Tears of the Kingdom thoughts

Sequels have always been something of a messy topic for me. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "sequels are never better than the original" type people - after all, some of the best games of all time are sequels: Portal 2, Metal Gear Solid 2, NieR: Automata... Majora's Mask... the list goes on. But I think the sentiment speaks for itself that, for every good sequel created, there are a hundred mediocre sequels being churned out en masse that no one talks about or even wants to acknowledge. So what sets apart a good sequel from a bad sequel to a merely mediocre one? Obviously, there are a lot of factors, not least of which is the virtue of the sequel as its own piece of media, regardless of how it stands in comparison to its original. But I find that, for any discerning person interested in video games as art just beyond the idea of "is it fun", there are a few major things that I think any sequel should hope to achieve:

(1) A good sequel is a direct improvement. It is a representation of either "lessons learned" from the original game, or merely a reflection of technological advancements made in the period of time between its release and the original's. Whether this means technical or graphical, a good sequel should seek to polish the cracks in its original or add new content in some way that goes beyond the scope of what today's DLC normally would add. In that sense, a good sequel should "surpass" its original in some dimension.

(2) A good sequel has its own identity. If you remove it from the original, it has its own creative vision, its own message, its own heart and soul. It is not merely piggybacking off the success of its original with no artistic merits of its own.

(3) A good sequel is not just a repeat of the original but with proper nouns swapped out. It should surprise in some way - it should introduce new ideas and concepts and breathe new life into the established world. It should be different, but not so different that it's unrecognizable as a sequel (looking at you, Xenoblade Chronicles 2).

(Note that for the purposes of this discussion, I am excluding sequels to games that were literally created to be "incomplete": ie, the Trails series, where every game released is intended to be an installment in a larger, ongoing narrative. This discussion is strictly about sequels to original works where the original work was not intended to spawn a sequel.)

So when a sequel to Breath of the Wild was announced, I was extremely excited, but also cautious. As the first-ever open world Zelda game, BotW brought us into an expansive world absolutely filled to the brim with fun little secrets and fresh environments and an actually genuinely likable cast of characters (a series new for Zelda). Now, in any open world game, the "world" takes center to its quality; discovering the world and watching it unfold before you should be a dominant source of enjoyment and satisfaction as you play. When news came out that Tears of the Kingdom would take place on the same map as BotW, I became worried; although the developers reassured us that the new world would have plenty of new content to still feel fresh, this led me to believe that exploring the world itself would not be anywhere close to the same as it was in BotW. So, then, if the breadth of the new content was not going to be the world, then what was?

I turned my eyes to the narrative of BotW. Direct sequels in Zelda are rare, and when they do occur, they often are complete offshoots from the originals' stories. This is largely due to the fact that narratives in Zelda are sparse, and ultimately very secondary to everything else about the game - and while this was absolutely still the case for BotW, BotW's narrative has the rare distinction of being able to support much more than what it really told. In fact, one of the chief complaints about BotW I saw from both myself and others was that the characters were heavily underutilized - characters like Revali, Sidon, and Riju were actually incredibly popular and beloved, something very rare for Zelda games, which often only have one or two likable characters other than Link and Zelda. These characters were so popular, in fact, that an entire spinoff was created just to capitalize on their popularity: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, a game that is chiefly just fanservice in order to provide more content of the historic Champions. In BotW, we actually got to know these characters well enough to be invested in them, and so naturally, when I thought of a sequel to BotW that would still take place in the same world, my mind went to: okay, so they're going to give us more content of the characters! This will be great, since it should definitely match the quality of writing that was in BotW, which was, in general, above-average for a Zelda game.

So, come to the release day of TotK, and my expectations were this: it won't be the same type of game as BotW where the open world discovery aspect is the core of it, and it'll probably focus more on continuing the storyline from BotW. This is fine.

Well. The game did not come even close to meeting those expectations. It did not exceed them, either. It fell completely and utterly short of them in every meaningful dimension. The greatest sin this sequel committed was against Sequel Goal (3): to not simply be a repeat of its original. TotK is, in every way, simply just BotW all over again - but worse. There are several changes made to this game that make it genuinely an inferior product to BotW, with only one major change that I think improves it: the building.

Obviously, it's impossible to discuss TotK without addressing the building aspect of the game. Yes, the building aspect of the game is very cool. I'm not going to dismiss how awesome the things you can make in that game are. But personally, I've never really found that type of thing to be very compelling; after all, the creations I've seen around are creations of the players', not of the developers'. I'm not going to give the developers praise for things that other people created. I'm not trying to be overly dismissive of it - again, I do think that that stuff is super fun - but a good sequel in and of itself building mechanics do not make, and I genuinely have come to believe that the building mechanics are the ONLY direct improvement in this game from BotW.

