It’s been about two months since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and the general consensus appears to be that the game is a triumph. I would mostly agree with this - there’s definitely a feeling of the game straining under its own weight with less-than-ideal controls, some uninspired dungeon design, and typical frustrations that come with collectathon crafting systems (the great faerie armor upgrade system is startlingly bad, as it forces the player into a dull collectathon that runs counter to the joys of the game), but my many nitpicks amount to a proverbial molehill compared to the towering achievement that is the rest of the game. I’m in awe of its bravery - Breath of the Wild pointed to this with its more open-ended approach to puzzle design, but Tears of the Kingdom takes that approach to its logical endpoint. To provide the player with means of breaking the game entirely as a primary tool is nothing short of a miracle, especially considering Nintendo’s often conservative approach to game design. Nintendo games very rarely allow players the kind of expression that allows them to intentionally break and think outside of their predefined boxes (wondrous as those boxes often are). Nintendo games are exceptional at letting the player feel like they’ve done something unintended, yet providing a cheeky smirk (think Super Mario Odyssey’s invisible coins) to let you know that someone, somewhere intended for you to be able to Do That. Tears of the Kingdom is the first time this illusion has not maintained itself. Even in a game that encourages you to break it, there were several times throughout my 90+ hours that I thought to myself “they did not expect me to do that.”
I’m less interested in retreading the same ground of whether or not the games are a success in terms of mechanics (they assuredly are, in many ways), but rather, how the games fumble their narrative opportunity around technology, especially in relation to warfare. To be fair, The Legend of Zelda series has never had its narrative sights set too high - the most narratively bold games in the series were often due to tone (Majora’s Mask) or the declaration of a specific place in the “timeline” (Skyward Sword). This is not to say The Legend of Zelda narratives are bad overall, just that they are very functional. The series is much more interested in providing players with moment-to-moment reveals and gameplay challenges as notable moments rather than narrative ones.
My hopes changed with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. When the game made it clear that so much of the baggage of what makes a “traditional” Zelda game had been shed, I was immediately excited at the narrative possibilities. They even have voice acting now! Maybe they can really do something interesting here! Unfortunately, the story in Breath of the Wild is better than a lot of the series, but still mostly nothing special, and I would say somewhat middling in an artform full of middling narrative. What I found most disappointing, however, was the treatment of technology. “An ancient civilization has left us technology that we fully don’t understand and use at our peril” is a nauseatingly common trope in video games. Even EA’s latest Star Wars video games use this trope despite having nearly fifty years of storytelling to lift from. Breath of the Wild does this too; however, one of the less common twists on this trope is that the technology turns on the characters at a critical moment, dooming them to the state of the world that Link wakes up to in the early hours of the game. I thought it was a great sign of things to come - here is a technology that our hero is ultimately reliant on (the “sheikah slate” for example, acts as the main menu and map), but carries the weight that it once turned on our heroes in their hour of need. How will they get out of this pickle? The answer, damningly, is that they don’t need to worry about that. The same giant, ancient mechs that turned on them one-hundred years ago simply work this time because Link goes and beats the bosses inside them. They just don’t get turned this time. They use the technology and win. End of story. The idea of “the ancient machines of war that were used against us Just Work this time because we wanted it bad enough” is lazy, and under serves what could be a really interesting plot beat. What if Link were forced to face Ganon alone? What if it were up to Link to recruit the people of Hyrule to rise up together? What if they had to find a new solution?
It’s nothing new to tell a story (nor in recent history - just look at the increasingly militarized United States police force) in which vast, overpowering military technology that was once used to dominate those outside a nation’s borders is now turned on the people within. This is a common theme in cautionary tales - put your faith not in governments that use weapons of mass destruction, as it’s only a matter of time until those weapons are turned on the people who deem that their rights have been impeded upon. The idea that these ancient weapons of dubious intent not only work this time but only work because “we wanted it badly enough” works to undercut the potential of the framework of the narrative that Breath of the Wild presents.
