I only have one temple left to tackle in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom before taking on Ganondorf, but I’m not ready to start saying goodbye. I’ve taken it in as slowly as I can so far. With 80 hours on my save file, I played one dungeon per weekend for the first three weeks. But now, it's starting to feel like I’m dragging my feet — especially because the chunk of the main story that I’ve experienced by hunting down all the Geoglyphs was enthralling. I want to see more, but I also wish there was more to see.
That probably seems like a wild thing to say about Tears of the Kingdom. It’s an overwhelmingly large game, with 152 shrines, three massive maps s🍬tacked on top of each other, seemingly endless places to visit, and almost as many side quests to uncover. Asking for more seems hopelessly greedy. But now that I’m feeling invested in the story, I just wish there was more of that one specific thing to see without needing to hurtle towards the end.
Tears of the Kingdom is a maximalist game in many ways, but it’s a minimalist one in terms of structure. You have four areas to visit to advance the story, or you can head straight for the conclusion right away. It’s the same structure 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild used and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Whereas I mostly experienced Breath of the Wild’s story as an excuse to explore the four corners of its ꦍmap, Tears of the Kingdom has its narrative hooks in me. I want to know what will happen ☂with Link and Ganon and Rauru and, most of all, Zelda.
To do that, I need to start moving toward the finish line. In a game like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Red Dead Redemption 2, the side quests in which Arthur can get to know the members of the Van der Linde gang were plentiful. Usually when you returned to your camp, you had a pal who wanted you to accompany them on a mission, a trip to town, or a few quiet minutes fishing. I love that game's main quest, but if I wanted to spend time with the characters I cared about, I could just head back to camp and… spend time with them, chatting, and singing dirty songs around the campfire, and drinking coffee in the morning.
Tears of the Kingdom has me invested in Zelda, and Zelda isn't here. She's as fully realized a character as she's ever been in Tears of the Kingdom, and that's frustrating because I can only get to know her through memories, or glimpses of someone who looks a lot like her in the run-up to each of the temples.
I wish there were more ways to see her and to connect to the story of Hyrule that Tears of the Kingdom is telling. It gives me tons of small things to do that build out the world, but to advance the big A-plot I have to be willing to end it. It's a melancholy dissonance that feels right at home in this series.