Six years ago, Nintendo stunned the world with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, perhaps the studio’s most ambitious undertaking since Super Mario 64 – and importantly, a game that sent game academics and experts into a frenzy. More than just another sequel in a long line of well-received, if not blockbuster, single-player adventure games, Breath of the Wild was Nintendo flexing its technical prowess, stretching what everyone thought was possible with the limited Nintendo Switch hardware and delivering a memorable, incredibly expansive game players have spent years exploring (side note – if you’ve never seen a BotW speedrun, you really should). The combination of the game’s exploration and creative toolset showed still-untapped potential in the ubiquitous “open world” genre – potential that, by most metrics, remained untouched.
In May 2023, after numerous delays, Nintendo released BotW’s follow-up, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Set in the same world – and on a fundamental level, the same map – as Breath of the Wild, many spent the game’s long developmental cycle side-eyeing the highly-anticipated sequel. More than two decades after the divisive The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (the follow-up to Ocarina of Time, perhaps the most lauded 3D game of the 20th century), fans remained skeptical of Nintendo’s ability to deliver an entirely new experience in Hyrule on the Switch’s old, obsolete hardware and BotW’s abundantly familiar terrains. How could Nintendo add an entire new layer to the game – a series of floating islands in the sky above Hyrule – and still make the game run competently, while also delivering a storytelling and gaming experience that rivaled the awe-inspiring Breath of the Wild?
The stakes were nigh impossible to meet for Tears of the Kingdom; it would be easy for Nintendo to coast on moneybags for this sequel, slightly expanding the original toolset (where Link, the series protagonist, could create bombs, magnetize to items, and other creative abilities) while adding in a few skybound places for players to visit. Given the system’s limitations and the complexity of BotW, there really wasn’t much Nintendo could do – or so we all thought.
I certainly had doubts; during the very familiar-feeling opening hour of the Tears of the Kingdom, it seemed Nintendo was only slightly building on the foundation of its lauded predecessor, with yet another story of Link trying to find Zelda (the series’ eponymous female lead). But after the game’s opening cinematics and tutorials, players are given the ability of an Ultrahand, allowing them to stick two items together in the world. An interesting idea, one that provided some intriguing capabilities early on – and then, about fifteen minutes after entering the tutorial island, I came across a scenario that quickly proved Tears was not only a worthy sequel – but an even better, more insanely inventive game than Breath of the Wild.
Walking around the island, I came across a Korok (think: the Yoshis of Zelda) who was trying to reach their friend, camping on a distant piece of the opening island, connected only by a pair of broken sky rails. With no simple way to get the Korok across, I sent Link around to see what I could find – and after a few minutes, found a few hooks and pieces of wood I had crafted into a makeshift skycart using the Ultrahand. There were no instructions, no signposts towards how I should solve this (completely optional) problem; but with a bit of intuition and Nintendo’s masterful level design, Tears of the Kingdom guided me towards a solution where my creativity and the game’s tools evoked a certain sense of freedom (and more importantly, two Koroks didn’t have to cancel their mile-high cookout).
And through my 20+ hours with the game so far, freedom is the word I keep coming back to; where Breath of the Wild’s shrines (think puzzle-focused mini-dungeons) were focused on utilizing specific powers, Tears of the Kingdom gives the player a set of seemingly game-breaking abilities and says “have fun figuring this sh*t out!”. In those 20 hours, I’ve created massive flying contraptions powered by flamethrowers, a boat consisting of a single piece of wood and an engine-powered fan (yeah, that ended poorly), and a vehicle I used as a Trojan horse to blow up an entire encampment of bokoblins. From an ability to attach any item to an arrow or weapon, to another that literally lets you phase through ceilings, Tears of the Kingdom feels like Nintendo watched hundreds of hours of YouTube videos where gamers broke the physics of Breath of the Wild, sat down in a room and went full Constanza.
What I mean is Tears of the Kingdom is the most “oh you want to get wild? Let’s get wild!” game from a mainstream publisher in years (not named Elden Ring); and despite its graphical limitations, makes seemingly “open” world games like God of War 2 and Spider-Man look silly by comparison (despite those games both being awesome). The sheer amount of interactivity with the world alone, between hunting, crafting, cooking, and making the dumbest contraptions possible, is unparalleled except maybe by Minecraft; Nintendo’s ability to do that in a highly stylized world with a fully fleshed out narrative (one, I might argue, that has progressed with much more haste and intrigue than Breath of the Wild) is stunning… and quite frankly, has me so excited for whatever they are doing to follow-up Super Mario Odyssey I want to squeal.
I’m getting ahead of myself; against all odds, Tears of the Kingdom is better than it has any right to be, and a prescient reminder that when Nintendo is focused on one of its core IP, there is still nobody in the industry who can deliver the same kinds of inventive, creative experiences at the scale of a AAA studio (also, the score? My god, the score in this game is stunning). 2023’s been a pretty down year for games so far – but leave it to Nintendo to show up with the oldest, creakiest hardware, and knock out the competition with Tears of the Kingdom, one of the best games I’ve played in recent memory – and more importantly, one of the best sequels Nintendo’s ever delivered.