In general, TotK emphasizes freedom over gameplay much more than BotW did. This is reflected very directly in the four core abilities that you unlock. In BotW, the four abilities you unlock are (1) move a magnetic object, (2) freeze an object in time, (3) detonate a remote bomb, and (4) create a pillar of ice from water. Note that half of these abilities can only be used in specific spaces in very specific ways, limiting the creativity that you are allotted in how to utilize them, with (2) being probably the most universally powerful ability in the game.

In TotK, the limiters have been removed. Now the four abilities you unlock are (1) move any object and attach it to another object, (2) reverse the flow of time for an object, (3) attach an object to your equipment, and (4) ascend upward through any surface above you within a certain range. All four of these abilities can be used universally wherever the physics support them. And while I think this is all extremely cool and leads to some very awesome innovation and creativity, it's also incredibly trivializing to the content of the game. The fact that there are no limitations placed on when or how you can use these abilities renders the majority (and I mean the majority) of the game's puzzle content literally ineffectual. In particular, (1), (2), and (4) in tandem mean that you can solve pretty much any puzzle in the game without having to learn any new mechanics. There were entire sections of temples I skipped because of the use of these abilities, and entire shrine puzzles I simply did not solve the "proper" way because I understood how to exploit them. You could say this is a benefit, and I think in some ways it could be, like for the shrine puzzles which are kind of whatever, but in other cases it did not feel that way. It simply felt like an oversight by the developers' part to not account for them in certain cases. In particular, I find the fact that I skipped entire sections of temples due to the use of (2) and (4) to be egregious; I even locked myself out of being able to leave one of the temples because I skipped the beginning floor and never opened the entrance doors as a result. I also caused cutscenes to trigger out of order and characters to be teleported around because the game genuinely did not expect me to be able to do what I did. I don't think it's good that that happened, lmao.

In the end, it's a PvE game, and talking about "balance" in a PvE game is silly, but I did personally feel my experience was somewhat ruined by how trivializing mastery of these abilities was. To this day I still don't understand how to legitimately solve those temples because I simply cheesed my way through them so fast that I barely paid attention to their mechanics, and I think that's a shame. It's unfortunate because the temple design in this game is definitely mostly better than the Divine Beasts in BotW, but they're still relatively short and there are still essentially only four of them.

The core flow of the game, too, is extremely repetitive and uninteresting. It is quite literally a repeat of BotW but with far worse writing. In BotW, you visited four regions of the world and recruited four characters to help you from each race. You also explore the landscape in search of flashbacks that show you more about what happened in the past regarding Zelda and the other historic Champions. In TotK, you do the exact same fucking thing, but with far less compelling characters and extremely stale, repetitive writing. You go to the same four regions of the world and meet the same four characters you already met, except now they're soulless and unlikable, shadows of their former selves, their development and charisma from the prior game taken completely for granted. Your reward for completing each area is a cutscene so repetitive that it's actually the same lines of dialogue and the same cutscene shown to you each time, four times. Gone are the tidbits of cheeky character of the historic Champions from BotW; instead you have a completely flat Sage character who says the same three lines of dialogue as the other Sage characters and whose names I can't even remember (and they honestly might not even have names). The Zelda flashbacks are middling; Ganondorf's character is worse than cardboard, his motivations completely bizarre and obtuse (even moreso than usual), and the (English) voicework in this game leaves much to be desired, with both Zelda and Ganondorf feeling either under- or over-acted in various sections. The story of TotK is so derivative that it is honestly most aptly described as "literally Ocarina of Time all over again" in the worst way possible. Even OoT Ganondorf is a better character than TotK Ganondorf. WW Ganondorf is rolling in his grave right now.

This is especially baffling when you consider that the cutscenes in TotK are much more forced than they were in BotW. It's entirely possible to go straight to Ganondorf and defeat him in TotK just like you could in BotW, but it's much less straightforward and incredibly difficult to do without help of some sort; the game doesn't tell you where he is from the start, and certain parts of the ending are much more difficult (almost brutally so) without completing the prior story content. The fact that the option is there is really cool, though, but let's face it: the majority of players won't know that they can even do that. And so we're faced with a situation where the majority of players who finish TotK will do so by following the much more linear order given to them by the game: by completing all of the Zelda flashbacks and by doing all four areas, which means watching lots of cutscene, and lots of bad cutscene at that.

