Tears Of The Kingdom – is the old Zelda ever coming back? (pic: Nintendo)
A reader is unhappy with the new gameplay footage of Tears Of Kingdom and worries that the original formula for the series is gone forever.
I get it, I really do. Zelda: Breath Of The Wild was the most successful entry by a mile and so naturally Nintendo would want to make a follow-up that was similar and not go back to the classic Zelda formula. From a business point of view it makes perfect sense but as a long-time Zelda fan I watched the new 10 minute Tears Of The Kingdom gameplay video and it was everything I didn’t want to see.
I can appreciate that the whole fusing concept is very clever, and difficult to do, but for me it just seemed to double-down on all the parts I didn’t like from Breath Of The Wild. I know people will say I should embrace the changes of the last game, but the problem is that not only is the Breath Of The Wild formula completely different to classic Zelda but Nintendo is not making any new games in the old style anymore.
It’s 10 years since the last brand new Zelda using the original formula, with A Link Between Worlds on 3DS. It’s 12 years since the last big budget 3D game, with Skyward Sword. We’ve had a few remakes and remasters since then but nothing actually new and now I’m worried that if Tears Of The Kingdom is also a big success that we never will. Everything I love about Zelda is being marginalised or removed completely and I can’t help but be upset at it.
I’ve seen people complaining about breakable weapons this week but my problem with that is not that it’s annoying (although it is) but that it feels so un-Zelda like. The Master Sword is Link’s main weapon and while he does use others occasionally, for specific purposes, that’s this Excalibur.
I don’t want Zelda to turn into a survival game where I’ve got to constantly be picking up resources and cooking meals and making arrows. For the majority of its life Zelda has been about three things: exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat and none of those work well in Breath Of The Wild.
The new games certainly have exploration but it’s very aimless and because of the open world design there’s never any guarantee of a reward. You might find a new area and an interesting bit of treasure or you might not, it just depends where you happen to go.
Combat in Breath Of The Wild isn’t very different from the norm, even with all the different weapons (which again begs the question of why have them) but the boss battles are terrible. They’re all basically the same and not interesting at all, unlike the very varied and imaginative bosses of previous games.
The biggest issue for me though is the puzzle-solving and lack of dungeons. This whole aspect of Zelda is just a shadow of itself in Breath Of The Wild, with the very brief shrines, half of which are just mini-boss fights, and four very sub-par mini-dungeons for the divine beasts. The dungeons should be the beating heart of a Zelda game but now they’re just a minor aside, most of which can easily be left out entirely.
Breath Of The Wild just isn’t a Zelda game as far as I’m concerned and Tears Of The Kingdom looks even less like one. I’m sure the fusing is all very clever from a technical point of view but it seems like it’s going to be very fussy and fiddly in practice. I didn’t like this stuff in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (nobody did, the game was a big flop) and I definitely don’t want it in a Zelda game.
The obvious problem is that there’s now no proper solution for any of the situations you find yourself in. They aren’t puzzles you have to figure out, they’re an obstacle you have to fudge your way around, seeing how you can manipulate the physics engine in your favour. I haven’t played the game yet, obviously, but it’s the way these physics-based sandbox games always work, and I have no interest in them.
If they’d just call these games something else, make them a new franchise, and carried on with the proper Zelda series I’d be fine but now they’re doubling down on all the things I didn’t like, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see the Zelda I love again.
By reader Gerlac
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A reader is unhappy with the new gameplay footage of Tears Of Kingdom and worries that the original formula for the series is gone forever.