The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Breath of the Wild reassembles the series by giving up a prescribed order. The prologue ends with a paraglider, after which the whole continent is open, including the castle with the final enemy: you can head there right away without entering a single shrine or collecting a single upgrade.

The world rests on shared rules. Fire spreads through dry grass and creates an updraft, metal objects attract lightning in a storm, wood burns, ice melts, heavy things sink. The rules work the same everywhere, so puzzles get solved in ways the authors never listed. You can climb almost any surface, the limit is set by your stamina, and the terrain stops being a wall. Instead of a few big dungeons, a hundred and twenty short shrines are scattered across the map, each with one idea, plus four major objectives. Weapons break, so the supply has to be replenished. The game came out on two Nintendo consoles at once, the Switch and the Wii U.