My Heart’s Not in Zelda or: Nobody Saves Gaming Culture

by Jed Pressgrove

And then I woke up.

– Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones), in the film No Country For Old Men.

Tears of the Kingdom led me back to a feeling I had in 2017 with Breath of the Wild: an absence of heart. Not having heart is the ultimate game killer. “No más,” said pugilist Roberto Durán to the referee in 1980, ruining one of boxing’s most anticipated rematches. I understand Durán when I ponder how my time with Zelda has ended two games in a row. The phrase has nothing to do with inability — Durán had notched one win against his opponent, Sugar Ray Leonard, and wasn’t losing by much in the rematch — and everything to do with a lack of investment.

Tears of the Kingdom is not unlike many modern big-budget video games: mechanics upon mechanics, curios upon curios, waypoints upon waypoints. All the crap you pick up is not actually crap, yet nothing feels essential. Outside of a few idiosyncratic enemies and a curiously placed shrine, I don’t admire anything I have discovered.

A game like this should have exciting action. Nevermind that Tears of the Kingdom reuses many thrills from its predecessor — the monster killing is mundane and emotionally vapid compared to that of several titles indebted to the Zelda series (e.g., Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls, and Hyper Light Drifter). Link might have early god-like potential (most shrines are a cinch with Ultrahand and Recall), but the proposition of breaking the game is not anymore interesting than it was in Scribblenauts or Hack N’ Slash.

After a period of amusement using the new powers, a sense of pointlessness emerged as I realized I was traversing a world with a consistent stream of moderate intrigue, nipping at an ever-dangling carrot. The caves and the sky islands are merely extra content, distractions from the reused setting and the awful story. In this collection of locations, there are no high points or low points, just a bunch of mid points. Nintendo straps you to a bed and plugs 10 IVs into your veins. You’re always getting injected, always feeding, but you’re never satisfied or healed, like a junky with no god and a patient with no timetable for discharge. Almost every experience amounts to a nice plateau, so when one has a rare sensation that registers between an above-average thrill and a very good rush, one might feel wowed.

The world of Zelda is purgatory made ultra consumable.

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In Desert Golfing, I am on hole 1401, 3653 strokes. In front of my ball is a sand shed with a sharply angled roof. Then the land flattens and stretches a little more than halfway across the screen before revealing the hole. On the other side of the hole is the steep edge of a fat hill.

I now look at hole 1402, which sits on top of the fat hill. Exasperatingly, the hole resides on the edge of a ridge. There’s no space to the left of the hole for the ball to sit, meaning the ball will roll down back toward the tee if it doesn’t land in the hole, and to the right of the hole, the ball has little room to travel before it would fall off the other side of the hill into a moderately shallow crevice. Past this crevice the ball would go off-screen, triggering a restart.

I would prefer not to deal with 1402, but it’s against the rules to see any new part of the desert before putting the ball in the hole.

This far into the game, I’m more fascinated by what the next section of land will look like than I am by how many strokes I will use on a hole. After all, I’ve hit hundreds of hole-in-ones at this point.

I’m well over a 1,000 holes in and have only seen water about 10 times. I have seen one rock. I used about 30 strokes hitting my ball into the rock, pushing it yard by yard until it fell into the hole first.

Desert Golfing isn’t open like Tears of the Kingdom, but it has a more curious and delightful exploratory philosophy. There’s an invitation to see Desert Golfing’s world, one screen at a time, this eternal sand trap, this place of triangles and other geometric shapes, this landscape of slopes, recesses, 90-degree walls, and clusterfuck canyons, this setting of meditation and self-determined pars and everlasting training, this neverending stretch of orange, this magnificent ode to random generation that resembles a natural progression of geological erosion.

I appreciate and anticipate every part of Desert Golfing’s setting. Spoiled, I take the environmental offerings of Tears of the Kingdom as a given.

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I wish Tears of the Kingdom would overwhelm me, plunge me into doubt and hopelessness, confound me. Progress seems predestined despite the ridiculous number of variables at play. Death in Tears of the Kingdom is irrelevant. I die and return to a nearby checkpoint, perhaps with more hearts than when I crossed the same spot. Every navigational challenge is no more than a temporary annoyance. The answer to everything is immediately apparent. I always know I’m capable of advancing. So what’s the point of moving forward?

Tears of the Kingdom specializes in deliberate predictability. Like Breath of the Wild, it sees itself as a survival test. But I consider myself foolish, not resilient, for engaging with the game’s dull and awkward routines. I have come to despise every jump, every instance of climbing or gliding, every swing of a weapon, every time I have to access a power or an item from a menu. I know why people dedicate themselves to Ultrahand wizardry: Without that novelty, Tears of the Kingdom is monotonously superfluous.

I knew something was dead wrong after I joined forces with bird boy Tulin. Tulin is an amateurish gimmick. He’s positioned as an essential part of the greater mission, but his status as a CPU-controlled juvenile gives off the odor of God of War trendiness. His wind gust ability epitomizes tortured design: To activate this underwhelming technique, Tulin must be close enough to Link to summon the almighty on-screen button prompt. It actually requires two button presses for Tulin to unleash his special move. The utter inelegance of the controls and the one-note personality of the sidekick speak to Nintendo’s low creative standards, which doom what should have been an enlivening ascent into the sky.

The idiocy of this scenario — naturally, Nintendo has the gall to label Tulin and other helpers as Sages — inspired me to take a break from the main story and wander about. After hours of the isomorphic caverns, dime-a-dozen enemy encampments, uninteresting wildlife, and silly side quests, I said to myself: NO MORE!

