Breath of the Wild is magic. No game before or since has perfected the open world formula in such magnitude. Hyrule is barren, ravaged down to its bones by Calamity Ganon and his hordes of minions, and yet it’s never boring. While I’d love some proper dungeons in the sequel rather than further iterations on Shrines, I understand how they make exploration feel constantly rewarding. It’s a big world, but one filled with tiny challenges and small narrative beats that allow you to forge your own story while saving the land.

This is never more true than at the edges of the map. On Hyrule’s outskirts, where the map edges are torn with overuse, there are some weird experiences that you wouldn’t think would work in a Zelda game. There are two huge labyrinths for starters, nigh impossible to enter and even harder to solve. But there’s also an island off the east coast. It looks like a normal island to start with, but after you use raft and leaf or cliff and glider to journey across the sea, you immediately understand that not everything is as it seems.

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When you wake up, you’re naked and alone. I mean, you’re nearly always alone in Breath of the Wild, but you really feel it when your weapons and armour have been stripped from you and you’re told to take on a series of challenges to escape Eventide Island. Had the Master Sword? Not any more buddy, and good luck beating Ganon without it.

Link on Eventide Island with monsters about to notice him

The goal of Eventide Island is to survive. You must scavenge sticks and crabs in order to fight and heal, and use everything at your disposal, from runes, to paragliding, to cooking. There are monsters to kill and orbs to collect in order to access the Shrine herein, but there’s a twist. You can’t save on the island, and every time you die, you’re placed back on the mainland, miles from the challenge with an ocean to cross before you can take it on again.

Eventide Island is more Dark Souls than Zelda, but somehow it works. It’s a great side quest that gives the game its trademark variety, but it works so perfectly because it forces you to interact with the game’s core mechanics.

By the time you can access Eventide Island and survive for more than a few seconds, you’ve likely got yourself a veritable armoury of equipment. You might even have the Master Sword, the only weapon in the game that doesn’t break. You’re dodging Moblin swipes and deflecting Guardian beams back at the shooters. The monsters of Hyrule fear you. But those on Eventide Island haven’t heard of your adventures on the mainland, they care not for your Phantom Armour and Hylian Shield.

BOTW Eventide Island link battling against an enemy

On Eventide Island, you’re forced to engage with Breath of the Wild’s core mechanics. You don’t have a full inventory of backup swords and spears if your main weapon breaks, so you have to improvise. Make sure to throw your stick as it’s about to break in order to defeat that last Bokoblin, and utilise your Rune-bombs to full effect. Cooking your food is essential, because there’s not a lot of it, and even a plain old rusty broadsword can become your most trusted ally.

Breath of the Wild wouldn’t work if it was all like Eventide Island, but it knows that. However, it revels in the opportunity to give you that additional challenge, and remind you of exactly what makes the game so great: its core gameplay loop of fighting, dodging, cooking, and exploring, all to get to a Shrine at the isle’s centre.

It seems as though Tears of the Kingdom will build on Breath of the Wild in every way possible. We’re headed into the skies and under the ground, entire castles are sinking and horses have been replaced by mechanical vehicles. But it needs to ensure it doesn’t lose sight of what made its predecessor so special. It’s a tough game to follow, and making the sprawling plains of Hyrule interesting all over again will be a challenge. It can’t repeat everything exactly the same, but it can’t change everything, either. Tears of the Kingdom must tread a fine line to keep things fresh while paying homage to the past, and keeping Eventide Island in mind will help do just that.

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