I would say the defining characteristic that sets Breath of the Wild apart from its contemporaries is its “chemistry engine”, as they call it.
It’s traversal. The interactions were cool, but mostly about the puzzles.
What BOTW changed was how exploration works. You see a landmark in the distance, start moving towards it, and figure out how to get there. There’s nothing you see that isn’t part of the traversal system. There are no invisible walls. Some things are absurdly high to climb, some things are slippery, etc, but everything you struggle to traverse is clearly a product of the systems the game uses and makes sense.
(The problem was none of that exploration got you anywhere interesting, but the core element of “everything you see is a destination” is the thing about BOTW that was groundbreaking.)
There have been games that showed hints of stuff you could get to, but I think BOTW was the first major open world game that actually universally followed that rule and didn’t have invisible walls all over the place.
Like Skyrim there was a lot you could “climb” by abusing the mechanics and spamming jumps until you got lucky, and everything existed in that sense. But it was glitches, not part of the mechanics. BOTW having points of interest almost entirely discovered visually was unique.
It’s traversal. The interactions were cool, but mostly about the puzzles.
What BOTW changed was how exploration works. You see a landmark in the distance, start moving towards it, and figure out how to get there. There’s nothing you see that isn’t part of the traversal system. There are no invisible walls. Some things are absurdly high to climb, some things are slippery, etc, but everything you struggle to traverse is clearly a product of the systems the game uses and makes sense.
(The problem was none of that exploration got you anywhere interesting, but the core element of “everything you see is a destination” is the thing about BOTW that was groundbreaking.)
I feel like “See that mountain? You can go there.” was already a cliche when the game came out. [Though I have no citation to prove it.]
BotW really delivered on it though, with everything being climbable as the rule rather than the exception.
There have been games that showed hints of stuff you could get to, but I think BOTW was the first major open world game that actually universally followed that rule and didn’t have invisible walls all over the place.
Like Skyrim there was a lot you could “climb” by abusing the mechanics and spamming jumps until you got lucky, and everything existed in that sense. But it was glitches, not part of the mechanics. BOTW having points of interest almost entirely discovered visually was unique.