The Zelda games I love are dead and Tears Of The Kingdom killed them

A reader is sad with the brand new Tears Of Kingdom gameplay footage and worries that the unique system for the collection is gone without end.

I get it, I actually do. Zelda: Breath Of The Wild was by far the most successful entry and so naturally Nintendo would want to make a sequel that was similar and didn’t go back to the classic Zelda formula. From a business point of view it makes perfect sense, but as a longtime 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 understand that the whole amalgamation concept is very clever and hard to do, but to me it just seemed like a duplication of all the parts I didn’t like from Breath Of The Wild. I know people will say that I should embrace the changes from the last game but the problem is that not only is the Breath Of The Wild formula completely different from the classic Zelda but Nintendo is also not making any new games in the old style.

It’s been 10 years since the last brand new Zelda used the original formula, with A Link Between Worlds on 3DS. It’s been 12 years since the last big budget 3D game, with Skyward Sword. We’ve had a few remakes and remasters since then, but nothing new really and now I’m afraid if Tears Of The Kingdom becomes a huge success too, we never will. Everything I love about Zelda is being marginalized or completely removed and I can’t help but feel angry about it.

I’ve seen people complain about breakable guns this week, but my problem with that isn’t that it’s annoying (although it is), but that it feels so un-Zelda-esque. The Master Sword is Link’s main weapon and although he occasionally uses others, for specific purposes, this one is Excalibur.

I don’t want Zelda to turn into a survival game where I have to constantly collect resources and cook meals and craft arrows. For most of its life, Zelda has been about three things: exploration, puzzle solving and combat and none of these work well in Breath Of The Wild.

The new games certainly have exploration, but it’s very aimless and due to the open world design there’s never any guarantee of a reward. You might find a new area and interesting treasure or you might not, it just depends where you go.

Combat in Breath Of The Wild isn’t much different from the norm, even with all the different weapons (which again begs the question of why you have them), but the boss fights are terrible. They are essentially all the same and not interesting at all, unlike the highly varied and imaginative bosses of previous games.

However, the main problem for me is the puzzle solving and the lack of dungeons. This whole aspect of Zelda is just a shadow of itself in Breath Of The Wild, with the very short shrines, half of which are just mini-boss battles, 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 could easily be left out altogether.

Breath Of The Wild is just not a Zelda game as far as I’m concerned and Tears Of The Kingdom is even less like it. I’m sure the merging is all very clever from a technical point of view, but it looks like it will be very tricky and clumsy in practice. I didn’t like this stuff in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (nobody liked it, the game was a big flop) and I definitely don’t want it in a Zelda game.

The obvious problem is that there is now no good solution for any of the situations you find yourself in. physics engine to your advantage. I haven’t played the game yet, of course, but it’s the way these physics-based sandbox games always work, and I have no interest in it.

If they just called these games something else, made them a new franchise, and continued 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 not if I’ll ever see the Zelda I love again.

By reader Gerlac

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