Tears of the Kingdom – Master Mode?

There has been an extensive interview by Famitsu with Aonuma and Fujibayashi, the producer and director of Tears of the Kingdom, which goes into various topics, like the creation of the Depths, the new abilities, the story ideas, and even the timeline placement. But probably the biggest takeaway comes at the end, where Aonuma confirms that they are done. They have moved on and have no plans for additional content, so we won't be getting any DLC for Tears of the Kingdom.

And this wouldn't be all too surprising if it weren't for the missing Master Mode. Otherwise this game feels truly complete and it's only natural that the Zelda team wanted to move on after developing on the same engine and world for over ten years. They should be focused on the next Zelda installment for Nintendo's upcoming hardware and all the possibilities that come with it.

Now, selling the same type of DLC again would also be lame, where many of the features from the Expansion Pass for Breath of the Wild are already included in Tears of the Kingdom. For example, all of the DLC armor pieces are there (or almost all of them, because I haven't found the Nintendo Switch Shirt yet), the Hero's Path Mode is there, as well as the Travel Medallion. And arguably some of these things never should have been paid DLC in the first place.

So, if they still were to add a Master Mode, there is a chance that they would do this as a free update and not as part of a paid Expansion Pass, which apparently won't be happening anyway. They may have even prepared such a mode a while ago and are simply waiting for the right timing to release it, to create some more buzz around the game and to get people back into the game who have already finished it. So, it's a possibility, despite these news. I'm not holding my breath, however...

The reason why there is no Master Mode could also lie in some design challenges, because they can't just simply repeat what they did in Breath of the Wild:

• Enemies regenerate health.
• Enemies are more aggressive and observant.
  
• Most enemies will have ranked up by one tier.
• Golden enemies get introduced as a new tier.
• Floating platforms with additional enemies and chests appear all over the world.
  

The main issue here are the new horns that have grown on the enemies with three or more tiers, which are dependent on the tier. On the one hand the horns can be used as a fusing material, where generally this would create a much better balance than the Master Mode in Breath of the Wild did, because defeating stronger enemies will always provide you with materials for creating equally stronger weapons. On the other hand they are also required for enhancing armor, where Nintendo would have to make sure that you can still find enough of the basic horns in Master Mode. Having a single red Bokoblin somewhere in the Gerudo Highlands won't cut it this time.

This can be solved by only upgrading some of the enemies, but not all of them. Adding stronger enemies in addition to what's there is also always an option, like that infamous White-Maned Lynel on the Great Plateau. Golden enemies may even work better as special encounters, similar to how they used to be in Oracle of Seasons and The Minish Cap.

Part of the reason is that they would also need golden horns that look even more threatening than the stuff on the silver enemies. And these new horns wouldn't be required for any armor enhancements, unless they add some new items exclusive to Master Mode, so in the end they wouldn't be as valuable as their silver counterparts – they would purely be there for the strong fusion attack power. This isn't necessarily a problem and may even be true for some of the existing horns already (I wasn't able to check it all yet), but it adds to the idea that the golden enemies shouldn't be all too common in the end.

Keep in mind that they didn't bother with adding the golden enemies to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity either, where they might follow the example here and not care as much about them as some of the fans, like myself, do. Of course these are completely different projects, but both teams had been working closely together for the new Hyrule Warriors and there may have been an influence on this topic.

Another trait of enemies in Master Mode was the regeneration, where this wouldn't work with bosses that want you to destroy a number of weakspots, first and foremost Colgera. But this was already an issue with Dark Beast Ganon in Breath of the Wild, where it simply didn't regenerate and the same solution could apply here: just make exceptions.

Otherwise, adding floating platforms probably wouldn't add much value to a game world that was already enhanced vertically. It also wouldn't hurt and with the Zonai devices there are many new possibilities for this than there were in Breath of the Wild.

In fact, with a Master Mode they have countless of possibilities to make the game harder. For example, there could be more places where you have to face Gloom Spawns and they could also appear more often. But this could potentially make the game more annoying than harder...

There is also the question of the connectivity to Breath of the Wild, where it transfers your horses and the Picture of the Champions. Ideally, it would check for a Master Mode save file there, but fall back to a Normal Mode save file if there isn't one. But it technically should work like that already, because people who have exclusively played Master Mode in the previous title have been missing out with this.

So, overall it's not as simple as changing some enemy values and Nintendo may not have any interest in implementing this mode again, because it means too much effort. But if they are going to add more features to the game via updates, then Master Mode should be on the top of the list. As polished and complete as the game is otherwise, it's just not something that we should expect to happen.