“Ganondorf’s No More Tears Shampoo Still Hurts Me Plenty”
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? More like The Legend of Zelda: Beers of the Kingdom, ha ha ayo, Saturdays are for the bois. More like The Lingle of Zingle: Tingle Kris Kingle. Ho ho ho. More like Lemon Juice: Tears From My Eyes, ouch my eyes are bleeding. More like tear up this kingdom, baby. More like “I have a tear in my butthole” amirite lads? More like Tears for Fears: “Mad World” (1982) from their hit album The Hurting, which later became a staple song from Certified Terrible MovieTM Donnie Disco, and the song of choice for my sixth-grade piano recital. It sure made me cry when I fucked up that note in the middle and embarrassed myself in front of my childhood crush. More like… more like… where was I? What am I doing here? Who are you? Ah, I’ll just go play some more Zelda instead.
Yes, indeed, the newest Legend of Zelda game is finally out, after waiting for six long years since Breath of the Wild came out in 2017, and I’ve finally played it. As the latest entry in one of Nintendo’s most revered and groundbreaking franchises, as a sequel to a game that I sunk over a hundred hours in, as a follow-up to one of the most landmark titles of the last decade, as a game that was announced in 2019 (the summer I was at Philmont, it was that long ago) and went radio silent for two and a half years while we all held our breath and wondered how Nintendo could possibly top Breath of the Wild while still using the same engine and overworld, as a game that shared my same mental space as Elden Ring for three years, as a game that… as a game that… Wait, where was I going with this?
Bear with me, I promise I’m getting to the point. The reason I begin this with two false, disconnected cold opens is two-fold. One, because what can I possibly say about Tears of the Kingdom that hasn’t already been said en masse, by everyone, everywhere, all at once? Let’s get past the formalities. It’s a Zelda game. You fight monsters with swords and collect treasure in a vast open world. It’s the sequel to one of Nintendo’s best-selling games of all time. It seeks to build upon and improve a game world and formula that, a year ago (and pre-Elden Ring; more on that later), many people would have considered impossible to improve upon. It is, definitely by download size and probably by content size, Nintendo’s biggest-ever video game. Just like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom is a new cultural landmark on the video gaming landscape. And it’s trying to up show up the cultural landmark of the last ten years, that being Breath of the Wild. It’s a big deal. Everyone is talking about it. And I have nothing new to add besides, perhaps, the second reason I broke up the opening this way.
The second reason being, two, my experience so far has been defined by a sense of disorientation and overwhelming scale. Much like a corgi thrown into the ocean at high tide, I am well and truly disoriented and overwhelmed by this game. I am lost, I am confused, I am in love with it, of course, but I am still lost and confused and oh my gosh should I go here and see this no wait what’s over there is that a hot air balloon what who’s that why does that robot have a gun wait oh shit I’m dead better try again but what is that
Much like Elden Ring, this game is too big to be properly reviewed in the ten days or so that it’s been out, and the maybe ten hours I’ve had to play with it already. This is a game that I’m going to chew on for the rest of the summer, maybe the rest of the year, and I’m hoping that it’ll keep me preoccupied during those long, cold, lonely Swedish nights when I’ll be living in a shed and peeing in a jug in some lady’s backyard. This is a game that you can’t just blow through in a weekend, oh no; this is a game that, I can already tell, is going to consume my playtime for the next long while. Which is funny because, perhaps despite or because of my first impressions of the game, I… don’t know if I’ll like it as much as I liked Breath of the Wild?