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To see consumerism as a kind of longing for spiritual connection in a world that has less and less space for the sacred, the mysterious, the luminous, opens up the idea of what we do in the games industry as more than straightforward game material. We touch on much deeper longings, fantasies, and desires. We sell dreams.

– narrative designer Meghna Jayanth.

Transforming into a horse that crushes monsters with its hind legs represents a more interesting fantasy than the Ultrahand prospect of constructing a flying car, mecha, or giant rotating flamethrower. I’ve used countless vehicles and contraptions in games, but I had never assumed the role of a violent stallion, a deranged mermaid, or a toxic slug until I played Nobody Saves the World.

Unlike Link, the titular protagonist of Nobody Saves the World is void of distinguished features. The eye sockets of this freak are empty. He is pallid and scrawny. He slaps his hand at opponents like a child. He is a joke, a winking reference to the modest saviors of countless fantasy games.

But he can shape-shift into other beings and wield their most lethal tactics and attacks. As in Tears of the Kingdom, your initial efforts with all the abilities involve minor growing pains. Nobody receives experience points by killing enemies in particular ways and doing other things, like opening chests. (You’re reading that right. You get rewarded for finding rewards.)

Nobody Saves the World and Tears of the Kingdom appear quite different. Their systems, structures, and capabilities don’t bear much similarity. Neither do their audiovisual styles or storytelling approaches.

Yet their ideologies match perfectly. They romanticize and fetishize the lone hero. One who saps the resources around him like a ferocious anteater, demolishes habitats as if justified by divine right, and rubs shoulders with glorious destiny. These heroes are successful in the most self-righteous, circular manner possible. Their dominance receives comprehensive, immutable backing by thematic suggestions about lowly beginnings, working one’s way up, and earning the respect of people. Contra pushes machismo. Hades worships rebellion. Zelda and Nobody present phony holiness as a sacred goal.

Beyond all my misgivings about the mechanical, kinetic, and environmental limitations of Tears of the Kingdom and Nobody Saves the World, I am most tired of their veiled and deceptive ego-building effect which leaves me hollow and aimless, notwithstanding the digital riches they can grant to me. In our slumber as gamers, kingdoms are forever customized for our fleeting happiness.

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?”

Why Isn’t Zelda Smarter?

by Jed Pressgrove

For a name associated with greatness, Zelda isn’t the sharpest tack at the start of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The scenario begins with Zelda and Link investigating a cavern under Hyrule Castle. The obvious question—why the hell would only two people, including the kingdom’s most important person whose life was recently in grave danger, delve into an unexplored dark place suspected as the source of new evil?—is never answered.

Atmospheric, creepy music attempts to set a serious tone, but I’m more immersed in my own impatience listening to Zelda’s gratuitous gasps and digesting her monotonous, incredulous comments about how deep the cavern goes.

“People have been falling ill after coming into contact with the gloom drifting from these caverns,” Zelda observes as she continues the inadvisable descent with Link, who, in line with tradition, remains speechless like the story pawn that he is. “Though here it seems almost misty and not concentrated enough to harm us.”

This last optimistic observation comes about a minute after her more worrying line, “This strange gloom keeps getting thicker.” Either the script team can’t understand basic contradictions in writing, or Zelda is a bonafide dullard.

An on-screen message instructs me to swing Link’s sword with the Y button. Conspicuously, this text prompt stays up for a while. I feel teased, as though the game makers know Zelda is irritating and would make an attractive target, but no amount of hacking can stop this NPC damsel in her tracks.

I see three one-eyed bats. At last the game offers a distraction from Zelda’s grating dialogue. I annihilate the vermin. Before I can congratulate myself for conquering this trio of winged dummies, a cutscene initiates. Zelda runs to the hero and says, “You’re not hurt, are you, Link?” No, he just completed the simplest tutorial sequence in the world with a high-powered sword and myriad heart containers.

After this less-than-minor brush with danger, Zelda has a series of Da Vinci Code moments, connecting the dots between images on the walls of the cavern and her knowledge of Hylian history. Soon she whips out a Switch-shaped device and takes pictures of her discoveries. “It’s so easy to record,” she says, channeling her inner tech bro. “You point it and click.” (How despicable that Nintendo markets itself within a game destined to sell millions.)

The princess tells Link to keep going deeper—something she has said ad nauseam, as if the writers intend a perverted metaphor. I run ahead as Link. An ominous red substance marks the air. Another cutscene triggers: The two approach a horrifying green spiral. Zelda, in patented clueless fashion, says, “Let’s continue, Link. But we must be extremely careful.”

On cue like a silly horror movie, bad things start happening—the corpse of Ganon reanimates, shoots red junk at Link’s arm and sword, and proclaims his power while calling out to Zelda and Link.

And Zelda, showing a level of stereotypical obliviousness only rivaled by Mila Kunis’ character in the risible 2015 film Jupiter Ascending, asks, “How do you … know our names?”

—- —- —

I expect more intelligence from the introduction of the one zillionth entry of a franchise that its creators and fans treat as sacred entertainment. (Say what you will about the less advanced Zelda II: The Adventure of Link or A Link to the Past—they had smarter openings.) When Breath of the Wild graced our lives seven years ago, I thought the Second Coming had occurred judging by people’s enraptured responses. And if one didn’t know any better, the responses this month would indicate a Third Coming has transpired. Yet even a casual analysis of Tears of the Kingdom’s intro can underline the mind-numbing potential of its regurgitated plot. Zelda hasn’t learned anything. Link can’t say anything. And we, as players, dare not denounce this exercise in arrested development. We are expected to welcome the stupidity of this badly written, lazily designed initial salvo. Save the ostensibly birdbrained princess, Nintendo says. So I kick off my individual journey in the open world environment, hoping for better things to come.

TO BE CONTINUED …