Let me be perfectly clear here: I am a cutscene enjoyer. I am a Metal Gear Solid fan. I play walking simulators and visual novels and I liked Death Stranding. I do not dislike cutscenes. I like being forced to watch them. IF THEY ARE GOOD.

And holy shit, is the writing in TotK laughably bad. It's so bad that serious cutscenes still sound like tutorial. To make sure I wasn't being too harsh on the game, I went back and rewatched a few cutscenes from BotW to remind myself what level of writing quality was in the original, and I can say with confidence that TotK is a direct downgrade in every aspect of the writing, which is incredible because BotW barely had any writing in it at all. The worst is the central plot of TotK, which, depending on the order in which you complete your Zelda flashbacks, goes from being merely uncompelling to straight up utterly nonsensical. As I completed all of my Zelda flashbacks before I proceeded my game any further, several of the plot "twists" made legitimately no sense at all, and I'm absolutely baffled that I didn't receive different cutscenes as a result of my progress, because that's how little sense it made that things played out the way that they did. It's essentially as if Nintendo designed this game's plot as if it was meant to be experienced linearly, then remembered at the last minute that this is an open world game, and then let you experience the plot events in any order, not caring how this would make the plot incomprehensibly stupid. There were several big revelations made in the main story that I already knew about three hours into the game, because the first flashback I discovered pretty much told me point blank what happened. And although I know Link is able to see these flashbacks just as I (the player) can, he still acted surprised about these twists...? For some reason?

It's really a shame, because the visuals, music, and overall direction in this game is incredible. There are so many moments in this game that are excruciatingly beautiful and that I just KNOW would have hit really hard... if there were good writing to support any form of emotional catharsis. Many of the ending scenes are wonderfully crafted and directed, but it just doesn't mean anything because the shoddy writing leading up to it. (I also find it kind of funny and interesting how much this game seems to take inspiration from Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and a little tidbit of Spirited Away. I won't spoil how these three things factor in, but if you know, you know, lol.)

And not only did they copy the same formula of "go to four regions and find Zelda flashbacks", they still kept tons of the same gameplay designs from BotW, even when it makes absolutely no sense to, for no other reason than "because we did it in BotW". For example, TotK still has skyview towers and shrines. While the existence of shrines can be somewhat excused, the existence of the skyview towers...? What? It's literally the same map topography with only minor modifications made where certain structures were destroyed. This means that you experience TotK with the same exact gameplay loop as BotW, but without the wonder and joy of discovering a new area. You just go to a new area that you literally already have seen before, go to the nearest skyview tower, fill out your map, and then start going to shrines... just like in BotW. Except in this game the shrines are even easier because now you have three god abilities that can cheese any challenge in less than thirty seconds. This makes for a very boring and dull core gameplay loop for anyone who's played BotW.

And while they did add two new layers to the map - a top and bottom layer - both of these layers are... kinda whatever, really. The top layer is the most interesting, but it's extremely small in terms of surface area. The bottom layer is really cool for the first thirty minutes, until you realize that the entirety of it is just the same thing over and over, and then the novelty wears off really fast and it simply becomes a genuine unfun chore to explore. The main debuff mechanic used in the bottom layer is also genuinely just really annoying and not interesting, causing you to have to spam craft a ton of the same cooking item over and over again in order to mitigate it. At least the main cooking ingredient in that one is pretty common, but having to cook this often just highlights how little UI improvements have been made between BotW and TotK, especially when, in order to cook anything, the steps are: (1) open the menu, (2) manually select 5 ingredients by pressing "Hold" and then clicking 5 items, (3) closing the menu, (4) dropping the items into the pot, (5) pressing "X" to skip the cooking animation, and then repeating.

TotK's menus in general are pretty much identical to BotW's, which I know they probably did out of familiarity, but feels like a huge mistake. They should have taken the sequel as a chance to improve on some of BotW's clunkiest design elements. Cooking is one big source of clunk; another is the new mechanic, Fuse, where you can fuse any object to your weapon... but in order to do so, the object has to be on the ground. So your inventory full of powerful materials all needs to be dropped on the floor first before you can fuse, which is extremely clunky. I have genuinely no idea why there's no option to fuse directly from menu. They also have a hotbar where you can select materials, but the sort options leave much to be desired, and you're constantly swapping between the different sort options and scrolling down an incredibly long list of items with no way to more quickly skip through them. There's also no option to directly Hold from the hotbar for some reason, only to Throw. The down arrow on the Directional Pad continues to be utterly underutilized; it's still used for "Call Horse" in TotK despite the fact that you will be using your horse way less in TotK due to the presence of vehicles. Why not bind a different button to Call Horse? Perhaps let us swap our bows while we have a melee weapon out, or vice versa, instead of forcing us to have to put our bow away in order to swap our melee weapon? :/

