2023 – Year of the Zonai

If you were to sum up the year 2023 for most Zelda fans in four words, then these words would be "Tears of the Kingdom". After five years in the making, the sequel to Breath of the Wild finally arrived this year, on May 12th to be exact. And as the next big 3D Zelda game it really has left an impact, where it was the sole focus for the series in 2023.

We already knew about the release date when we went into the year, and to keep us invested until then Nintendo released two trailers, as well as a gameplay presentation by Mr. Aonuma himself, which gave us a first peek at the mind-blowing abilities.

However, already in February the artbook for the game got leaked in its entirety, revealing many details about what it's going to offer three months in advance, where fans had to be careful if they didn't want to see potential spoilers. Things got even worse when the entire game found its way onto the internet at the beginning of May...

The release of the game was a big one, checking off almost all possible boxes. It all started on April 28th already, two weeks before the launch of Tears of the Kingdom: Nintendo finally put a Zelda edition of the Nintendo Switch on the market, after six years of waiting. Better late than never. The Nintendo Switch OLED Model in the "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition" is a looker and probably got many fans to replace their old Nintendo Switch systems, unless they have been waiting for this long... But Nintendo really wanted you to double-dip with this one.

If you wanted some merchandise around the game, then Nintendo had you covered as well. It got a Collector's Edition, containing the aforementioned artbook, a steelbook, a steel poster, and some pins. There were a variety of (pre-order) bonus items, most notably a coin and a medal. There was a new amiibo of Link from the game. If you wanted to put your new Nintendo Switch into a matching carrying case, you could do that as well. And finally, the game even got a Pro Controller of its own. There was everything...

Well, almost everything. The one thing Nintendo didn't want to do with Tears of the Kingdom was making DLC for it, so there was no Expansion Pass, nor free updates, or anything alike. And that's okay, it's admirable to get a full package these days, where a game is completely done and polished on its launch, but it became a lot more silent around Tears of the Kingdom in the second half of the year. There were two additional amiibo in early November, based on Zelda and Ganondorf from the game, but that was it. (We never even got a Tears of the Kingdom theme for Tetris 99, which is a shame.)

The game itself impressed with its mechanics, first and foremost all the possibilities that come with Ultrahand and Fuse, but also its completely seamless world and the huge amount of things to do, where you might be still playing it to date. Being based on Breath of the Wild and its game world, it doesn't achieve the same level of novelty and sense of wonder, however.

In any case, it was a successful title, which has sold over 19.5 million copies according to the last report in November. By now, after all the sales for Christmas, it certainly has crossed over the 20 million mark, making it clear that the new direction for the Zelda series is on a whole other level and is here to stay, whether you like it or not.

In November we also saw the announcement of an upcoming Zelda live action movie, directed by Wes Ball. There wasn't really anything to go by here and it will probably take years before we see some first footage, but it was good to know nevertheless. It was just a small distraction in a year that was all about the newest game in the Zelda series.

If you were looking for more distractions by Nintendo, then the year 2023 offered a variety of things to get you covered. There were some small Zelda cameos in both the remake of Super Mario RPG and the new Super Mario Bros. Wonder, with Link still sleeping and Manbo's Mambo respectively. And speaking of Mario, if you're still taking the Master Cycle (Zero) to the race courses of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, then there were 24 more courses and eight new characters to choose from, thanks to the 2nd half of the Booster Course Pass. Plus, The Super Mario Bros. Movie also was very entertaining and should make you less worried about the upcoming Zelda film.

Fans of Nintendo's Action Adventures in general also might have been interested in Metroid Prime Remastered or Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, both of which came out in the first quarter of the year and were therefore excellent choices for passing the time until Tears of the Kingdom.

Outside of the Nintendo bubble, Super Dungeon Maker did a good job at showing us how a 2D Zelda Dungeon Maker could have looked like... And Baldur's Gate 3 made it together with Tears of the Kingdom one of the strongest years in gaming to date, where both games put the player's freedom and creative problem solving first, in means that will be remembered for years to come.

