Breaking news: I still can’t stop playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom. I played over 80 hours for my review, and after restarting to take it aꦆll in slower, my personal playthrough is slowly creeping towards the same milestone. This time around though I still have three temples yet to clear while side quests, shrines, and a general sense of freeform discovery take precedence. Every moment is being savoured, but deep down I know the time will come to leave this classic behind.
That eventual farewell is important though, and recognises how Tears of the Kingdom not only builds upon everything that made 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild so special, but acknowledges how the series needed to change once again. By turning its principles of open world innovation into constant bouts of gameplay that also tout sources of open solution, no longer is Hyrule just a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:melancholy wasteland for Link to explore, but a 168澳洲ꦆ幸运5开奖网:la༒ndscape filled with endless possibilities.
When it comes to Zelda, greatness doubles as a reminder of complacency. Ahead of launch there was an understandable fear that Tears of the Kingdom making use of the same world, characters, and mechanical systems - except for big new powers - would make it feel like a glorified expansion. This didn’t end up coming to pass, and doub♌ters seem to miss the point of iterative game design. The fact Nintendo was able to take a world we had already spent hundreღds of hours with and make it unrecognisable in its majesty is a crowning achievement, and still Hyrule felt like an old friend at times as you revisited old haunts with a drive to discover how things had ch🌼anged. Everywhere you look sits a new discovery, or a reformed interpretation of well-worn ground waiting to be relished.
This excellence shouldn’t mean yet another game should repeat what it does w🧜ell though, but instead should take its foundational innovation and apply it to new takes on these characters and a new vision of Hyrule that reshapes itself out of necessity. BOTW and TOTK couldn’t be anything except ♈open world, and justify this excessive scope at every turn, since despite the endless amount of things to do across both games, everything you do manages to feel deliberate. No player will ever approach it in the same way, and that beauty should be a lesson Zelda carries forward into the future while continuing to abandon its own tradition.
Tears of the Kingdom is, rather ironically, weakest when it tries to be a Zelda game from the past, like when unorthodox environmental solutions and procedural storytelling are ca🎃st aside in favour of traditional temples and expositional dialogue designed to have a single purpose. It isn’t to say these moments aren’t good, but they also serve as a reminder of the history Breath of the Wild otherwise seemed to leave behind. We are at a turning point in this series’ evolution, and will likely see TOTK continue to expand thanks to future downloadable content and expansions, but after that I’d love to see its slate wiped clean once again. Keep the fundamentals while fully altering the final execution.
Imagine a spiritual successor to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Wind Waker which makes similar use of mechanics such as Recall or Ultrahand but with much larger bodies of water and a layered open world of land or ocean each requiring distinct means of traversal. It would incentivise constant inventiveness from the player and for Nintendo to craft a setting that both pays homage to the past while forever unafraid to reinvent for the sake of progress. Even a hybrid of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Twilight Princess and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Skyward Sword would work, swapping atmosphere at the drop of a hat as we jump between regions each with their own distinct characteristics, yet the centre is still upheld by ꧂cohesive mechanics that we can bend to whatever will best serve our imagination.
Where Zelda can go after a masterpiece on the levels of Tears of the Kingdom is a terrifying prospect, but we thought the same thing about Breath of the Wild. Perhaps better than reimagining the past would be a complete unknown. A new branch in the timeline or a bold, subversive take on these characters that takes risks we’ve never seen before. Gamers are often afraid of change, although Tears of the Kingdom has shown that one of the medium’s most beloved properties can turn everything on its head and come out standing tall. Thanks to the joy at the centre of it all that keeps its sense of adventure intact. So long as that stays, Zelda can be anything Nintendo wants itღ to be and we’ll come along for the ride.