Blasphemy! Heresy! A pox upon the foul-tongued devil! Back with ye! Yeah, yeah, I get it. Everyone’s throwing nothing but praise at the game, and don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely loving it so far, but I still somehow have the gall to say that I might not like it as much. This, despite the fact that the game has a map that’s at least 50% larger than breath of the wild’s, an infinitely larger variety of weapons, a huge improvement to the number of enemies and strategies for beating them, far more engaging crafting systems and deeper means of interaction with the world, and a story that I can’t easily predict right off the bat. Someone online said that Tears of the KIngdom isn’t Breath of the Wild’s sequel; Breath of the Wild is the demo for Tears of the Kingdom. And, honestly, I think that’s a perfect description of it. Tears of the Kingdom is everything Breath of the Wild had, but cranked all the way up to 11. So what gives?
I… don’t know, to be honest with you. I think that’s part of the problem. In some ways, this game is now too big for me (hey, talk about those tears earlier, huh?). There are too many things for me to see, too many things for me to do and try, and it’s disorienting and overwhelming to my OCD list-compulsive brain. Seeing some of the density of stuff out here is giving me an overload. Let me give you an example.
The game opens with some story stuff before plopping you on a big ol’ island in the sky. This island serves as Tears of the Kingdom’s version of the Great Plateau, from Breath of the Wild. But while the starter island offers a condensed, controlled tutorial through the game’s primary mechanics as a way to ease new players in, much like the Great Pleateau, this island isn’t just a small snapshot of the larger game world. It’s a whole damn dungeon. It is one of the single most densely-packed video game areas I have ever seen. It has some of the most simultaneously liberating and controlling geometry I have ever met. It is a roller-coaster ride through idea after idea after idea getting chucked at you all at once, with barely the time to explore the true possibilities, and then it literally throws you off the edge and says “go get ’em, tiger.” I spent about six hours in the tutorial area alone, and I about had a damn near heart attack everytime something new got added. I’m getting old, I thought to myself. If the rest of the game is this jam-packed, I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it.
So there’s the disorienting and overwhelming start to the game, a kind of weird, double-sided first impression. Near the end, I realized how much damn fun the tutorial had been, and realized that it’s designed like one singular challenge. A realization that most people probably came to in their first five minutes. The first sky island is a masterclass in teaching players, offering challenges that test player knowledge, and guiding them down a single critical path while offering room for improvisation and decision-making. But at the same time, this island is so full of nooks and crannies with little treasures and things to see and I don’t want to miss any of it. And I had to resign myself, eventually, to accepting that I would miss some of it. Because what else could I do? If I kept scouring this place the way that I played in Elden Ring, I’d never even get to the ground and I’d hate my time with it, constantly cursing myself for being unable to actually enjoy the game but also dreading the thought of not seeing everything.
I keep bringing Elden Ring up, and I’ve also got a good reason for that, too. It’s impossible not to compare the two games, even coming out more than a year apart. They were both announced in the summer of 2019, for one, and they’re both riffing off the same open-world style of gameplay that was, frankly, established by the very first Legend of Zelda back in 1986, and then modernized with Breath of the Wild. Everyone’s said it before, but I’ll say it again; Elden Ring feels like what Ocarina of Time was setting the groundwork for. Elden Ring is the natural accumulation of years of video game design. Tears of the Kingdom, on the other hand, takes that same basic framework and throws a monkey wrench into it by giving players tools to break the game from the very beginning, and then building its world around the understanding that, yes, you can do pretty much anything you want here. And I… don’t like it?
That’s not entirely true. As complex of a game as Elden Ring is, I ultimately love it for its simplicity. Your actions, your “verbs,” if you will, are fairly limited. Jump, attack, roll. If you want, you can get through the game with basically one weapon and one toolset, as I did. This narrow focus appeals to me and my obsessive playstyles, for whatever purpose that is; it’s one of the reasons why I adore Bloodborne so damn much. Breath of the Wild had a much wider array of “verbs,” with its magnetics and stasis mechanics and physics simulations, and Tears of the Kingdom has infinitely more still. Before it came out, no one really knew what Tears of the Kingdom’s big hook would be, or how impactful it would be. But let me tell you, that hook for the game, it’s mind-boggling just how huge its impact really is.
