It's such a shame that no game has handled sailing nearly as well as Wind Waker after over 20 years.
We've seen lots of games attempt to recapture that same magic over the years, sometimes even other Zelda games, but none of them have stuck the landing in my opinion because they focus on expanding the mechanics set (Adding crafting systems, more RPG mechanics, focusing on economic trade, etc.) and all those go against what I feel is WW's greatest strength: Powerlessness.
In WW, you sail a glorified talking canoe with a sail grafted onto it. You sail that dinky little vessel across a massive, uncaring ocean where an indescribable beast can assault you at any moment and knock you into the abyss, a giant kraken can blot out the sun and drag you down to the sea floor, a hurricane can toss you halfway across the planet, or even just a faceless bigger ship with more firepower can try to sink you with cannon fire. You? You barely have a single cannon and a few gadgets to defend yourself. You're just a little red leaf floating on infinite uncharted waters, and the game makes sure you damn well FEEL that way.
Alone, this would result in a depressing experience where you fight to survive whenever you step offshore. But Wind Waker's sense of discovery - that loop of seeing an island silhouette on the horizon becoming more detailed as you approach it - is the savor to the spice of powerlessness that makes the whole game work. Nothing can recreate the feeling of watching the skies blacken with eternal rain and night for the first time while chasing Nauru's Pearl, swearing I just saw the shadow of a titan moving deep under the waves amongst the noise of composite video on a cheap TV set late one night. It humbles the player and inspires your imagination just through fight or flight instinct.
Every sailing game I've played has added mechanics that end up necessarily empowering players as reward for engaging with them. That's standard practice in game design and is generally regarded as a good idea if you want players to keep playing, especially if you're a small team who can't make a huge fleshed out ocean map and instead rely on iterative stat-driven systems to extend the depth of your game. But these approaches lead to the same end: Making the world a domain to be conquered.
When I played Windbound a while back, I struggled to explain why it didn't grab me like Wind Waker did, but then I realized this problem. Once your numbers are high enough from spending enough time on islands such that you understand the mechanics thoroughly, you start to ONLY be able to see the game as a series of numbers. Gotta keep your hunger meter from depleting. Gotta craft upgrades for your ship. Gotta manage your inventory. Gotta optimize every single interaction in the game. I wasn't an awestruck visitor in this fantastical waterworld anymore, I was just crunching numbers to optimize my progress over time. It was a very depressing realization to just look at the screen and no longer see a world - I could only see blue pixels.
This is a problem that all RPGs that want you to get lost in their world have to solve to some degree depending on the tone they wish the establish. For countless RPGs I've played, this is barely an issue since their stories play to the strengths of that gradual mastery and empowerment. That's great! I love it when that's executed well!
But for a sailing game looking to chart the same course as Wind Waker? No. The sea is vast, untamed, and beautiful, and you are but a humble wanderer in it.
(Image Source: https://www.deviantart.com/orioto/art/Wind-s-Requiem-704422823)
