I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY DISLIKE TEARS OF THE KINGDOM
THIS IS NOT A FINISHED REVIEW.
It's just me airing out my frustrations (also literally not finished. Will probably edit as time goes on, also need to actually finish the main questline and give my full thoughts on the finale (already have some))
Story
Posted August 8, 2024
The story of Tears of the Kingdom is my biggest gripe with the game. It's the primary reason I realized that the game was absolutely not worth its $70 price tag. After being excited for the game for over 4 years, the teasers and trailers that had been released for the game were promising a darker and more story-driven game. Once it came out, however, it was made clear that the story was just cutscenes in the past again. A complaint that I and many others already had with Breath of the Wild. Additionally, the story beats that happen in the current-day are negligible at best and just exist to give you light amusement
Characters
The character development in Tears of the Kingdom is near-negligible. In Breath of the Wild, the lack of character development could be justified with the significance of Link working with the literal ghosts of his past. You get to see the new generations' reactions to the loss of their heroes. And through past cutscenes, each champion is given a significant backstory that is able to draw emotions. However, in Tears of the Kingdom, each past cutscene merely exists to further show how dangerous Ganondorf is. A point that has been re-iterated over and over since the first Legend Of Zelda. I'll get to Zelda in a future section (it's one of the few positives of the game.)
Lack of permanence
Tears of the Kingdom doesn't make completely sure whether or not the events of Breath of the Wild did happen or not. It feels like the game doesn't want to fully commit to it. The best way to show this are 2 characters that were extremely important together in Breath of the Wild (Bolson and Hudson). Meeting Bolson and eventually helping Hudson build his town was one of the stand-out quests in Breath Of The Wild. In TOTK, Terry does recognize you, and even has (IMO) one of the best side-quests in the game. However, Bolson doesn't even recognize Link. Despite the existence of Terrytown requiring Link to have met him in BOTW. This may seem like a minor complaint, but it really gets in the way of immersion when hundreds of hours of meeting characters is just disposed of, and characters that narratively should have met Link don't even recognize him (Hateno village gets on my nerves the most. WDYM you don't recognize me? I literally live down the street). Even with this, NPCs aren't the most egregious example of BOTW erasure. What about Sheikah tech?
What the fuck happened with the Sheikah tech?
The most important aspect of BOTW, which gave it one of my favorite aspects of the game (The Science Fantasy aesthetic) is somehow almost completely missing from the sequel. The explanation Nintendo gave about its disappearance being "it served its purpose and left" falls completely fact when you notice ALL of the Sheikah tech still remaining. [PICTURES OF SHEIKAH TECH EXAMPLES]
Is the tech gone or not? Nintendo's unwillingness to actually commit to decisions is especially weird when you consider they spent **6 years** developing the game. Even removing the years lost to the pandemic, that's still ~**4 years'** time to develop the game (TOTK started development as a DLC pack for BOTW, which was then expanded as an entire game). They could've and should've come up with a better explanation than just "it's gone lmao. cope". Sheikah tech was (and still is) extremely fundamental for the stories of both games, the lengths the game goes to to justify its lazy writing and decisions make it seem like Nintendo want to forget Breath of the Wild.