The hook, the new feature, the primary mechanic, is, of course, the ultra-hand and fuse tools. Boiled down, this game lets you take anything you can find and stick it together. You got a sword but need a hammer? Just throw a boulder on there, now it’s a mace. Have a big-ass fan and need a boat? Duct tape some logs together and stick that fan up its keister and you’re golden. Need to light up a dark cavern? Attach this plant to your arrows and let ’em fly. Link is our brand-new lighting expert at Home Depot. Want to make a giant statue that shoots fire from its dick? Don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do that, since you can do that now. This game went from exploring and crafting to exploring, crafting, and building every tool, vehicle, or weapon you could ever need out of random garbage. It’s not The Legend of Zelda anymore. It’s MacGyver: the Game, with just enough Mythbusters thrown in to make it exciting.
I don’t like it.
Well, once again, that’s not entirely true. Using these tools to solve puzzles and get to locations I didn’t think were possibly is very satisfying. The handful of shrines (self-contained puzzle rooms, just like Breath of the Wild) that I’ve been to are all unique and offer interesting ways to use these tools to overcome problems. I like the thinking and the planning that they offer. The number of verbs and systems in play is pretty overwhelming, but I’m not opposed to that level of complexity. But as a primary mechanic, building vehicles and Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions has never really been a thing I’m interested in. I tend to avoid games that are, like, “Build your own spaceship!” or “Build your own boat!” in favor of “build a house” or “decorate this garden.” I was always a Creative Mode kid in Minecraft. I never cared much for the crafting and spelunking. Part of the reason why I never finished Subnautica is that the second half of the game turns into “You better keep this submarine working if you want to survive.” And seeing that this central mechanic to Tears of the Kingdom is in the same vein is, well, a little disappointing.
I had a handful of people tell me that they bounced off of (or in one of my coworker’s cases, vehemently loathed and refuses to acknowledge) Breath of the Wild because it wasn’t what they liked about Zelda as a series. And I get that; I loved the game, because it was one of my first open-world games (barring Skyrim, maybe the first), but my biggest complaint was that there weren’t enough dungeons. The things I love from Zelda are the complicated, moving puzzle box dungeons of Majora’s Mask or Skyward Sword. Give me your Sand Ships and Arbiter’s Grounds, or your Ancient Cisterns and Lakebed Temples. Breath of the Wild had some of those, but not enough. Tears of the Kingdom has… well, it’s yet to be seen.
My biggest complaint with Elden Ring is basically the same, too, not enough dungeons, not enough dedicated, self-contained spaces where the challenge is exploration and traversal. But I also learned something important about myself from Elden Ring, and it’s that I will let myself kill a game I love if I’m not careful. I want to love Tears of the Kingdom, and I’m sure I will. It’s already got its hooks in me, and I want to keep playing it, work be damned. But I have to keep in mind that I cannot rush a game like this. In my effort to explore every crevice, every cave, and in my effort to force myself to engage with systems that I’m not keen on, I think I’ll just grow to resent the game for not being what I want it to be. The disorienting and overwhelming scale of something like this is supposed to be fun. I paid seventy dollars for this giant sandbox because it’s fun, not because I have some obligation to uncover every secret. And if I’m not having fun, I don’t have to play it. I can come back to it later, or, better yet, go somewhere else in the game. Shigeru Miyamoto is not holding a gun to my head (anymore), and he already took my money.
Tears of the Kingdom is a game that I’m going to need to take my time with if I actually want to enjoy my time with it. I haven’t been waiting six damn years to not enjoy this game. I know that I can have fun with it, I just need to let myself… relax, I guess? And not get bogged down by trying to explore everything. That seems like something most people can just… do, but… I don’t know. I’ve only barely scratched the surface of what this game has, and I’m eager to play more, so that’s a good sign. Any kind of criticism at this point feels premature. But it is, if nothing else, off to a very interesting start. And I’ll be sure to keep you updated and see where it goes.
