I’m going to spoil something about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for you: You can catch and ride a skeleton horse. Are you mad at me? Send your hate mail here, but that’s the last spoiler in this story, I swear!
I don’t think you should get mad. The new Zelda is far too expansive, with way too many things to do for you to realistically expect to find them all through natural exploration. Is it more magical for you to discover the stalhorse on your own? Probably. But I think it’s far more likely that you wouldn’t have discovered it at all. Or even if you did, I’m positive there are a dozen other tiny, incredible moments, characters, or items that you might never see before you put down Breath of the Wild for good.
My suggestion then is to let down your spoiler guard and join the rest of us in collectively exploring Zelda. You don’t have to start Googling for secrets every time you’re stuck or encounter a new quest, and you don’t have to go out and buy the strategy guide. Instead, when you come across a Twitter post that shows you something you haven’t experienced personally, revel in the fact that this game is big enough to continue hiding things from you. And join us by sharing some of your own moments.
Above: … I should go play more Zelda.
I think if you go that route, you’re still going to experience the bulk of Zelda’s treasures firsthand. And then instead of getting upset when someone shares something you haven’t seen yet, go in the game and seek it out yourself immediately. That’s what I’m going to do with an item I just discovered through a friend’s post on social media. AV Club writer Sam Barsanti just shared a screenshot of his “squad” from Breath of the Wild, and it showed me an equippable item that I never even imagined. Check out the post for yourself if you want to see what I mean (like I promised — no more spoilers in this story).
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After 115 hours of Breath of the Wild, it’s nuts to me that I am still stumbling over things I had no idea about on Twitter or Reddit. And instead of making me mad, it motivates me to go back and put even more time into Link’s epic adventure.
In my review, I explained that one of the most important things about Breath of the Wild is that it is simultaneously deep and wide. The map is enormous in scale and is roughly a quarter of the size of the island of Manhattan, except without the option to take a cab.
At the same time, Nintendo packed each one of those square kilometers with so much to do that you can get distracted a dozen times on your way to any one objective. In a world this dense, it’s absurd to think you’ll see everything through your own time with the game. Maybe you could 100-percent it on your own, but if you’re going to do that, you’re probably playing the game nonstop with complete devotion and no time for scrolling through Twitter.
Now, I’m not saying that you deserve to be spoiled because you are following me on social media. But you’ll find a lot more happiness if you let go and let yourself enjoy discovering aspects of the game through the experiences of other people.
Like this one:
