As I initially set off to finish the last of the remaining dungeons, I round a corner and a stray thought occurs: “Can I dogfight dragons in this game?” After an evening spent on that instead, it turns out that I can both do that and send it tumbling down a cliff in the process. Another thought follows: “This is probably the coolest game I’ve ever played.”
This reflects a strength that’s been carried forward from Breath of the Wild and part of what separated that game from standard open world fare: the “triangle rule.” It includes shaping environmental geometry in such a way that landmarks and other notable sights were deliberately obscured from angles players were most likely to view them from, creating a visual chain of interest as they orient themselves around it. It’s impressive that Tears of the Kingdom retains this considering just how much Hyrule has been reshuffled and expanded upon, but where it particularly excels in this regard is in terms of new additions, namely its tripling down on verticality.
Diving into a well or tree stump, winding up in a complex cave system, finding treasure behind a waterfall or at the top of a hidden shaft and using Ascend to pop out the other end in parts unknown is the exact kind of storybook-like experience that this new formula needed, like meat added to the bones of the sense of adventure BOTW was otherwise so successful at selling. Caves seem a deceptively simple inclusion on a conceptual level – goodness knows open world fantasy games’re no stranger to them – but one reason you couldn’t just plop TOTK’s into some other game is because of how their design’s informed by Link’s traversal options. Just finding them often resembles a scene out of Katsuya Terada’s art for the first few Zelda games, steep climbs into hidden entryways and all, often in a way that foreshadows the challenges inside. Slippery walls, boulders you have to smash your way through, confined spaces and other hazards combine to form the other reason, which is the contrast these environmentally constrained puzzle boxes create with the rest of the game’s freedom.
Shrines and temples alike exemplify this, as much as or more than the spectacle of diving from a sky island straight into the Depths in what’s a sensation I haven’t felt since Gravity Rush 2. Getting goofy with a combination of Ultrahand and Recall or whatever other powers you prefer to circumvent obstacles brings to mind an anecdote I have about a level in Thief 2 called Casing the Joint – years now after first playing that level, I still couldn’t tell you the “proper” way to beat it, because I’d always drag boxes from the opposite end of the level and use them to scramble onto titular joint’s roof before smashing a window that would leave every guard permanently alerted. Scuffed a method as it may sound, the important thing is that the game says “yes” to the player regardless, and the same’s largely true of TOTK; although, as with BOTW, some of its quest design shows that it isn’t fully designed in accordance with these sorts of open-ended solutions (Calip’s omniscient fence in Kakariko comes to mind), this isn’t necessarily so much a flaw as just an indicator that it’s not quite the same type of game. Where limitations like these do exist, they rarely feel so arbitrary as to outweigh the feeling of thinking like an adventurer that comes with nonlinear problem solving through Link’s new, more multifaceted powers.
Fuse is a favourite of mine not just for how it turns any item you come across into a potential tool, but also because this by extension encourages thinking about your equipment more than BOTW required. A bokoblin reaper may share the same animations as a horriblin hammer, but only one of them’s getting used for smashing enemies’ armour, clearing boulders out of caverns or searching for ore among other things. It’s understandable why some players may initially be upset at the apparent lack of any new weapon types compared to BOTW, but considering how many different functionalities are covered thanks to this one power, I wouldn’t be surprised if the devs considered and rejected the idea based on potential new ones being redundant. It feels weird to say so about a game that isn’t by any means hurting for recognition, but this is just one example of how it (and its predecessor) probably deserves more credit for achieving more with less.
This extends to its enemy design. We have a tendency to think of “enemy variety” in terms of the quantity of different enemy types, but what gets lost in that sort of discourse is the mechanical variety between those types. Even in BOTW, bokoblins have more dynamic behaviours than the combined enemy rosters of some other games, and that was without boss bokoblins, aerocudas and Zonai constructs for them to interact with. While TOTK having a higher amount of different and region-specific enemy types is appreciated nonetheless, I’m glad that fleshing out these behaviours amongst a relatively condensed roster still seems to have been a priority.
Flux Constructs are a standout in both that respect and why we ought to also apply this sort of lateral thinking to TOTK’s combat as well – in a game in which you can remove a golem’s hands to prevent him from being able to punch you, shoot dragons out of the sky with a DIY plane or suspend yourself in air with a foot-mounted flamethrower, it seems myopic to judge it based on how many ways Link can swing a weapon. Between using Recall on a certain attack of theirs to fling myself to places I couldn’t otherwise reach, darkness that’s actually dark and which requires resources to dispel, plus summonable AI companions, it becomes apparent that the sceptics were wrong – this isn’t BOTW DLC, but rather a Dragon’s Dogma 2 closed beta.
I’m only being slightly facetious, because much of what makes Dragon’s Dogma and its mutual point of influence, i.e. Skyrim, special as adventure games is present here too. If those two games could each be distilled into one key characteristic, I’d say they’re respectively dynamism and player-directed experiences. TOTK takes both and melds them with a largely honoured commitment to unrestricted problem solving that – in my view – has always felt like the most natural direction for Zelda to go in, forming a superlative package which I think sits at the top of its franchise, its console and potentially open world games in general.
All this and somehow I still feel as if I’ve only scratched the surface of all there is to appreciate here. As many words could be written about the atmosphere invoked during a sunset with the Dragon Head Island theme playing, the extent to which Ganondorf’s phase 2 transition has been living in my head rent free or the fact that, if you think about it, Link himself has become the legend of Zelda. I might play another 100 hours and still be finding new things to wrap my head around. Such a game.
