10 Gruelling Video Game Levels That Were Just The Beginning
2. The Great Plateau - Breath Of The Wild
One of the best tutorial levels in gaming history is also one of the hardest opening levels thereof as well.
If you're a new player, The Great Plateau is going to kill you a lot. And if you're a veteran Zelda player, but playing this game for the first time completely blind, you are going to die even more, because this game is unlike any Zelda game that's come before and it isn't afraid to throw your ass into the deep end and laugh as you drown mere inches from shore.
For the first lesson of Breath of the Wild is that the stamina wheel rules all, long may it spin, greased with the blood of the heretical.
The second lesson of Breath of the Wild, which you learn very quickly afterward, is that the world doesn't like you. Link may be the chosen hero, but he's been asleep for a while, and that rest has taken its toll, as even certain bokoblins can take you out in one hit. On top of that, the climate is something you must constantly take into account, as you climb the plateau's single mountain and get very acquainted with the cold.
The Great Plateau runs you through everything the game will be expecting of you, and in a way that ensure you will NEVER forget...and then you open your map to discover that after all of that, you have cleared less than half of 1% of this gigantic game.