Now, this isn't to say the game is a complete and utter disaster. If you haven't played BotW before, I'm sure TotK is a really cool and fresh experience (although, why are you playing the sequel without playing the original?), and the building mechanics do add a lot of fun to the game (but I would argue do not add much depth). They did add plenty of new content to the existing map, to be fair (though mostly just in the form of caves), and there are a handful of moments in the plot that were well-directed and musically and visually nice that I have positive feelings on despite everything. It's just that... in the end, well... the game is really underwhelming. It's really kind of a nothing game, and as someone with over 200 hours in BotW, it's genuinely monotonous. It's just more of the same. If that's all people wanted, then cool, but I really thought Nintendo would understand why doing that is such a mistake.

After all, they realized it would be a mistake to do so when they created Majora's Mask. The developers of MM literally talked about how they understood that if they simply created OoT all over again, it wouldn't be well-received because - how do you trump something already lauded as perfect? You don't do it by just repeating the same thing and then tacking something new on top of it. So they acknowledged their limitations and embraced them. They chose instead to make a game with a much smaller, more focused scope, one so much more intimate and concerned with its story and its atmosphere than its predecessor. The result is a wonderfully constructed work that honestly feels more at home with your modern-day indie games than it does with the rest of the Zelda series, to be frank. Perhaps naively, I thought that TotK would fall more in line with this, by reusing the assets from BotW and choosing instead to focus on a more well-constructed narrative.

Sadly, TotK does no such thing. While it does contain more cutscene by-the-hour and more forced story content in general, the loss in quality is so palpable that I find myself genuinely preferring BotW's more minimalist approach to story. I'd much rather just get to know eight likable characters than be forced to watch several hours of the most monotonous dialogue and same-y plot developments that have already been done in countless other Zelda games, paired with nonsensical plot twists and a dreadful Ganondorf depiction. The end result is a game that just feels genuinely confused. It feels like they wanted to have more of a story, but that story doesn't even really acknowledge or call back to BotW in ways that feel meaningful or respectful. The four historic Champions aren't even mentioned, with the exception of Mipha, due to her direct relation with Sidon. The confusion as to its identity is felt in many other aspects of the game: they want you to innovate and experiment with their building mechanics and let you build vehicles that enable you to transport yourself at rip speed, but then later on force you to use a mech that moves at the pace of a snail and is genuinely dreadful to use; they acknowledge that the game is a sequel by showing Link as having a maxed out health and stamina bar in the beginning of the game and even let you keep your horses from your BotW save file, but then don't let you keep any map data, Compendium progress, or the fact that you've already spoken with characters like Hestu; they want you to feel like you're experiencing something new and fresh, but then keep the exact same core gameplay loop from the original game... the list goes on.

I do have to wonder just how much better this game would be if they simply allowed it to be a true sequel and didn't do this sort of bizarre "soft reset"/"non-acknowledgement of BotW" likely done not to alienate potential newcomers who haven't played BotW. If TotK were actually a real sequel and not just BotW again, perhaps they'd have to actually come up with a new gameplay loop, and a new way to satisfy players that isn't just the same approach they already used in BotW. But that's very distant thinking, and at the end of the day, it's just not what happened. Instead they created a homunculus game that's BotW-2-but-not-actually-it's-just-BotW-1-again.

All in all, the popularity of this game is what it is, and I'm not surprised about the game being popular despite that, but damn, I won't lie, I'm surprised just how mediocre it is. I really thought my expectations were realistically low and they still were too high. It truly does feel like such a missed opportunity; I think the world of BotW has so much more to say, if it were given the space. Sadly, if you're looking to scratch the itch of getting more out of the world's characters and story, you're honestly just better off playing or watching the cutscenes from the Hyrule Warriors game. Because if you play TotK with any kind of expectation regarding fulfillment, you're just going to be disappointed.

And even ignoring the bad story, I really can't even compliment the game design or the gameplay loop, because all of the compliments I could give it are compliments that should be given to BotW for inventing them. This game literally only exists because Nintendo knew how successful BotW was. It has nothing to say for itself except funny contraptions that you can build, I guess, and that just isn't enough for me.

Go love yourself and play Outer Wilds instead.