Tears of the Kingdom – Update Suggestions

It's been stated multiple times by Nintendo that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom won't get any DLC, the game is fully done and the Zelda team has with all certainty moved on to the next project for Nintendo's next system. Therefore, we shouldn't expect to see any major updates for the title, let alone any content additions.

Still, it's Christmas and we can always make a wish. And at some point the game will eventually see an update, even it's in the form of a remaster in ten years from now on. After playing the game for hundreds of hours throughout the whole year, here's everything that I would like to see improved. For the most part this will just be about setting things right, your usual quality of life updates, where I will only be discussing content additions whenever there is an obvious gap. And let's start right away with the biggest omission...

Master Mode

If Tears of the Kingdom were to receive a major update still, then this is probably what everyone would expect it to come out of it. Master Mode is the one big feature from Breath of the Wild that didn't make it over into the sequel, where this seems like a no-brainer.

It's not entirely trivial, however, and they can't just blindly copy what they had done in The Master Trials this time, where you can read all about a potential Master Mode here. The short version is that they need to make sure that enough of the basic red enemies remain, because they come with unique materials. You wouldn't want those to become the rarest, you want the golden enemies to be rare instead.

In any case, a Master Mode would provide a huge incentive to play through the entire game a second time, where this time you may also make much better usage of the different abilities and possibilities that come with Fuse, Ultrahand, and especially the Zonai Devices. This game has a long learning curve and a higher difficulty mode would put what you've learned to test in ways the normal game simply never asks of.

Armor

With 135 armor items in the game, there are many good reasons to swap your outfit constantly, which can only be done inside the inventory. Here, new prompts should be added to certain pieces of armor to allow for more convenience:

• "Equip set": Whenever an item is part of a set, it will give you the option to equip the entire set at once. If certain pieces exist multiple times, it will go for the matching color. If there's none, it simply picks the first.
• "Put down" / "Put up": Once Cece showed you how to change the Hylian Hood, you should be able to alter it yourself in the menu at any given time.

In addition, you can mark your current outfit as a favorite via the X button and then quickly equip it again by pressing the left stick. Now, certain armor sets should be improved in different ways:

• The Tingle, Phantom, Evil Spirit, and Dark sets can now be enhanced to ★★★★.
• The Tingle set can now be dyed, so you can pose as his siblings and more.
• All the tunics and hats from past Zelda games, e.g. the Cap of the Wind and the Tunic of the Wind, can also be dyed now.
• Pieces of the Frostbite and Ember set now will have a maximum defense value of 20, matching those of the Charged set.

Since there is still place this time, it wouldn't hurt to add some additional armor pieces as well. One idea would be to bring back the Great Plateau items from Breath of the Wild: the Old Shirt, the Nintendo Switch Shirt, the Warm Doublet, and the Well-Worn Trousers.

Together with the Well-Worn Hair Band this lets you perfectly recreate the Breath of the Wild starter look. This could be something to get from the Bargainer Statue below the Great Plateau, after you've finished the "Call to the Depths" Side Adventure. So, these items would stay close to home.

(Note: I've also considered bringing back the Gerudo Vai set, but this would require a lot of dialogue changes around Gerudo Town and therefore may not be worth the trouble for Nintendo.)

Another idea would be an armor set that increases your walk speed with each piece, the set bonus being "Dash Stamina Up", which decreases your stamina consumption while running. That's essentially the equivalent to the Climber's set just for when you're on the ground. It's weird that this didn't make it into either game, because this seems like a very straightforward idea based on what's already there. So, let's implement it! This could become a "Postman set", based on Twilight Princess, or something like a "Pegasus set", as a reference to the Pegasus Boots, or even something new.

Materials / Inventory

Whenever you're sorting through your materials or weaponry, it should stay on the currently selected item, instead of jumping to the first. If you're using the quick select menus via the D-Pad, you can now quickly jump to the beginning and end by pressing L and R respectively. New sorting options for "amount" and "value" are added whenever you are selling something.

