Tears of the Kingdom Should Have Felt So Much More Alive

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Legend of Zelda: Tear🐻s of♛ the Kingdom is a masterpiece. Over a year later, I’m still blown away by how it subverts the open world structure presented by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild and manages to run a multi-layered open world filled with unique physജics objects in the confines of an ageing handheld.

Yet despite its greatness and how much I adored its time-hopping main story, parts of its open world also feel sadly underbaked, or strangely disco♉nnected from everything we saw take place in the previous game. Fans theorise that five years or so have passed since the last game, and parts of Hyrule have begun to both rebuild and prosper in the absence of a world-ending threat.

The Master Works Reveal A Very Different Tears Of The Kingdom

But for some reason, all the ancien🥂t Sheikah techꦇnology has vanished and been replaced by the Zonai, while Castle Town is still in ruins despite outposts spread across the land having the manpower and resources to bring the capital back to life. Turns out this could have been very different.

Last week saw the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Master Works in Japan, a 464-page tome that features a new timeline, never before seen character designs, alongside developer notes and other insights that players are already exploring to uncover new discoveries. Upon its 🦹reveal, I explored some of th▨e cut Zelda hairstyles it revealed, but the full literature is considerably more subst♑antial. But without a

translated release, which I&rsqu🍷o;m confident will arrive in the future, all I can go on is observations thrust onto social media and my own two eyes. Right away, one particular image grabbed me:

Tears of the Kingdom Master Works - Hyrule Restoration Festival — Credit: Zemmy On X.

Prior to being cut, that would have seen Hylians, Zora, Gerudo, and Gorons assemble in Castle Town to celebrate the day Link vanquished Calamity Ganon. Everyone is seen dancing and jumping arou🌼nd in glee, simply relieved to be alive in their rebuilt capital and saved from the horrors of mortal peril.

In the finished article, this celebration is nowhere to be seen, and worse yet, many of the world’s inhabitants seldom acknowledge what they’ve been through or the roles Link and Zelda played in saving Hy🃏rule. Link is a stranger to some people when, in actuality, he should be the most famous person in the world, asꦆide from the Princess he serves.

Tears of the Kingdom - Castle Town Inhabitants

It serves the majority of Zelda games to treat Link as an empty vessel for the player to inhabit, and allowing him to have a determine🌠d role from the outset surfaces a dissonance that could actively make the game worse. But this is a sequel, and people wil♑l come in expecting to see this existing world change, grow, and react to all that happened before.

Tears of the Kingdom achieves that in a mechanical sense, and also narratively in select locations like Hateno Town where 🎐Link and Zelda now live with one another in a cute little house but totally aren&r𓃲squo;t a couple. But elsewhere, it doesn’t.

Castle Town Should Have Been A Symbol Of Life For Hyrule

Imagine if Castle Town wasn’t a shoddily assembled sequence of wooden platforms and bombed out ruins, but instead a bustling symbol of life in a world once destroyed, where people can feel confident in living their lives again after a century of subjugation. If years have passed between both games, it also doesn’t make much sense that Hyrule Castle is still a massive tip. Surely that and Castle Town would be the first points of restoration, and I can't stress enough how much I would have loved a built-out capital city to explore in Tears of the Kingdom with shops, houses, characters, and secrets to uncover.

Built out towns and cities were replaced by the outposts found across Hyrule, while the existing homesteads like Kakariko 🐷Village and Gerudo Town remained, but updated and reflective of a changed world. But even these can be static or loyal to the whims of when and where the player is in the main nar🦩rative. Everything else about the game oozes this sense of unpredictable dynamism, especially in how certain characters go about routines or react to Link’s presence, but what if these occurred on a larger scale?

I want to walk into a Castle Town that is still recognisable, but rebuilt and filled with life. I want to suddenly be pulled into a dance by jubilant citizens happy to be alive, now feeling safe enough because of my actions to take to the streets and celebrate. This could have been an ideal introduction before Link and Zelda are pulled beneath the castle to investigate a newfound threat, not to mention setting up a world we’ll have a reason to misཧs as it is once again thrust into turmoil.

The Master Works reveals several things, including this ill-fated festival, that were likely cut for good reason, but seeing even a foundational part of what could have been already has me wishing they had become a reality. Tears of the Kingdom is a game that feels alive wherever you look, but many of its towns and the people who call﷽ Hyrule home can fall short.