I felt something missing from Tears of The Kingdom compared to BOTW. I don't mean this in a bad way, just that something felt different during my playthrough. It may seem obvious to others, but to me it only became clear when I sat down and looked at the actual names of the two games; Breath of the Wild versus Tears of The Kingdom. The phrasing of the two titles cements this initially vague feeling of something missing as an intentional choice for me.
Hyrule is no longer an untamed wilderness with pockets of civilization throughout, instead it's a proper kingdom. You can't go very far without encountering some sign of civilization; an adventurer in the wild, a pile of unused construction materials, or a random shack housing an NPC in the middle of seemingly nowhere. Gone from TOTK are the multiple hours spent seeing little more than nature and the ruins of the calamity. The Hyrule of TOTK feels dense, lively and interesting, but as a result of this direction, the isolated, serene feeling that BOTW imparted is almost gone. It was a feeling I loved in BOTW, one that no other game had ever provided me, the feeling of getting lost in a true wilderness, a feeling that was the basis for the very first Zelda game. BOTW had signs of civilization, but they felt vastly overwhelmed by the untouched wild. When you left a town you truly felt like leaving civilization, it could be hours before you saw another person. TOTK occasionally captures this isolation in The Depths, but given that area's framing as a more sinister, malicious place I don't think it captures that same feeling of being alone in raw nature, devoid of any good or bad intentions, and the feeling that sort of serenity imparts.
I also think that the games new building mechanics, and the Skyview towers which provide an easy method of travel to any untouched location, end up removing the intimate connection with the world that Botw imparts. My relationship with the world feels fundamentally different when I can so easily soar above most of the surface without a second thought, instead of having to hike my way to every location and feeling immense satisfaction in arriving at any new area. The glider of BOTW combined with Sheikah towers already allowed you to cross huge sections of the map without issue, but in TOTK you can pretty easily make a vehicle that traverses the whole map in a fraction of the time. My horses are no longer my trusty thick-and-thin companions, but just domesticated house pets that sit in their Stable while I traverse the map on my Green Goblin Glider. I love these new mechanics to death, I really do, but again, their addition fundamentally changes the way you navigate and interact with this world. Hyrule isn't a sprawling, intimidating wilderness, but an easily navigated kingdom. I felt a little bummed out when I finally amassed all three parts of the climbing gear, my tried-and-true equipment in BOTW, and realized I had vanishingly few opportunities to actually use it in TOTK.
I love TOTK's dense, multi-layered map, and it's excellent new building and fusing mechanics. By all accounts, it's a roaring success of a sequel, one which expands on the good aspects of its predecessor while still leaving room for plenty of surprises. I'm not fully finished with it yet, but I'm leaning towards it being better than BOTW. If Breath of the Wild was about recapturing that feeling imparted by the original Legend of Zelda, then Tears of the Kingdom is the series becoming confident in that change, and moving forward in new directions. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a tinge of sadness seeing people say that this game makes Breath of The Wild somehow "invalidated" or no longer worth playing. That isolation remains unique to Breath of the Wild, and I'm glad that Nintendo saw fit to give its sequel an identity of its own, even if it technically takes place in the same world. It's an evolution of its predecessor, no doubt, but evolution inevitably comes with sacrifices, and I'm hopeful that more people will come around to the idea that Tears of The Kingdom is its own experience, and not just a straight upgrade.
Still, nothing in this world could ever recapture the magic of playing Breath of the Wild for the first time. Maybe all these words are just a short way of me saying that I've grown nostalgic for a game from 2017. Maybe it's just the fact that Breath of the Wild was perhaps the last time I felt a child-like sense of wonder from a game before the full weight of adulthood came down on me, the last time I could stay up until 3am five nights in a row just getting absorbed into, well, anything. In that sense, maybe nothing Nintendo could've put out would've been able to fully rekindle that feeling. But that's OK, because Tears of The Kingdom came very close to reigniting that feeling, and it gave me something new and equally valuable as well, in that it showed how that world I cherished so much has changed. Time moves forward whether we want it to or not, and although I can't go back to the same Hyrule I experienced 7 years ago in BOTW, I can move forward with this new one, and see the ways it's changed and stayed the same in that time as we both move toward the future.
