Do you know how to make a grown man cry? Take something that he has invested hundreds of hours in, day and night, and then spoil or ravage it. Gamers would definitely be able to understand just what I mean by this, especially when you have poured out your heart and soul over many hours on a particular game, only to have the save game wiped out either by accident or design. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an epic adventure title that was launched alongside the Nintendo Switch, and boy, has it racked up rave reviews over the course of time. However, do bear in mind that it is all too easy to wipe out your save game when starting a new game of Zelda.
Basically, the “trick” behind such a potential tragedy is this: starting a new game of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will erase the entire lot of existing save files. If you have already poured in hundreds of hours into the game, losing several friends and cutting family ties off with Aunt Gertrude in the process, then this is an apocalyptic moment in your gaming life: When your 8 year old nephew waltzes into the room, turns on the Nintendo Switch, and boots The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He then starts a new game using your current Switch account. All those long weeks of gaming? Down the drain. Always, always start a brand new Switch account before kicking off a totally new game.
There should have been a warning about this in the manual or through online forums in the first place, as this could be a major crying point for those who do not know about this and would like to begin parallel Zelda adventures at once in order to explore various quests and see how the storyline unfolds. Basically, when one is in the main menu and selects “New Game”, a prompt will appear, asking the gamer, “Overwrite previous save data?”
Obviously pressing the negative answer would not lead to any save game being overwritten, but if you were to click on the affirmative, then all of your saves would be wiped out, requiring you to start from scratch again. Now that is not an entirely bad thing when you think about it, considering how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the next best thing since sliced bread and ham, but some others might think that overwriting the previously saved data applies to auto-saves only.
Hence, if you would like to begin a new game while retaining your precious save files, always kick off with a brand new Switch account. This can be done by entering the System Settings that is located on the home page, scrolling down to Users, and then picking Add User. From there, you can fire up The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild using the new user data, from where you would have a brand new save file to enjoy. This is definitely one of the lesser known banana skins in the newest Zelda game, that's for sure.