When I started Tears of the Kingdom, I truly didn’t expect anything in terms of narrative. I was truly looking forward to the game as a mechanical set piece. How would the developers that changed the conversation around open world design do it all over again? I was dragged back in when, early on in the game, Link is assaulted by robots called Zonai Constructs (once again, inventions of the even ancient-er race that predates the Shekah and everyone else that has settled in Hyrule). Only this time, the idea that the Zonai Constructs are attacking Link is unexpected by one of the people who built them - early in the game, Link is accompanied by a mysterious spirit who tells him that this wasn’t their intended function. They were supposed to assist in times of great peril, they had planned for this, what was going on? I was immediately grabbed - here was a narrative that was specifically in conversation with what came before it. Now the hook was going to be about the price of building and using machines of war - especially ones that we don’t fully understand, to defeat an encroaching evil.
I was even excited for the narrative implications of building being a primary mechanic - with Link’s left arm being severed and replaced with the “ultrahand”, he can now construct new weapons and devices previously unthought of. While I don’t know that the developers intended necessarily to comment on players doing things like building automated drones, I was excited for the narrative possibilities of what all this building might do to the world around it. Would Link’s inventions eventually turn against him like the Zonai’s had to them? The game contains a mechanic for “remembering” the constructions that you’ve made. What if these suddenly are used against you in the end, making you consider the fact that you’ve potentially created weapons to wage war against an enemy without considering what happens when those are pointed back at you? What if you, the player, suddenly started seeing your inventions used to terrorize the people of Hyrule because you had been building terrifying weapons without considering the consequences? What if the final stretch has you face the most nightmarish of your creations on the way to Ganondorf?
Unfortunately, none of this happens. It’s a shame too - because again it feels like an obvious narrative gesture that just… never gets capitalized on. There is a part of me that wonders if criticizing the narrative of a The Legend of Zelda game is like criticizing a dog for not knowing perfect English, but I argue that these kinds of narrative swings could really make the package feel “complete”. See, I maintain that the narrative of Tears of the Kingdom, much like Breath of the Wild, is fine. I even personally found the ending the most effective in any entry in the franchise (I’m lukewarm on that take and it may be the recency bias talking, but it’s certainly up there). There is, unfortunately, a distinct feeling of the narrative being somewhat disconnected from the rest of the game. The main objective of “find Princess Zelda” is driving most of the plot of the game, but the actual plot threads occur in flashbacks the player can find throughout the world (much like Breath of the Wild). The missed opportunities hurt so much more here because there was a golden opportunity to weave narrative and mechanics into one another seamlessly, to let the player feel like their actions had consequences. I don’t think that the narrative needed to necessarily veer into “Link is the Bad Guy Actually” territory, but something to ground the verbs that the player spends most of the game engaging with (building, experimenting, etc.) into the narrative writ large would have gone a long way. It’s doubly disappointing that the ultrahand abilities are more or less absent from the final encounter - they’re usable, sure, but they aren’t required in any meaningful way. I was able to run to and beat the final boss without ever once using an ultrahand ability, and that’s a shame considering how much of the game I spent coming up with various contraptions.
The Legend of Zelda has so much baggage from previous incarnations, player expectations, narrative hang-ups (Nintendo giving in to fans and establishing an official timeline is a choice they will come to regret, I imagine), it’s practically impossible to appease everyone. I truly admire the mechanical swings that Nintendo takes, and knowing that Breath of the Wild has introduced the “new” era of Zelda as we currently know it, I hope that Nintendo continues to prioritize bold, interesting mechanical swings. I do hope, however, that they allow some of that boldness to seep into the narrative as well. There’s so many interesting opportunities with the series as a cultural object and as a means of reckoning with the past and its influence on future generations, I hope that the next time we visit Hyrule, some more consideration is given to these aspects.