A Shrine Tale

by Jed Pressgrove

The shift from dungeons to shrines* in the The Legend of Zelda series smacks of creative convenience. Shrines give the developers freedom to throw in whatever puzzles or enemy encounters they want without overarching context. Everything in a dungeon, ideally, works together like the instrumentalists in an orchestra. However small the dungeon elements might be, they create something bigger than their sum. A dungeon needs vision. A shrine doesn’t. And so the shrines in Breath of the Wild seem less like an art and more like the scattered ideas of game design students.

Immediately following the transition from the Great Sky Island to the ballyhooed open world, Tears of the Kingdom plays into the worst disposable tendencies of the shrine paradigm. What does it say when a 2023 Zelda title — a good six years removed from its predecessor’s experimentation — dedicates an entire shrine to a contrived lesson on item throwing? It reeks of inefficiency, as you would hope the lengthy introductory tutorial would fully cover something as rudimentary as item throwing. And it doesn’t suggest adventure, neither in terms of being rewarded for wandering about, nor in terms of being stimulated by curiosity or surprise. Maybe the point is to celebrate the player’s ability to follow basic instructions. Upon completion of the task (i.e., dismantling a stupid robot standing on higher ground in the middle of a room), a voice remarks, “You have proven your mastery,” which is akin to giving someone a college degree because they can zip up their pants.

The second shrine I visited proved just as perfunctory. Its hurdles involved rehashed Ultrahand lessons from the Great Sky Island — fusing logs together for Link to walk across or climb, and crafting a raft with fans to travel on water. These mind-numbingly vapid challenges, like the item-throwing routine, say more about the smarmy design philosophy of modern-day Nintendo than they do about the setting of Tears of the Kingdom. As in Breath of the Wild, Nintendo appears frightened of letting players off the leash at the beginning. These games are as unconfident and repetitious as they are grandiose. The initial shrines in Tears of the Kingdom point to the company’s conservatism as much as the open world hearkens back to the conviction of the original Zelda on the NES.

Then something magical happened. As I scaled a mountain to draw closer to a third shrine, I found myself in the clutches of the morbidly fascinating Gloom Hands. These hands reach out of puddles that spread like a virus. It’s like a child’s nightmare, this idea of strange hands touching you, pulling you, kidnapping you to hell to do God knows what. I was able to shake loose of the hands and arrive to the Morok Shrine, but the undying threat of the hands foreshadowed an hour-plus purgatorial struggle I would have in the glorified mini dungeon.

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Let me back up. When you leave the Great Sky Island, you have the choice of following the main quest marker. I considered this option for about five seconds and became sickened by the thought of continuing down a preset path after complying with the bureaucratic orders of the Great Sky Island. Anything to escape the game’s eye-rolling storytelling seemed sexy. This early decision to ignore the larger goal meant I would not attain the handy paraglider, which would have rendered the Morok Shrine as dull as the other shrines I had the displeasure of discovering.

Without the paraglider in Link’s possession, Morok Shrine’s platforming becomes treacherous. Particularly early on when one has not had much of a chance to gain extra heart containers to lessen the probability of deadly injury.

The subtitle of Morok Shrine is “A Bouncy Device.” It sounds innocuous and fun, but I nonetheless felt nervous after reading the words. I sensed potential destruction, however playfully constructed. The first part of the shrine made me unclench. Just a square platform rising quickly out of the floor. A higher point unreachable without upward momentum. I timed it so the platform propelled Link to the next floor mid-jog.

I saw the bouncy device. A heavy-looking spring full of pressure. It indeed bounces when Link’s weapon strikes it. Not a complicated solution. Move the contraption closer to the ledge of the upper level with Ultrahand, situate the hero on top of the spring, swing the ungodly big stick and spear combination to activate the spring, and boost Link to the next floor. Push Link forward during the jump, or you will die an embarrassing death like I did, crashing back down into the very thing that was supposed to deliver you to new heights.

My second attempt was successful, though Link sustained significant injury because I failed to dive right after I cleared the ledge in midair. On subsequent tries, I became a master of this little dive — if you didn’t know any better watching, you would think Link is instantly magnetized to the floor. (The paraglider would have made this skill irrelevant and undiscovered.)

—

The final floor almost stumped me, thrusting me into a cycle of restarts that attracted me like an irresistible merry-go-round, where my stubbornness felt like drunkenness; where my realization that the shrine, by design, required the paraglider compelled me to keep going against the grain; and where my memories of hardship in games as diverse as The Talos Principle and Ninja Gaiden floated in the background, inspiring me to prove, yet again, some silly point about my ability to overcome doubt, perplexing circumstances, and brick-wall opposition.