This reflects a strength that’s been carried forward from Breath of the Wild and part of what separated that game from standard open world fare: the “triangle rule.” It includes shaping environmental geometry in such a way that landmarks and other notable sights were deliberately obscured from angles players were most likely to view them from, creating a visual chain of interest as they orient themselves around it. It’s impressive that Tears of the Kingdom retains this considering just how much Hyrule has been reshuffled and expanded upon, but where it particularly excels in this regard is in terms of new additions, namely its tripling down on verticality.
Diving into a well or tree stump, winding up in a complex cave system, finding treasure behind a waterfall or at the top of a hidden shaft and using Ascend to pop out the other end in parts unknown is the exact kind of storybook-like experience that this new formula needed, like meat added to the bones of the sense of adventure BOTW was otherwise so successful at selling. Caves seem a deceptively simple inclusion on a conceptual level – goodness knows open world fantasy games’re no stranger to them – but one reason you couldn’t just plop TOTK’s into some other game is because of how their design’s informed by Link’s traversal options. Just finding them often resembles a scene out of Katsuya Terada’s art for the first few Zelda games, steep climbs into hidden entryways and all, often in a way that foreshadows the challenges inside. Slippery walls, boulders you have to smash your way through, confined spaces and other hazards combine to form the other reason, which is the contrast these environmentally constrained puzzle boxes create with the rest of the game’s freedom.
Shrines and temples alike exemplify this, as much as or more than the spectacle of diving from a sky island straight into the Depths in what’s a sensation I haven’t felt since Gravity Rush 2. Getting goofy with a combination of Ultrahand and Recall or whatever other powers you prefer to circumvent obstacles brings to mind an anecdote I have about a level in Thief 2 called Casing the Joint – years now after first playing that level, I still couldn’t tell you the “proper” way to beat it, because I’d always drag boxes from the opposite end of the level and use them to scramble onto titular joint’s roof before smashing a window that would leave every guard permanently alerted. Scuffed a method as it may sound, the important thing is that the game says “yes” to the player regardless, and the same’s largely true of TOTK; although, as with BOTW, some of its quest design shows that it isn’t fully designed in accordance with these sorts of open-ended solutions (Calip’s omniscient fence in Kakariko comes to mind), this isn’t necessarily so much a flaw as just an indicator that it’s not quite the same type of game. Where limitations like these do exist, they rarely feel so arbitrary as to outweigh the feeling of thinking like an adventurer that comes with nonlinear problem solving through Link’s new, more multifaceted powers.
Fuse is a favourite of mine not just for how it turns any item you come across into a potential tool, but also because this by extension encourages thinking about your equipment more than BOTW required. A bokoblin reaper may share the same animations as a horriblin hammer, but only one of them’s getting used for smashing enemies’ armour, clearing boulders out of caverns or searching for ore among other things. It’s understandable why some players may initially be upset at the apparent lack of any new weapon types compared to BOTW, but considering how many different functionalities are covered thanks to this one power, I wouldn’t be surprised if the devs considered and rejected the idea based on potential new ones being redundant. It feels weird to say so about a game that isn’t by any means hurting for recognition, but this is just one example of how it (and its predecessor) probably deserves more credit for achieving more with less.
This extends to its enemy design. We have a tendency to think of “enemy variety” in terms of the quantity of different enemy types, but what gets lost in that sort of discourse is the mechanical variety between those types. Even in BOTW, bokoblins have more dynamic behaviours than the combined enemy rosters of some other games, and that was without boss bokoblins, aerocudas and Zonai constructs for them to interact with. While TOTK having a higher amount of different and region-specific enemy types is appreciated nonetheless, I’m glad that fleshing out these behaviours amongst a relatively condensed roster still seems to have been a priority.
Flux Constructs are a standout in both that respect and why we ought to also apply this sort of lateral thinking to TOTK’s combat as well – in a game in which you can remove a golem’s hands to prevent him from being able to punch you, shoot dragons out of the sky with a DIY plane or suspend yourself in air with a foot-mounted flamethrower, it seems myopic to judge it based on how many ways Link can swing a weapon. Between using Recall on a certain attack of theirs to fling myself to places I couldn’t otherwise reach, darkness that’s actually dark and which requires resources to dispel, plus summonable AI companions, it becomes apparent that the sceptics were wrong – this isn’t BOTW DLC, but rather a Dragon’s Dogma 2 closed beta.
I’m only being slightly facetious, because much of what makes Dragon’s Dogma and its mutual point of influence, i.e. Skyrim, special as adventure games is present here too. If those two games could each be distilled into one key characteristic, I’d say they’re respectively dynamism and player-directed experiences. TOTK takes both and melds them with a largely honoured commitment to unrestricted problem solving that – in my view – has always felt like the most natural direction for Zelda to go in, forming a superlative package which I think sits at the top of its franchise, its console and potentially open world games in general.
All this and somehow I still feel as if I’ve only scratched the surface of all there is to appreciate here. As many words could be written about the atmosphere invoked during a sunset with the Dragon Head Island theme playing, the extent to which Ganondorf’s phase 2 transition has been living in my head rent free or the fact that, if you think about it, Link himself has become the legend of Zelda. I might play another 100 hours and still be finding new things to wrap my head around. Such a game.
AstroboyMario
9 months ago