Leon's Microblog – Posts tagged "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom"

There's still so much they can do. What if Zelda got turned to stone AND split into 8 pieces. What if Zelda got stuck on the moon. What if Zelda became unable to freaking do anything for 100,000 years instead of just 100 or 10,000. The imagination boggles.

Main reason TotK's final battle is better than BotW's, despite being roughly the same thing, is because they wrote themselves into a position where no NPC dialogue is possible, leaving the player to figure it out themself. That doesn't mean it's intuitive, just that it's better.

Thinking about how TotK is so Zelda-brand-obsessed that the plot dungeons are called "<noun> Temple", followed by a subtitle explaining what the structure actually is instead of a temple.

I'm fixated on how much this game's main plot writing is stripped of details and particulars to keep it as blunt as possible. The most telling fact, for me, is that that the ancient sages in this game don't even have names.

It's a popular preconception that every memorably bad B-movie is full of unbearably wooden performances except for one actor who knows they're in a rock and is determined to chew as much scenery as possible on the way down. Anyway, Master Kohga is played by one of those people.

So far I've done 4 plot quest dungeons, and my takeaway is: no one is allowed to call Kirby games "for literal small children" now that this game exists.

This game really expects you to watch the same flashback cutscene four times with identical information but with different voiceovers, huh. That's one of the things it expects of you.

The overworld enemy encounter music is just as obnoxious in this game as it is in all previous games, all the way back to OoT. Elden Ring copied this music concept from BotW and it was even obnoxious there, too. (But at least it actually varied between regions.)

2017: Princess Zelda is a powerless disembodied voice that only Link can hear 2023: Princess Zelda is a cryptid like Bigfoot or the Flatwoods Monster

So like……………… does Nintendo /have/ to write NPC dialogue like that do they really have to

If they make BotW 3 and put yet another precursor civilisation in it that also serves the same narrative role as the previous game's precursor civilisation, I'm going to do the Stuntcopter backflip

I did the geoglyph quest and mostly feel annoyed at how much they hammered each plot beat of an already basic narrative into a fine paste for the benefit of speculative 7-year-olds. Also, I called le cool twist way early… but didn't quite expect them to entirely follow through.

This game (TotK) is ostensibly a sequel, but it narratively feels less like BotW 2 and more like… BotW season 2. Which is rather refreshing for a Zelda, but ultimately means none of BotW's narrative strengths and weaknesses have meaningfully changed or improved even slightly.

Good news is I just channeled all my resources, weapon crafting, and AI manip know-how to beat a boss in Korok Forest while extremely underleveled. The bad news is I have now run out of interesting things to do in this game and am now watching Tetris tournament VODs.

I have been surprised at how well Recall synergises in a quality-of-life way with the machinery/construction mechanics that Ultrahand provides (that is, by letting you put machines back in place after they freaking fall off a cliff or rocket away without you).

The four runes in this game feel a lot more balanced in power compared to BotW's… though BotW's emphasis on elements/materials with Cryonis and Magnesis worked well with that game's strong nature themes. This game's theming is way messier in comparison.

So far my only interesting TotK observation (more than just thinking "Elden Ring did it better" at the underground stuff) is: yeesh, Super Mario Sunshine's genes really do just keep re-emerging at Nintendo. It truly has become the ur-Nintendo game, whether we like it or not.