Hyrule is no longer an untamed wilderness with pockets of civilization throughout, instead it's a proper kingdom. You can't go very far without encountering some sign of civilization; an adventurer in the wild, a pile of unused construction materials, or a random shack housing an NPC in the middle of seemingly nowhere. Gone from TOTK are the multiple hours spent seeing little more than nature and the ruins of the calamity. The Hyrule of TOTK feels dense, lively and interesting, but as a result of this direction, the isolated, serene feeling that BOTW imparted is almost gone. It was a feeling I loved in BOTW, one that no other game had ever provided me, the feeling of getting lost in a true wilderness, a feeling that was the basis for the very first Zelda game. BOTW had signs of civilization, but they felt vastly overwhelmed by the untouched wild. When you left a town you truly felt like leaving civilization, it could be hours before you saw another person. TOTK occasionally captures this isolation in The Depths, but given that area's framing as a more sinister, malicious place I don't think it captures that same feeling of being alone in raw nature, devoid of any good or bad intentions, and the feeling that sort of serenity imparts.
I also think that the games new building mechanics, and the Skyview towers which provide an easy method of travel to any untouched location, end up removing the intimate connection with the world that Botw imparts. My relationship with the world feels fundamentally different when I can so easily soar above most of the surface without a second thought, instead of having to hike my way to every location and feeling immense satisfaction in arriving at any new area. The glider of BOTW combined with Sheikah towers already allowed you to cross huge sections of the map without issue, but in TOTK you can pretty easily make a vehicle that traverses the whole map in a fraction of the time. My horses are no longer my trusty thick-and-thin companions, but just domesticated house pets that sit in their Stable while I traverse the map on my Green Goblin Glider. I love these new mechanics to death, I really do, but again, their addition fundamentally changes the way you navigate and interact with this world. Hyrule isn't a sprawling, intimidating wilderness, but an easily navigated kingdom. I felt a little bummed out when I finally amassed all three parts of the climbing gear, my tried-and-true equipment in BOTW, and realized I had vanishingly few opportunities to actually use it in TOTK.
I love TOTK's dense, multi-layered map, and it's excellent new building and fusing mechanics. By all accounts, it's a roaring success of a sequel, one which expands on the good aspects of its predecessor while still leaving room for plenty of surprises. I'm not fully finished with it yet, but I'm leaning towards it being better than BOTW. If Breath of the Wild was about recapturing that feeling imparted by the original Legend of Zelda, then Tears of the Kingdom is the series becoming confident in that change, and moving forward in new directions. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a tinge of sadness seeing people say that this game makes Breath of The Wild somehow "invalidated" or no longer worth playing. That isolation remains unique to Breath of the Wild, and I'm glad that Nintendo saw fit to give its sequel an identity of its own, even if it technically takes place in the same world. It's an evolution of its predecessor, no doubt, but evolution inevitably comes with sacrifices, and I'm hopeful that more people will come around to the idea that Tears of The Kingdom is its own experience, and not just a straight upgrade.
Still, nothing in this world could ever recapture the magic of playing Breath of the Wild for the first time. Maybe all these words are just a short way of me saying that I've grown nostalgic for a game from 2017. Maybe it's just the fact that Breath of the Wild was perhaps the last time I felt a child-like sense of wonder from a game before the full weight of adulthood came down on me, the last time I could stay up until 3am five nights in a row just getting absorbed into, well, anything. In that sense, maybe nothing Nintendo could've put out would've been able to fully rekindle that feeling. But that's OK, because Tears of The Kingdom came very close to reigniting that feeling, and it gave me something new and equally valuable as well, in that it showed how that world I cherished so much has changed. Time moves forward whether we want it to or not, and although I can't go back to the same Hyrule I experienced 7 years ago in BOTW, I can move forward with this new one, and see the ways it's changed and stayed the same in that time as we both move toward the future.