Bigger Towns, More Population
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is often criticized for the emptiness of its open world in comparison to other games in its genre. Personally, I’ve always admired how the game uses its deserted landscape to make each new discovery feel special.
I actually adore the lack of clutter, which I sometimes think works against games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Not to mention, the deserted expanses of Hyrule correlate with the overall theme of being out in the wilderness.
That all being said, the lack of population is something of a disappointment to me. In the context of the game’s story, it does make sense, of course, but I would have loved some larger towns with more bustling populations to explore.
Imagine how brilliant it would be to see Hyrulian city dwellers going about their day to days in urban areas similar in size and appearance to, say, those found in a Dragon Quest or Ni No Kuni game.
Now, would any of this be possible on Wii U hardware given how large Breath of the Wild’s map is? Probably not, and I’d wager that’s at least part of the reason the game’s population was scaled back, in addition to the aforementioned story beat.
But with development now tailored to more powerful Switch hardware, and Hyrule’s population presumably returning to its villages and cities once again now that Gannon is (temporarily) defeated, hopefully, we can expect some more impressive metropolis’ in the upcoming sequel.
