Was Tears of the Kingdom worth the wait? | Zeldudes Podcast #3

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Personally, I think the geoglyph problem would have been really cool if they had turned each memory into a tiny section where you can play as Zelda. Just imagine you find a glyph, and then you get transported to the past, where you play as Zelda trying to figure out where to go, and you’re able to explore small parts of the world from thousands of years ago. That way, you would experience the story first hand, while also having link learn about what happened and stuff. Plus it would just be awesome lol

Frequently I found myself thinking "alright, now I've been taught the gimick of this shrine time for the puzzle" but it would already be over

As much as I enjoyed TotK, it really made me feel that the fans care more about the lore of the series than Nintendo does. The inconsistencies between BotW and TotK were so great that I started to think that we were in another timeline where BotW happened a bit differently. In reality I think Nintendo just wanted to avoid the player needing to play BotW to understand the new game, which is valid but since they marketed it initially as a sequel to BotW the inconsistencies irked me.

The comment Rauru makes about the sky islands not having been sky islands at the time he was alive and wondering how they came to be so implied, to me, that these islands were what Hylia lifted into the sky (because how else would they have gotten up there?) which means his Hyrule existed before the “origin story” of the series. That was a big blunder in my book. They need to be more consistent about the order of events and at least keep some events permanent/canon, because bulldozing your origin story for a series that’s been around as long as it has and is as popular as TLoZ is just isn’t a great move. The fans clearly want some level of consistency in terms of lore and story elements and want more effort put into the details of how things connect — we want the history and “rules” within the game’s world to make some level of sense at the very least. It doesn’t have to be extremely fleshed out and majorly detailed like LotR or something, we just want the basics in place and the order of things to make sense. ToTK could have accomplished this just fine, but they went off course in areas it wasn’t necessary to do so (like Rauru’s comment about the sky islands) and completely bulldozed their own origin story when they really didn’t need to touch it at all.

Personally, I have very mixed feelings about this game. On one hand, it's without question one of the best games I've ever played, but it just leaves so much to be desired. I was really upset (and still am) when they announced there wouldn't be any DLC because when I finished playing I was left with this want for more. More sky islands, more depths content, more enemies, more quests, more story, more answers. And then when that revelation of no DLC happened it was like a slap to the face. That was it. And I will never understand people who feel satisfied with what we were given because it just feels so inconclusive. It felt like they were deliberately withholding content for future DLC, stuff like the fate of the Zonai, the mysterious people of the depths, the story of the 3 dragons, Twinrova. But no, that was it. And it's almost certain that we won't be exploring most of these concepts again, or this Hyrule in general. The game is still amazing to play, and I've spent about 250+ hours on it, but it doesn't change that feeling of emptiness knowing that this is it. It does feel somewhat like it is our fault that we overhyped the game and assumed it was going to be this earth-shattering, once-in-a-generation game that would incorporate all these amazing elements and follow up on all the lore and theories we had and make BotW look like a beta in comparison, and we probably should've kept our expectations far more tame, but it really does feel like it overdelivered with new gamplay features, and underdelivered with lore, exploration, and most importantly variety. If you made it all the way to the end of this comment, then apologies for wasting your time with my rambling. Just wanted to get this off my chest.

You know Tears of the Kingdom is a lot like Mario Galaxy 2. It’s basically just a bigger better version of its predecessor. It’s one of the reasons I love the game so much.

Interesting, there are people who wanted the Depths to be lit up more. My complain is the opposite, i wished the Depths remained completely dark with only a miniscule area around the Light Roots lit. I thought they were going to be more as Safe Heavens from like Alan Wake. Of course, i was also expecting to be hunted down (originally by a Dead Hand covered in Malice) by Gloom Spawn at every turn. Just imagine that every time you touched down on the Depths, this thing noticed your presence and hunted you like a starving animal with your only respite being the Light Roots. Course the "Zonai workshops" would have to be close to the Roots so you can at least freely create vehicles to move around, as running wouldn't be enough. It also would've given Flash fruit a bigger use other than, stun enemies for a few seconds.

