In my last entry for Breath of the Wild I said that the point in time where I want to return to the game will give testimony to Tears of the Kingdom. And I'm actually back to playing Breath of the Wild already, so Nintendo has caused me some trouble here. I have played a little bit after the tutorial and made a concerning discovery, which let me straight to Hateno, where now I'm in an uncomfortable spot about whether I want to continue or not. But first things first...
Leap of Faith and Freedom
Okay, you just jump down here from the platform, right? What could go wrong? Well, apparently, if there is no "jump" action present, Link will simply fall and not do his sky diving stuff... which was unexpected, because in the Aonuma gameplay he was blown off a sky island by a Construct and still could move around through the air. (Update: you can switch into diving with R, but I didn't realize this due to the Pro HUD mode.)
So, I just plunged down and hit the edge of the pond for another death... The second try I was a bit smarter by going down at one of the waterfalls, so you land in the middle of the pond. And I must say that – despite the mechanic – this is a really impressive entry into the Kingdom of Hyrule. You're in the middle of Hyrule Field and you're surrounded by 360° freedom.
They chose a great spot for this, too, because the center of Hyrule Field was a bit of a danger zone due to the Guardians, so this area always came with a bit of anxiety. But Hyrule Field now represents the full freedom that Breath of the Wild has embraced.
Still, you are given directions by the game and you probably should follow them, but it wouldn't be me playing if I didn't just go and do whatever I want, where I started moving towards a shrine to the southeast. The shrines still feel more like teachings at this point, instead of tests, but I suppose there isn't that much of a difference to the shrines in Breath of the Wild.
But with the new abilities the puzzles also become a bit more complex, especially with the Ultrahand. There is so much that you can do with this, I love it.
Anyway, I caught a first horse and got immediately to the Riverside Stable, where it hit me on the registration...
Breath of the Wild Connectivity
It carries over your horses from the previous title! I was surprised to hear that they still knew Link and have his horses around, where I got presented with the exact ones I had in my recent Normal Mode playthrough:
They won't come with any horse gear that they might have had, but I was still curious about the extent of this. So, I did some testing afterwards... I went back to Breath of the Wild and got myself a horse with maximum speed from Upland Lindor:
Now, I went back into Tears of the Kingdom to see whether my new horse would carry over... Well, it didn't, even when I loaded an earlier save file before first talking to the stable guy. So, whatever the game does here, I suspect it loads your latest Breath of the Wild save file whenever you start a new game in Tears of the Kingdom.
If this only were about horses, then it probably wouldn't be a big deal. I have all the special horses already and the other ones might get replaced anyway, since they might not be the best possible ones any longer. There is even the new "pull" stat, certainly for pulling carriages.
But what if there is more than just the horses? So, I grabbed Athena (who I barely used in Breath of the Wild, because the Master Cycle Zero was my preferred method of traveling), and made my way over to Hateno. Which wasn't all too easy, because the roads are blocked with fortifications by the Bokoblins. After Fort Hateno I had to go on foot and ran into several stronger enemies, even some new ones, like a walking tree monster... That's so crazy, but I didn't care. I just wanted to see the extent of this, where Link's house could be another key point of interest.
Well, Link's house is still in tact, but it is seemingly Zelda's house now and she did some redecorating. The Picture of the Champions, which you can put on the wall after completing the Champions' Ballad, is still there, however. I'm not sure if it's there by default, but it might be another thing that carries over...
The weapon stands are gone, probably because Zelda didn't like them. I did not expect the weapons to carry over in any case, because some weapons, like the Ancient Bladesaw and basically all of the ancient Sheikah stuff, might not even appear in Tears of the Kingdom. And they probably didn't want to bother supporting all old weapons with the new systems.
So, I had to do the one thing that I didn't want to do: investigate about Tears of the Kingdom on the internet. And despite the fact that game has been leaked for almost two weeks, there is surprisingly little to find about this. Some sites only talk about the horses. There is a topic on GameFAQs, but it has conflicting information. Some say nothing else carries over than what I've already discovered, others claim that NPCs recognize when you've helped them in Breath of the Wild, so there could be some dialogue changes depending on your progress in the first game.
And this puts me in a tough spot. I have fully completed Breath of the Wild before, but I did so on my Wii U, not on the Nintendo Switch, where I'm still in the middle. And I don't want Tears of the Kingdom to pick up on a journey that was only half finished... I really wish that Nintendo had clarified any of this beforehand. It might feel like a nice surprise to have certain things carry over, but it causes a number of problems.
Apparently, this only works with Normal Mode, so if you've completed Breath of the Wild in Master Mode nothing will happen. And of course, if you've completed Breath of the Wild on the Wii U, like I did, then nothing will happen either.
Luckily, I've started a new Normal Mode run and I got far enough to cover most of the important things, like the photo. But I don't want to miss out on any special dialogues with side quests characters. And in general it just feels wrong to pick up from a save file where I was still in the middle of playing.
Now I feel the need to return to Breath of the Wild, finish everything, and then start over in Tears of the Kingdom, just to be sure. But this will be a huge setback and I didn't take vacation to play an old game. Still, I might be better off doing that for now and see if I can find out the true extent of this in the meantime...
If you know anything about this topic, please let me know in the comments. I don't care about spoilers in this particular case, because this right now really affects my enjoyment of the game. I just couldn't go on, because I'm too worried that I might miss out on stuff, after it connected to an unfinished save file. And this sucks, because I could have completed Breath of the Wild before the release if I had prioritized it. I was a bit worried that this might happen, but Nintendo never said anything...
And now I'm disappointed in both myself and Nintendo for being in this situation, where I don't want to play the new Zelda game any longer, at least not before I'm done with the last one... A situation which could have been avoided.
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