windjamm | Tears of the Kingdom: 7 Hour Review (Reply)

I've spent about seven hours in Tears of the Kingdom and I've been finding it so much fun so far.

I think it's fascinating how they mechanically shifted the game mechanics so utterly that by the time I got the glider I was already trying to concieve of a game without it because everything else had changed so fundamentally.

The abilities, for instance. Not only are they all distinct and strange compared to the abilities of the last game, but they are wild departures from what feels possible in this space.

The Ultrahand is such a wild concept to add to a AAA Nintendo Product. This is a space where things are quality tested to hell and back and to add a physics based item-construction mechanic that seems to simply allow you to attach any number of things would have taken a mind-boggling amount of test hours considering the games I see that are physics based in this way both base their entire conceit (and thus the majority of their development hours) around it and still come out buggy. In a world where Bethesda games are seemingly impossible to quality test fully in a meaningful capacity, what a feat it is that in all this time building stupid ass houses and configurations of planks I haven't seen one thing glitch out of the world.

And THEN you add the other powers! Time reversal? I've solved puzzles by simply holding an object at the destination, bringing them to me, then reversing its time and creating my own time-based rail system. The item-combining one? There are SO many possibilities! I glued a shield to my sword! I don't even know why beyond, "oh I fought with this guy and he dropped two things and I didn't have two slots." Ascend is probably the most buggy, being that I managed to subvert a few areas by pixel-hunting spaces that sent me about 300m to the top of a cliff, but even that doesn't feel bad so much as a little bit goofy.

They truly swung so hard with these and I just adore that.

I love how much the world has changed in meaningful ways. I was worried I'd be bored or that it'd feel samey after all these hours, but it's genuinely so much fun.

I do wonder where it's all leading, though. I haven't gotten to the first of the four Regions they wanted me to go to yet and I am eager to find out what that's about. Likewise, everyone feels very divided and lost after the Upheaval, which is fair, however I did think it was beautiful how much peace and placeness people found beyond the apocalypse of the calamity. Even though it was ongoing, it felt like places like Kakariko, Hateno, even the Rito village managed to feel like Homes.

I could imagine children growing up in Breath of the Wild, but even though they have in Tears of the Kingdom, it very much feels like seeing kids grow up in wartime. I haven't found Kakariko, so I suppose we'll see how I feel about those places when I arrive.

But so far I am really interested in finding a through-line that feels at heartfelt as Zelda's self-doubt, as the failure of the Champions, as their desire to try again one more time and the hope Link instills.

Rather than hope that he can save everyone, everyone seems to meet Link's return with a relief that they no longer have to worry. I don't begrudge them for this, of course you would rather a hero save the day and write it off as a bad dream. It just hurts to see and to deliver the news, "no, I'm sorry, you very much have to keep fighting. The war's not done."

I'm eager to see what happens.