In the Breath of the Wild, we are introduced to a new approach to an inventory system that differs from what was used before.  To start, in the previous games, once you acquire the designated sword, shield, bow, and whatever else you may need, that is essentially what you are stuck with for most of the game. Breath of the Wild changes this by allowing the player to hold multiple weapons and items in their inventory. The primary reason for this change in design could be due to the fact that it is a more “open world” than the previous Zelda games, which means more things for the player to find. For instance, in Wind Waker, Link can pick up weapons that an enemy drops, but he will not be able to truly carry it. If you want to switch back to your designated hero sword, you will have to drop the enemy weapon, and it wont be added to your inventory. This kind of design may not fit as well in Breath of the Wild because it is such an expansive world. A player will likely encounter hundreds of weapons over the course of the game. Why include all these different weapons in the game if the player can’t truly use them?

To account for this change, they implemented a balance.  You don’t want the player to be able to pick up every item they see and store it indefinitely, mostly because it would just be too easy and impractical. Instead of a practical player, you get a hoarder who never runs out of supplies and never has to be mindful about what they have at their disposal. These games aren’t inherently realistic, its fantasy world with fantasy creatures. But the general rules of logic still mostly apply. You can carry more weight than a normal person probably could sure, but you can’t carry infinite amounts of weight. There are limited number of inventory slots, which force the player to be a bit picky about what they pick up and what they decide to leave behind.

They want you to be able to use these other weapons that they’ve presented to you, but they want you to think about which ones you really want or need. Weapons, bows, and shields are given a ranking number, which determines how powerful they are and how long they will last. Using an item too much will result in it breaking. This method can help the player decide if an item is worth carrying rather than just relying on whether or not it looks good or cool. The balance comes into play here as well. The designers allow the player to carry multiple weapons, but most of those will not last long, forcing you not to get too attached to one weapon and to constantly be searching for new things to pick up. So they have not only given the player the opportunity to hold more items, but they clearly want you to do this because most of your weapons will eventually break. In part this may be due to the fact that certain weapons are more effective against certain enemies than others. I think the intention here is to encourage finding which weapons work.

They also designed it so that the player can switch between weapons mid action as opposed to opening the inventory, finding the item, clicking on it, equipping it, and then getting back to the action. In previous games you had to do this, which becomes a bit tedious after a while. The less time spent doing simple tasks the better. With the addition of being able to hold more items, this process would likely have been even more of a nuisance for the player. This new method allows the player to seamlessly switch between their weapons, bows, and shields with less clicks, and helps keep the momentum of the game from slowing down to a stop.