Ever since its launch alongside Nintendo Switch two and a half years ago, I can’t stop gushing about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nintendo took one of its greatest series and made it an order of magnitude better with an utterly enrapturing sense of discovery and craft and experimentation applied to a typical open-world adventure game. And its minimal painterly melancholic art style is one of the most beautiful aesthetics in a franchise with some real lookers.
Video games take a long time to make. So we knew it would be a while before games inspired by Breath of the Wild actually started hitting store shelves. Nintendo themselves have only just revealed a direct sequel. However, a new pair of games has us wondering if developers are studying Link’s latest adventure just a little too closely.
First there’s Decay of Logos from Rising Star Games and Amplify Creations. Watching this trailer, it’s tough for us to describe it any other way than “it looks like Breath of the Wild.” The grass, the mountains, the mounts. But the characters designs for both you and your enemies have their own medieval thing going on. This more reminds us of the long history of games inspired by Zelda, from Oceanhorn to Okami, rather than a full-on rip-off. And it’s not like Breath of the Wild is entirely original. Just ask fans of Shadow of the Colossus or Miyazaki movies.
For a full-on rip-off that makes Decay of Logos seem even more original in comparison, take a look at Genshin Impact. Based on this trailer for the Chinese PlayStation 4 game, it really looks like the developers at miHoYo just took Breath of the Wild and replaced all the characters with anime wives and some Dynasty Warriors (or Hyrule Warriors) over the top action. Even the sparse piano music is the same. We aren’t the only ones who noticed this either. At the China Joy gaming expo, Zelda fans destroyed PS4s in protest over the apparent theft at the Genshin Impact booth.
But whatever. Copyright law is too restrictive anyway and copyrighting specifics of gameplay or style is even trickier. We just hope these games copy the quality of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild along with its surface level look. For more on (official) Zelda games check out our hands on impressions of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. And as for unofficial Zelda games, check out this fan-made tabletop version of Breath of the Wild.