Hearty Blueshell Snails and Hearty Durians return from Breath of the Wild. The latter will be a much rarer find than it used to be, however, and they will also be needed for some of the new armor enhancement (see above).

The drop rate of certain materials gained from enemies should be increased, mainly the tails of the three different elemental Lizalfos, but also Gleeok Guts from all three "normal" Gleeoks.

Zonai Devices

The update should add three more Zonai Devices that come in capsules, bringing the total to 30. These are all things that can already be found in the game, inside certain Shrines of Light, but in order to use them outside of the shrines you currently have to fuse them to a shield or weapon and then break them apart at Tarrey Town, which isn't all too convenient. Here's what should be added:

• Board
• Float
• Propeller

The first two are objects made out of rubber, which are really good for making swimming vehicles, because they don't drift underwater, unlike some wood constructions. There is the "Float", which is a giant rubber ball, and the "Board", which is a rubber plate. You can find both of them in the Jonsau Shrine ("Deep Force"), but the Floats are also used in the Rasiwak Shrine ("Flotational Brilliance"). That's really it, making them quite rare for something so useful in the game...

It would be nice to have them more accessible, where they should be added to some Device Dispensers (or maybe have a new one somewhere at the ocean) and also to the Crystal Refineries once you've completed your Energy Well. If you have fused a Float to your shield, it should also bounce you up when you're doing a shield jump into water, but this will use up the attachment. So, it will act like a Spring Shield, just on water.

The Propeller is basically a big fan, but unlike the other two additions this won't be the exact thing, because the propellers found in shrines need electricity to work. A Zonai Capsule variant should run on its own, making it much easier to build vehicles with it. So, this would be a half-new addition.

Otherwise, the Portable Pots should now last five cooking before they dissolve, instead of just a single one. As it is right now, it feels so restricted that you may not even bother with them, so this really needs a buff.

Autobuild

The Autobuild history should get expanded to allow for 15 favorites now. Or make it more, but we can all agree that seven entries are not enough...

Two more Yiga Schematics will be added to the game (for a total of 36) – the "Gloomdredger" and the "HOVERDOOM MK. 3". They can be purchased from the respective engineers at the Yiga Clan Hideout.

Summoning

If you hold down on the D-Pad (the whistling button), it will now open a quick menu for summoning and dismissing your Sage's Vows, so you don't have to go into the inventory to do that. It pretty much works and looks like the other three quick menus, but you can quickly summon and dismiss via the X button.

In addition, you now will be able to teleport your horse to you. For this the Horse Beacon gets added to the game, an expansion for the Purah Pad, which works similar to the Ancient Saddle from Breath of the Wild. (They could also bring this back, but the Ancient Bridle and Saddle didn't work on all horses and basically made all the other bridles and saddles obsolete, which is why this is now a separate item.)

You can obtain the Horse Beacon from Robbie after having all the different types of horses in your Hyrule Compendium. It will also work more closely to the Sage's Vows, meaning that you can summon and dismiss your horse. If you haven't taken out any horse, it will summon the last one you've used. And if you dismiss your horse, it will be put back into the stable.

Dream Home

Other than the missing Master Mode, there is only one area in Tears of the Kingdom that is truly lacking something and that is the house building. There is so much potential here, where you could achieve a lot with very little, that it almost hurts. In fact, the other box houses made by Hudson Construction already show how it could be done...

image source

First of all, the room limit should be doubled from 15 to 30. And to make good use of this extension, there will be a variety of new rooms to pick from:

• Window Room (2x1)
• Small Window Room (1x1)
• Balcony (2x1)
• Roof (2x1)
• Small Roof (1x1)
• Large Roof (2x2)
• Cedar Tree Patch (1x1)
• Leaf Tree Patch (2x2)
• Tree Nursery (2x1)
• Monster Showcase (2x2)

The windows can be opened and closed via an interaction inside the room. The Tree Nursery lets you plant any fruits that come from the sky (Fire Fruits, Ice Fruits, Shock Fruits, Splash Fruits, Dazzlefruits) to grow their little trees and harvest more of them after a while. The Monster Showcase is a smaller version of the one found in Tarrey Town. Here you can order and place additional monster sculptures.

