More TOTK versus BOTW thoughts as I put together my
top 5 games of 2023, just to reopen a can of worms!
Every addition to Tears of the Kingdom is brilliant. As a creative toybox the crafting is joyous, turning the abuse of interacting systems into a core mechanic. The world too is stretched into another dimension, with new, literal depth at every turn, be that in the aptly-named depths, the sky, or more importantly to the fuller feel of the game in the wells and caves that now punctuate Hyrule. Look at almost any mechanic or feature in Tears of the Kingdom and it is Breath of the Wild refined and made better, with more side quests and characters and enemy variety and better dungeons and powers - and yet, this is the worse game. There's tension in Tears of the Kingdom. Objectives demand attention, things to do become chores to complete. The game becomes overwhelming and exhausting. You'll worry about where to go next, and what you've missed, and you'll realise none of these concerns ever crossed your mind when you were playing Breath of the Wild, where your path there meandered but your goal was always simple. As a game Tears of the Kingdom is caught between being a creative, free-form sandbox and a checklist of activities, something Breath of the Wild carefully and deliberately avoided. There's a recognisable formula here, of side quests and activities, and spending time just playing in the world sadly feels like time wasted. In Breath of the Wild the distractions were always momentary, new little discoveries to constantly delight as you picked your own path between shrines, towers and dungeons, in ascending order of importance. Tears of the Kingdom in contrast will constantly redirect you against your will. Three separate overworlds ensure at least one is always underexplored. Caves and wells contest on the same level of shrines for attention. Even koroks stop being little dopamine hits to be stumbled into and instead derail your progress, taking you off in unwanted directions. The narrative is perhaps where it most falls apart, not in the lack of a good story, but in the much poorer melding of scenario and game design. Breath of the Wild's ultimate objective was known from the beginning, its any order approach married to its open world design, where any and all distractions weren't at odds with the narrative but further preparation towards the final encounter. Everything built towards the finale, in an order and at a pace set by the player. Told primarily through memories, the story coalesced naturally regardless of the order said memories were relived, as naturally they were prompted by revisiting past locations. Tears of the Kingdom fails to replicate such serendipity. Its open world contains a mostly linear quest that has you second guessing where not to explore, while little justification can be found for disjointed visions best experienced in chronological order. None of which is to say the story is bad, on the contrary there are some fantastic moments, but taking a holistic view it isn't the story that best matches the game. That holistic view is really where Tears of the Kingdom ultimately disappoints compared to its predecessor. Yes you can improve on every individual mechanic and feature, and even address almost every complaint, but a game is more than the sum of its parts.
just under seven months of joy, playing an hour or so most evenings!