To the left, the final floor presents a pair of fused-together bouncy devices behind bars, which only open when a ball is placed in the middle of a recess in the floor. That ball is located to the right across a pit on a higher floor. To retrieve it, you must launch Link across the pit using another bouncy device propped up at a diagonal angle on a ramp. This stunt doesn’t demand more than simple aim. Link will not take damage, regardless of whether you dive or press no button.

Shooting the ball over the pit to the recess in the floor is easy. But the return trip for Link means almost certain death without the paraglider at this early stage. More heart containers would solve the issue, but I only had four. Being launched from the higher floor triggers fatal fall damage for this most sensitive version of the princess-saving son of a bitch.

The easiest way to shoot Link back across the pit is to utilize a ramp. You fit the bouncy device into the crevice of the ramp so that the launchpad faces your destination, stand Link on the pad, and whack the spring. Because of the ramp’s sharp upward angle, this method killed me multiple times, even with a dive.

I could have joined a Reddit discussion, asked why Nintendo would place this shrine in plain sight after the player leaves the Great Sky Island, and permanently degraded myself, even under the guise of anonymity. Instead, I opted to die multiple times while attempting different launch methods.

I reasoned that if I could launch Link with the spring on the floor with a less extreme angle, perhaps the pointy-eared rupee rubber wouldn’t perish from the impact to the lower platform, as he would not fly as high into the air. This not-so-brilliant idea presented three issues. First, the spring had to be angled so that Link would clear the conspicuously placed railing at the edge of the higher floor. Second, even if the angle allowed Link to avoid contact with the railing, he might still hit the wall below the edge of the lower floor, causing the otherwise silent protagonist to let out a pathetic, futile yell as he plummets to the abyss. Third, how would you create an angle in the first place without a ramp?

My answer to that question was as embarrassing as you might guess: drop a few shields from my inventory and fuse them together to form a pallet that could help support a lower angle for the launch. My ingenuity was never rewarded, mainly because the makeshift pallet couldn’t remain steady enough throughout the spring’s abrupt initiation.

Like many puzzles in life, the solution turned out simple, though arriving at it required me to destroy Link’s body a number of times. Just use the ramp, and dive into the lower floor as soon as you pass over the pit. When successful, you lose all but one-quarter of a heart. From there, you must make one final significant vertical jump with three stacked springs, which must be positioned close to a wall so that you can move forward a couple of feet in midair, just enough to catch the edge of the highest floor. If the stacked springs sit too close to the wall, Link’s momentum will be stalled ever so slightly, resulting in probable doom.

The torture of solving Morok Shrine in this way ranks as one of the greatest experiences in a Zelda game, in the most counterintuitive manner possible. It puts your gaming life in the most ironic of contexts. It puts hair on Link’s chest. It puts the Tears in Tears of the Kingdom.

*Yes, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have dungeons, but they’re secondary now, and seemingly only included out of obligation.

TO BE CONTINUED …

This is the third part of an ongoing critical series. Click here to read the second part, “The Legend of Tutorialization.“

The Legend of Tutorialization

by Jed Pressgrove

Like its predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom bars entry to Hyrule until the player completes a glorified tutorial. If a so-called open world game must include this type of contrivance, the initial trial should be brief, as in Fallout 2 or Dark Souls, for two reasons:

1. The shorter the delay to the meat of the game, the better.
2. Replaying a tutorial on subsequent playthroughs is tedious.

I criticized Breath of the Wild for the trite battles and busywork in its introductory Great Plateau area, which takes about an hour or two of your time (if not more if you want to explore—an urge that isn’t rewarded with anything particularly interesting). Seven years later, Tears of the Kingdom presents the Great Sky Island. I again question the use of “Great” as an adjective, because there’s nothing spectacular about being locked into an educational portion of a game whose design otherwise preaches freedom—especially when you must interact with a former Hylian ruler named Rauru, who has the personality of an ironing board.

Similar to the Great Plateau, the Great Sky Island has shrines where Link gains powers, though these locations must now be visited in a specific order. As Rauru nudges you to the next shrine, you run into puzzles on the island that require new skills (primarily Ultrahand). Along the way you encounter peaceful robots who relay helpful tips and malicious robots who allow you to practice the unimaginative combat system.

