A Cynical Prediction of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Disclaimer: the following is largely opinion and speculation.
A recent gameplay trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) sparked my interest. After much anticipation and Nintendo keeping a lot about TotK close to their chest, the audience finally got a taste of what would make the sequel to Breath of the Wild (BotW) different. Visually, it looks precisely like BotW which doesn’t bother me; in that way it kind of gives me Majora’s Mask vibes (i.e., there’re no updates to its graphics from the previous game Ocarina of Time). What really got my (and many others’) brain thinking was a new ability that was shown. Three new abilities were shown: Recall (rewinding an object through time), Fuse (combining two items to make a unique one), and Ascend (pretty much Revali’s Gale but now without worry of bonking). The Fuse ability is what stood out and where a lot of potential lies. That potential is not all good.
When I saw Fuse, I first thought it was cool. “Oh, hey, neat! An ability that lets you combine virtually anything with anything!” Then I considered what that meant for items. If a stick and a boulder, items you can find literally anywhere, become on par with actual weapons (I’m talkin’ real weapons like a sword), does that not cheapen weapons considerably? And if an arrow and a Keese eye make aiming a bow obsolete, does that not cheapen challenge considerably? Then I considered what Fuse meant for item items; the key items of former Zelda games like the Hookshot or Slingshot. Fuse meant there would very probably be no key items like previous Zelda games (except BotW, the absence of key items being a gripe I had with it too); thus, there would be no worthwhile sense of progression or achievement through obtaining unique items; and thus, Fuse meant we would make do with any items available and have a reliable chance of succeeding regardless of what type of items are on hand.
That line of thinking got me worried. Nintendo already sacked the story of BotW to focus on gameplay, what would adding another shiny gameplay mechanic mean? Then I froze, a thought surfacing: “A Nintendo series sacrificing its charm for gameplay sounds terribly familiar.” And it hit me that this mimicked a pattern of two other Nintendo series: Paper Mario and Super Mario. Paper Mario died years ago thanks to its dev team having an obsession with gimmicks and gameplay, and Super Mario from New Super Mario Bros to Super Mario Galaxy 2 to Super Mario Odyssey all emphasized gameplay with skeletons of a story barely keeping them upright. Notably, the common thread over the years and across all these games that involve this paradigm of gameplay>story is one dreaded man… Shigeru Miyamoto. That he came out with a statement earlier this year directly addressing his stance on gameplay and story (in which he denies being against story, though the track record speaks otherwise) makes me all the more uneasy. The Fuse ability in TotK has massive utility. On its own it’s like the Cappy ability for Super Mario Odyssey or the stupid stickers and paint in Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Paper Mario: Color Splash respectively. I can easily see the time it would take to develop a game based entirely around the gameplay of this one ability. And I can easily see the bones of a story being slapped on in the typical Miyamoto fashion as an afterthought.
(This is not a real quote)
“Hold up,” I told myself, “I can’t be focusing on the worst case. And Fuse is just one ability with only a few minutes of footage showing it off.” And yet my mind churned with the implications of another game whose story became obsolete thanks to its style of gameplay. “BotW emphasized its open world, and that itself detracted from the specialty of items, exploration, and story. TotK throwing any and all items at once at a player is virtually the same as BotW throwing any and all locations at once at a player.” And then my mind leapt to the next bad scenario: Fuse made crafting obsolete.
With the nifty ability to fuse items together, it is very unlikely TotK would have a system that crafts or upgrades items. The dream of crafting unbreakable (or incredibly durable (or unique)) weapons and enhancing other utility items (like torches or Korok leaves) would be dead. Fuse is TotK’s way of crafting. And that… bums me out. Here we have a Sheikah Slate 2.0 doing all the crafting for us without a need for rupees, a discovered area or character, or a completed quest. Well, maybe not—maybe there is some sort of progression, achievement, or unlocked thing that gives access to Fuse. And maybe my mind is focusing on the positives of what crafting should be as it’s been done in the past and not entertaining the positives of what crafting could be. And, maybe there really is a crafting system in addition to Fuse. Maybe. I just hope it’s not like BotW in which it’s all given in the game’s tutorial.
The TotK release date is a little over a month away. I tend to think critically about things I truly care about and have hopes for, mostly to curb my hope and allow myself to be happily surprised. In any case, I’ll be giving my thoughts about TotK after I’ve actually played it and have seen how right or wrong I was.