Also, the wooden exteriors of the rooms now come in four different colors: green (the default), red, blue, and yellow. You can switch the color when picking a room.

Miscellaneous

The map should keep track of any giant monsters that you've defeated, which are required for obtaining the Monster Medals. In addition, the locations where you've put up signs together with Addison should also be marked on your map. The Hero's Path should now let you select any point on it to start playback from there.

Scanning any Zelda-line amiibo now will directly give you its corresponding Paraglider fabric, given than you don't already have it. Afterwards it will return to its default behavior. This way you can get the exclusive items right away and then can chose to ignore the amiibo feature, if you want, because everything else can be obtained elsewhere in Tears of the Kingdom.

When standing outside of Shrines of Light that lead to a Rauru's Blessing it will show you an entrance that matches the blessing chambers.

Finally, the Master Sword durability glitch should be fixed, where it doesn't last as long as it should after using Fuse for the first time.

Tears of the Kingdom – What Will Return?

In an interview with GameInformer, which took place around the Game Awards last week, producer Eiji Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi talked about various aspects of Tears of the Kingdom. One of the key takeaways here was that they consider the Ultrahand ability to be the big gimmick of the game:

Fujibayashi: When we're creating a title, say, Tears of the Kingdom, as you mentioned, the crux of the experience in playing Tears of the Kingdom is Ultrahand and the freedom to create. As you mentioned, that is what Tears of the Kingdom is. So every time we're making a Zelda title, we want to create something new. If, for example, there was any continuation of Tears of the Kingdom and we were to bring in, say, Ultrahand, then I think to us, it would feel like, "Well, we're just bringing in Tears of the Kingdom as is." What we want to do from a game creator's perspective is create something new. From that perspective, I don't think we'll be seeing Ultrahand in every Zelda game or anything in the future.

Aonuma: When you're talking about Ultrahand, that is a really core idea for Tears of the Kingdom and I think it represents our approach of kind of putting everything we could into this game.

This stings a little and actually takes me back to Majora's Mask, which was also a direct sequel and brought something absolutely groundbreaking on the table with the transformation masks. The ability to turn into a Goron or a Zora at will was simply so good that I couldn't imagine Zelda without it, going forward. But it never returned, at least not in the same capacity. We had the wolf transformation in Twilight Princess, which was so bad that the game had to force you into it, and there were the costumes in Tri Force Heroes, but they weren't on the same level. If you want to play as a Goron or a Zora these days, you have to buy Hyrule Warriors.

And when you think about it, then Breath of the Wild doesn't really have a defining gimmick, the one big thing that sets this game apart from the entire rest of the series. The game has completely revolutionized Zelda from top to bottom, but what stood out was really the ability to freely climb everywhere, in combination with the Paraglider. But Tears of the Kingdom has adopted both of this and pretty much everything from its predecessor.

The Ultrahand ability really is just a natural evolution of Magnesis and going forward it's going to be dearly missed. Even if there will be another ability to move around objects, it will automatically feel inferior without the ability to attach them to each other. At the same time it's understandable that Nintendo doesn't want to bring back such a convoluted system, where you even need something like Autobuild on top to make it more convenient. Whatever they will do with the next 3D Zelda game, it has to be something where the players don't feel like they are missing something without the Ultrahand.

And it's probably not desirable to simply fall back into the gimmick pattern. Make Breath of the Wild with the power to build stuff. Make Breath of the Wild with the power to dig into the earth. We already had this after Ocarina of Time and they need to focus more on evolving the franchise, instead of creating ideas for a single game.

But this raises the question, what in Tears of the Kingdom could and should potentially make it into the next game? Is there something in the game as essential as the free climbing in Breath of the Wild? Or is it all just gimmicks that are never meant to return, like the Ultrahand?

