With its massive world and open-ended gameplay, Breath of the Wild was a well-received game that claimed hundreds of hours in the lives in many Legend of Zelda fans. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that the trailer for Breath of the Wild 2 has been intently studied and analysed in great detail, as fans await the chance to get stuck into the sequel.
Excellent as it was, Breath of the Wild was not without things that could have been improved on. Whilst we know that the sequel will use the same game engine as the original, there’s still scope for making some tweaks that could result in an even better game. Here are five things that I’d like to see changed in BOTW2.
1. Better Steeds
I love catching horses in Breath of the Wild. The feeling of accomplishment as you tame a wild steed is eminently satisfying. But despite the sheer size of BOTW’s Hyrule, I usually just leave my horses languishing in the stable.
The reason for this is simple – unless you have a specific item from the Champion’s Ballad DLC, you can only summon your horse from a relatively short distance away. So if you’re exploring bold new frontiers and you suddenly think “a horse would really speed this up”, it just doesn’t seem worth the effort to go and fetch your trusty steed. Add in the fact that lots of BOTW’s exploration involves climbing up to places where horses cannot reach, and you might as well just leave them munching hay in the stable.
In the sequel, just having the ability to call your horse from anywhere right from the start would make them feel much more integral to the game.
But horses can only take you so far. Imagine for a moment that you could eventually soar over Hyrule on your very own loftwing, a la Skyward Sword. Obviously it wouldn’t be available straight away, but later in the game you could replace all that tedious climbing with the ability to effortlessly soar over cliffs and peaks.
2. More Runes
In many of the earlier Zelda games, you had a wide variety of tools at your disposal – no self-respecting adventurer went out without a boomerang, slingshot, grappling hook and bomb bag to hand, to name but a few. In contrast, BOTW’s selection of runes feels a bit limited. You pick up the main ones in the first couple of hours, and then that’s pretty much it for the rest of the game. And yes, there is a decent range of melee weapons and arrows, but the lack of runes just feels like a wasted opportunity. Give us a grappling rune to make climbing more fun. A fire rune to eventually replace torches and flints. A permanent boomerang beyond just the occasional boomerang-type melee weapon. If the new game is going to have more shrine puzzles, let’s also have some new abilities to play with.
3. Optional Blood Moon
Every time the Blood Moon rises over Hyrule, all of the monsters you’ve defeated get resurrected. This is understandable – it keeps the world populated and ensures that you can farm monsters for items needed for upgrades. What’s annoying, however, is that you have no control over when the Blood Moon appears. In the worst case scenario, you’ll have just painstakingly cleared out a camp of tough enemies, only for the Blood Moon to appear and resurrect them just as you were looting their corpses.
What we need in BOTW2 is more control over when the Blood Moon does and doesn’t happen. Maybe you can summon it by making an offering to a dark fairy, or postpone it using a similar mechanic. Give me the choice of exactly when all those pesky enemies will respawn, and I’ll feel a whole lot happier on my explorations.
4. Better weather
A lot of open world games boast some sort of weather mechanic – it helps to keep things interesting and varied. Unfortunately, there’s one thing that BOTW players really hate – and that’s the rain. Rain not only douses all those useful campfires and cooking fires, but it makes climbing pretty much impossible. If a rain shower begins while you’re in the middle of climbing, there’s little you can do except stand on the nearest ledge and wait it out – far from a recipe for a fun gameplay session.
What’s worse is that rain doesn’t seem to confer any benefits. It’s not like, in return for the inconvenience, there are tasks you can only do during the rain. It’s a pure drag on gameplay, which could be avoided either by removing the climbing penalty, or by adding in some rain-specific things to do.
5. Fast cook
Procuring and cooking ingredients in BOTW is good fun, but let’s face, there are times when you really need to cook in bulk. You’ve just harvested a load of meat and seasoning, and you’d like to repeatedly cook the same dish a few times. Sadly, there are no shortcuts – for each individual dish you’re going to have to make Link hold the individual ingredients, toss them in the cookpot, and receive the finished item. You’ll probably get bored before you even finish.
For any situation where you’re just cooking up the same thing instead of experimenting with new dishes, it would be nice if you could speed up the process a bit – either by cooking multiple dishes at the same time, or with a ‘repeat last recipe’ shortcut.
What changes would you like to see in BOTW2? Comment below to let me know.
