Finished Breath of the Wild today, park ranger Link is the Hero of Hyrule! All shrines & memories, 361 Koroks, ~54% total completion.
Full ending spoilers below! The Hyrule Castle section was really thrilling, with all the guardians pointing at you from everywhere, and there must be so many ways to scale this place. Scaling waterfalls with the Zora suit, abusing Revali's gale, just climbing, taking the exterior route and wasting guardians, or sneaking in through the Dock entrance...
(I did a combination of all of the above.)
Had a few panicked moments when they drop a Lynel on you and close the gates around you -- I've never really learned to fight them, and have in fact only ever beaten one of them (near Zora's Domain). But remembered the Ancient Arrow trick from the Master Trials and just zapped them to space. Easy way out? Absolutely.
The final battle... Yeah it's on the easy side when you've spent ~200 hours playing this game and burst through the door with 100 bomb arrows and like 900 other weapons you could chuck at him. Doesn't make me regret any prior decisions though. Frankly I'm not sure how you'd scale this; he should get easier with more preparation, so struggling players have a way to beat him (getting all the Divine Beasts to halve his lifebar).
Conclusion: Is it fun to play without hunting/fishing? Honestly, yes. Very much so, in fact. By forcing myself to save wildlife from hostile moblins, not picking every field clean but leaving some plants untouched, not fishing, hunting, or killing any animals where possible you kinda feel more responsible for this fake virtual world.
Later on I also restricted my mining of ore deposits, although admittedly the fossil fuel analogy doesn't really work there.
Playing this way does introduce some limitations:
1. I don't have every armour fully upgraded. The Zora one, in theory you can sometimes find fish when you kill Octoroks, so I think that should be doable. I however chose to always sell these to food stores, so the food wouldn't go to waste. Although I suppose they might never be bought, and I guess it's like supporting the meat/fish consumption pipeline.
2. I've never made any elixirs. They all require bugs to make. Did buy a fire one for Death Mountain. In retrospect that was unnecessary and supports the industry of killing bugs for Hylian consumption.
3. Several (seemingly dull) sidequests become unbeatable. There's a kid who wants you to catch dragonflies, the Korok on top of the Deku Tree eventually wants you to bring him fish, there's a guy who wants crickets, someone who will trade you Heat resistant armour for lizards... Probably a few more? There's at least 1 Korok seed in the Castle I can't get because they want a boiled egg from you (didn't even know you could boil things!)
4. The Master Trials are really tough.They give you meat, and even hearty fish which could probably restore you to full health I'm guessing, which would be veeeery welcome. Could even kinda rationalise these foods to be illusory, as the entire Master Trial realm seems kinda magically separate from the real world... Luckily there are radishes you can ration out, but I was definitely tempted here.
5. Dragons are a grey area.The game almost forces you to harm at least one in a boss battle, and their scales are useful for several upgrades. I decided to consider these as immortal being who would be unfazed by a few lost scales, assuming they shed them over time. Doesn't quite justify hunting them everytime though (in fact there's a certain fridge horror in perenially torturing an undying being for materials).
List of wildlife I've possibly harmed:
- One nest of bees, shot down to reenact a Hunger Games scene on a moblin. Sorry bees.
- Several fish when I accidentally bombed a river.
- 2 Wolves were killed in an explosion.
- At least 2 dragons, several times.
- Caught a butterfly & beetle, released them seemingly unharmed?
- Rode a deer who seemed less than thrilled to unlock a Shrine. Deer seemed fine?
- Removed 3 horses from natural surroundings for domestication.
- Grabbed a crab by accident once and when you release those they look dead.
- Kept several fairies hostage for a while, they fly away on their own accord though.