Breath of the Wild's Approach To Accessibility Is Still Unmatched

Jon still likes Zelda

- Jon Wilson

After playing it for over a hundred hours, few games have amazed me like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I've been thinking about how the developers created a game that’s still leading the way in terms of accessibility all these years later.

First of all, I want to make one thing clear. When most people, including myself, think about accessibility in videogames, we usually think of adjustable controllers, colourblindness settings, and disabling quick time events, among other things. Those are all well and good, but they fail to create a consistent experience and instead rely on secondary factors that ultimately fail to deliver what is really needed. Not that games shouldn’t have customisable options, and I do believe being able to tailor the game to your liking is a great feature. But sometimes, it can damage the overall experience, making players feel like they missed out on something. I think this is something Breath of the Wild gets right as it’s all about player freedom, so there isn’t a need for extraneous features.