot in the middle like Skyrim did and have the music be yet again a strong point for a Zelda title.

5) You have a giant open world? Great, fill it with bosses.

Now this may seem like a ‘duuhh’ kinda thing to say, but think about it: when is the last time you can remember fighting an optional boss in The Legend of Zelda series? I can’t think of one (feel free to correct me in the comments below). Sure, we’ve had trial pits and whatnot before, but I’m talking about something a little bit more substantial to spice up the land of Hyrule. One of my favorite things in Skyrim is fighting Dragons. Every time I see one, I get the tingles (punny again) cause I know I’m in for one hell of a fight. I don’t have to fight these behemoths, but if I do and I win, I unlock new abilities and powers. This is exactly what Hyrule needs. If Calamity Ganon has wrought havoc over the land, why wouldn’t there be something like Dragons (Guardians?) roaming around to fight? It’s the little things like that that’ll give incentive to exploring. I suppose they could be situated inside the Shrines and be bosses there, but I think it would lose some of its impact.

And so there you have it. I have no doubt that Breath of the Wild will be an awesome game (and let’s be honest, a single developer for Nintendo probably has more good ideas in his pinky than I ever will about how to make a video game great) but I still hope that it takes the lessons, both positive and negative, that The Elder Scrolls V gave us and uses them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go put another hundred hours into Skyrim.

Andy Spiteri is a Managing Editor at Zelda Informer. If you hate his thoughts on Zelda, Skyrim, and life in general, make sure to follow him on Twitter!
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