I think like anything, too much hype can be detrimental to any game. Because it exceeds regular standards. Tears of The Kingdom is an amazing game for me, because I actually took a break from Breath of The Wild and haven’t played it since it came out. I also avoided over analyzing trailers for ToTK. So when I played TotK, it was extremely fresh and revitalizing for me. I know you guys have not had that opportunity because of nature of your content/videos, just wanted to provide a perspective for you guys.

I can never get bored of any zelda based discussions, so I love the podcast. This is the perfect way for me to just watch and think about zelda topics.

From what I understand, TOTK was built on a separate physics engine, their proprietary LunchPack engine, rather than BOTW's more well-known and well-used Havok physics engine which wasn't proprietary to Nintendo. What I suspect was that TOTK was used as a demonstration of Nintendo's ability to port from Havok to LunchPack, as well as to demonstrate its capabilities within Nintendo's own hardware. That explains the absolute spit and polish on the game physics and game play; the story was completely secondary to any of that. ( Ultimately, the story did not actually matter to Nintendo. ) Nintendo knew the Zelda fans would buy up the game regardless of story, so long as the gameplay was fun they'd buy into it, similarly to how they know Mario games will sell well regardless of story. Regarding the limitations on building, it was likely by design that things fall apart after a few minutes because limitations promote experimentation; and as a result, Nintendo now has an incredible number of real-user examples of just how well the engine works. I'm not entirely saying that the Zelda fandom was completely played by Nintendo, but I do see TOTK as Nintendo capitalizing on opportunity and sticking the Zelda fans with the bill.

What frustrates me the most about TotKs story (besides how it was told) is the fact that we have so much unexplained/not talked about information. Like we saw Kotake and Konume, what’s up with them? Or what’s Ganondorfs backstory? Who’s Rauru and Sonia’s child? I liked what we got, I just want more and now that we arnt getting a DLC, this stuff will forever be unexplained.

I think this game was announced too early. The 5 or 6 years of speculation blew this game out of the water from what it was meant to be: a sequel, meaning BOTW but bigger and better. With so little information to go off of for so long, we created this perfect game in our heads that the actual game itself could never live up to. I even remember a few months before launch a theory about link, zelda, and ganondorf trying to work together to break the cycle or something? Sure, we were justified in wanting the best product possible, but our minds couldn't help but wander and that's not entirely our fault since we had so little to chew on for so long.

With the Yiga slapstick, Japan is very well known/big on slapstick comedy. Its a big staple of their young adult fiction. So it was something i loved in both ganes. I still prefer Master Koga in Age of Calamity though. He felt a bit more powerfuk

Were they to do another discussion about TotK, I have some topics I’d love to hear their opinions on: Ganondorf The Sages (By that, I’m referring to their storylines, their roles in the overall plot, and as party members) Yona and her domain The boss fights Kass’ whereabouts No plans for DLC Content they would have loved to see in DLC

I played TotK every day since release for almost 4 months. One of the greatest experiences I've had in any creative medium and one I'll be thinking of for many years more. Everyone has their own perspective on this game and honestly that's what makes it so beautiful. I sympathise with many criticisms fans have even if they didn't necessarily effect me.

I have nitpicks of course, but for the most part, TotK is exactly what I wanted. A long time ago, I made a video about the top 5 items I wanted in BotW 2, and we got 3 of them: glue for building contraptions / weapons, ways to mitigate slipping in rain, and smoke bombs. The only major issue I have with it is that I don’t enjoy the Depths. It’s massive, repetitive, and annoying to traverse. I would have preferred those resources to go towards more Sky Islands instead.

I can’t believe they basically only advertised the sky just for there to be one big island.

Personally, no. I think if it released two or three years after Botw I'd have a much higher opinion of it but after six years I expected so much more.

Just for statistical reference: Days between SS & BotW: 1,932 Days between BotW & TotK: 2,261 That’s a whole 329 days longer wait for TotK. About 10 months. With that in mind, we should have gotten more. I greatly appreciate TotK building upon the foundation that BotW provided. But with the 6+ year wait for TotK, there was opportunity for so much more. Even if you take out the year or so of Covid for development time, 4 or 5 years is more than enough time for the amazing Zelda team to give us more than we received. Just my opinion but I can’t help but be disappointed.