Tears of the Kingdom Reminds Me Why I Gave Up On Breath Of The Wild

We’ve all been enjoying Tears Of The Kingdom, not just this site, but humanity as a whole. It’s been the least surprising hit of the year, being the direct sequel to the game that made the Nintendo Switch an out-of-the-gate smash hit. It’s also part of a long-standing gaming icon who’s define many a gamer’s childhood, though in my case, Tears Of The Kingdom is the only Zelda game I’ve currently played front-to-back.

Crazy though it might sound, the only other Zelda game I have played is Breath of the Wild, and for reasons that only Tears of the Kingdom is now making clear, I just never really clicked with it.

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I had some of the typical complaints about Breath of the Wild: weapons broke too quickly, and climbing stamina started too small. I knew I could increase my stamina later, that’s just how it goes after all. As for weapons, it did feel like better weapons lasted longer, but for hours I had to swing around tree branches and other flimsy weapons, which just wasn’t much fun.

Then there was the shield-sledding—something I had to try for myself the second I’d heard about the mechanic online—but even with a new shield it still broke only a few inches down the mountain and nearly killed Link. It felt like a punishment instead of a fun side activity. I’m not even the only player who complained about this either, and I was delighted to find that shields have better durability for sledding in Tears Of The Kingdom, even without having to fuse them first.

Honestly, my big issue was how lost I felt in Breath of the Wild. I love RPGs, especially when I dive into the side missions, but I also need that signposting. I need to know what the correct path is, that way I know when I’m deviating, and I need to know where to go when I’m done deviating.

BOTW really loves telling you that the correct way to finish this adventure is to just jump into the open-world and figure out your own way, with the very opening hours being linear until you are given the paraglider and told to just dive off the cliff. In the distance you see Ganon’s evil cloud swallowing the castle, so clearly that’s the end-goal, and given a few ideas along the way, but nothing completely direct.

In theory this is about the player telling their own story, but frankly, I’ve been doing that with other RPGs that did have strict waypoints. Bethesda games for example will stick you in a linear opening, just like BOTW, then once you escape your jail cell or Vault, point your eyes directly at the town you should visit first as your main story will start there as well and a bunch of side quests that will happen to give you more side quests. My first story in Fallout 3 contained a lot of helping Moira finish that novel, which is nearly perfect for what I want, it’s put exactly in the town I know I’m supposed to visit and forced me to see the entire map with a purpose.

Killing Ganon and saving Hyrule is certainly a purpose, but making me see the whole world map from up top with the statement that every path is correct, all it really did was show its hand instead of lure me in.

Breath of the Wild was praised for ‘not holding your hand’ and ‘you can just go literally anywhere’, and those were bad sells to me. Telling me I could just try and kill Ganon at any point didn’t make my heart flutter. I would have rather known for sure the path I’d need to be ready for it, and what I could gradually do in the meantime.

That means it was only with Tears Of The Kingdom that I could fully dig into the world, lore, and fantasy of the Zelda universe. And now, finally, they have my interest.

I knew who Link and Zelda were, but I didn’t know what a Goron or a Rito was. Never heard of the Gerudo, never faced something quite like a Hinox or a Gleeok. There’s a very lively set of ideas here. Even in the slower opening hours of Tears, there was an establishing of setting and tone I was digging way more than the overly mysterious early hours of Breath Of The Wild.

After the opening, I also felt far more incentivised to follow a necessary path. While BOTW wanted me to drink in the huge map, Tears started a main story quest that boiled down to finding and talking to Purah. With a waypoint and everything!

What’s funny is how Tears pulled the same trick Breath did, as Link is then shot high into the air to gently float back down, forcing me to see world. However, this time, it’s overly clear the game wants me to note the location of every Skyview Tower, directly giving me a goal instead of demanding I drink in endless possibilities.

After that, Purah let me know there’ve been weird natural disasters in specific villages. So whether or not I wanted to unlock the rest of the towers was my call, and the correct path for the story was by helping the villages get back on their feet. I could still tackle them in any order, but the game was clear that the only way to finish the story was by going down that specific path.

In Breath Of The Wild, there very well could be a direct story path in there somewhere, but the game usually concealed this in the name of player freedom. Ironically, I actually felt far more free in Tears when the sequel painted the road ahead, and just so happened to throw distractions at me while I followed it.

For me, there is no desire to go “oh, what’s that!” if the whole game is a great big pile of “oh, what’s that!” I want a path that feels right, something that feels like its story progression. You can still have branching paths, but BOTW was effectively too free for its own good. Everything is supposed to feel right, but that can come across as everything feeling meaningless.

There are a lot of Zelda games out there, most of which aren’t on the Switch yet, and Tears Of The Kingdom showing me how wonderful this series can be has given me that itch to finally play them all.

But I can never give Breath Of The Wild a second try. It’s unfair to call it a bad game since I quit too early, but I played more than enough to know it’s a game I cannot understand or get into. Tears Of The Kingdom has effectively deprecated its predecessor, perfecting a formula I originally felt was a bit too bitter. Even divisive games like Skyward Sword sound like they’d give me way more fun than what BOTW tried to offer me.

I’m just happy Tears pulled through as well as it did.

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