The script gives an explanation for this environment, but that doesn’t take away the manufactured stench of the area. Obviously the game needs to introduce mechanics, but I would prefer a concise training sequence from Rauru. The lanky fellow might show irritation as Link commits errors with the complex Ultrahand ability. Anything to decrease the extended blandness. (For all the complaints that could be directed at the more linear Zelda titles, I appreciate the sense of discovery involved with locating a special item in a dungeon and the simplicity of a quick message about the artifact’s capabilities.)

Thankfully, Link’s main powers in Tears of the Kingdom outshine what he could do in Breath of the Wild. The abilities lend a more surreal tone to the adventure. They go well beyond the activities one would envision in a dream about Link. They even correct some of the dubious qualities of Breath of the Wild. I recently visited Wikipedia because I couldn’t remember all the powers from Breath of the Wild. But these four I won’t forget.

Ultrahand

You can build complicated contraptions (just browse YouTube) with this superglue ability, but you don’t have to be perfect with it to solve certain puzzles, so Ultrahand has a comical jankiness to it that recalls Scribblenauts. While Ultrahand brings the most mechanical possibilities to Tears of the Kingdom, it’s my least favorite of the four, mainly because of the awkward controls. My main irritation: Waggling an analog stick to unglue parts is inefficient and silly. Should have been a button press. I also don’t have much of a desire to build things outside of situations where I need to. Frankly, I would have preferred Nintendo to reinvent the game’s stale combat. (It’s no surprise two of my favorite Zeldas, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Twilight Princess, emphasize the intricacies of swordplay.)

Fuse

The simplest of the four, but it goes a long way toward eliminating one of the limitations of Breath of the Wild: the uncreative weapon-breaking system that could pass as parody. Fuse permanently welds items together for various bonuses, including magical effects, higher attack power, and, most importantly, extra durability. If you combine the right items, certain weapons can last quite some time. That’s enough to warrant praise alone; the experimentation with different amalgams adds intrigue. Fuse makes chests more attractive. In Breath of the Wild, I started ignoring many chests because the items I discovered disintegrated so easily. In Tears of the Kingdom, I’m curious about what I might find and manipulate with Fuse. Exploring the advantages of fused materials pays off when you face monsters with unique weaknesses, creating a stronger dynamic between the hero and the random elements scattered throughout the world.

Ascend

Ascend feels like a satirical wrinkle about the tension between the desire for convenient exploration and the limits of logic. Blasting Link through a ceiling qualifies as the goofiest action in any Zelda. It’s as exciting to misuse as use: I’ve inadvertently thrusted myself into places that had nothing to do with my original intentions. After you use this skill, the game asks if you want to go through with the ascension, in case your aim was terrible or you see a massive problem waiting for you above. I find it almost impossible not to go through with the process every time. The option to back out of consequences robs the game of irony.

Recall

Although time manipulation isn’t an original concept for the Zelda series, being able to isolate a rewinding effect on an object introduces novel game-breaking possibilities. Recall is thus a double-edged sword. Undeniably fascinating to play with, but when used on items in conjunction with Ultrahand, many of Tears of the Kingdom’s shrine challenges become repetitive jokes.

– — — I … ——…

Sometimes tutorialization seems to never end in modern games. An hour or two (Zelda), a baker’s dozen (Persona 5), 20+ hours (Xenoblade Chronicles 2). Part of the issue lies in developers’ and gamers’ confusion about the value of mechanics. The more mechanics, the more depth. Even if this assumption is true (it’s not—a simple session of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker has more depth than most video games for social and psychological reasons as much as mechanical ones), we run into the predicament of games taking on too much or, as we would say in Mississippi, getting too big for their britches. Too many games are counterinstinctual, turgid, overambitious, and trendy. And games need to be accessible for financial and philosophical concerns. So tutorials overstay their welcome. The manual never died. It transformed into an obtrusive, virus-like guide within games. These eyesores, earsores, and brainsores are accepted because people feel empowered when they get to do extra things in games. Look at me I’m a builder chemist craftsman cook and photographer in an action game I finally appreciate things that I never could in real life I finally have depth

—- —- —-

I dive off the Great Sky Island. In the wilderness. Happy to leave behind the lessons. Stoked about the real game. I find a few shrines. They want me to fight single enemies and build rafts. They want me to learn things I’ve already learned.

TO BE CONTINUED …

This is the second part of an ongoing critical series. Click here to read the first part, “Why Isn’t Zelda Smarter?”