The first thing that comes to mind is the sky diving. It's not a new thing, because it first was introduced in Skyward Sword and now has been refined for this game. But this mechanic became so good that its full potential never really gets explored in Tears of the Kingdom for some reason. For example, you can turn around in the air while aiming with your bow, which you may not even know, because at no point in the game this is even necessary. Nintendo has released entire patents for this, but in the game it's really just a thing you can do without any major reason to do it, because the aerial combat is very minimal.

The entire setting of the sky islands is quite frankly underutilized, again, and for the most part just feels like something that was thrown into the game to make you build flying vehicles. Maybe one day we will get a Zelda game that truly focuses on such a setting and brings you aerial mobility to the next level. Third time will be the charm.

Another gameplay mechanic is the summoning, which is a new sort of partner system. This is also nothing that never was done before in Zelda, where for example you had some sages at your side in The Wind Waker as well. The difference is that you can't control them yourself this time, but they will fight autonomously. We also had this with Wolf Link in Breath of the Wild already, but here it lets you summon multiple allies at once. However, it's a bit of a mess, because it gets too crowded very quickly and the sage interactions can get in the way.

They meant well with this idea, but it's probably not something that will return in this form. Instead, this could turn into something that will be explored in other ways, like being able to actually play as other characters, maybe even going back to the transformations from Majora's Mask somehow.

This leaves us with the main items, the Zonai abilities. Well, we've already talked about the Ultrahand, which has the Zonai Devices and the Autobuild as its extensions, where it looks to be a one-time deal and brings a level of complexity with it, which might never be repeated in a Zelda title. At least not for a while.

Fuse is on a similar page, where we most likely won't see the ability in its entirety again, which lets you freely combine all your weaponry with each other and also with objects from the environment. That was just needlessly crazy, but being able to use materials to augment your arrows and/or weapons is really something that needs to stay with the series, in whatever for that may be. In the very least, the ability to craft different types of arrows from your materials should return somehow.

Well, they should limit the total amount of materials for future Zelda games and get rid of all the redundancy, while they should also make them much easier to organize and browse through, but Tears of the Kingdom comes with the best utilization of materials in the series so far. And it would be a shame to lose this, because It makes so much sense on so many levels, where it really feels like a natural evolution for Zelda.

Now, both Ascend an Recall feel a bit underutilized in comparison to what the Ultrahand and Fuse are offering. In case of Ascend this isn't much of a surprise, because it was really just a debug feature that made it into the game (source). The world of Breath of the Wild wasn't created with this ability in mind, where it becomes more useful in that world's extensions, mainly the caves and the sky islands. But it never reaches its full potential, where it would be nice to see this ability return in a future Zelda game that comes with a world more cleverly designed around it. Ascend could become the next Hookshot.

It's quite obvious with the dungeons, which either try to prevent the usage of Ascend entirely or make it pointless in any case, because you're tied to a sage descendant, who can't follow you through ceilings. Imagine dungeons where entire rooms are sealed off from all sides and the only way in is from below...

And Recall is such a smart ability that you could probably create an entire Zelda game with it as the main gimmick. That's not going to happen, now that this item already was a thing, but you never know. After all, the shrinking in The Minish Cap originally came from an item in Four Swords. But it would need to evolve. In Tears of the Kingdom it primarily acts as another great companion for the Ultrahand, where you can move things around and then reverse their movements with Recall. It's also very useful for retrieving things, like gliders that have crash-landed. But otherwise it mainly turns fallen objects into elevators.

Of course this isn't entirely fair towards Recall and there is lots of creative utilization for this ability in the game, but it's clear how Tears of the Kingdom was first and foremost developed around the Ultrahand ability and Recall had to take the backseat here. At the same time it might not be so bad that they didn't turn Recall into a main gimmick, because this could have gotten really tiresome...

Well, the idea of a playable Zelda is something that gets discussed time and time again. If it ever happens, giving her the Recall ability would look like a natural fit, since this was her new power in this game.

Summary

Tears of the Kingdom has experimented a lot with its gameplay mechanics, maybe more than any other Zelda game before it, where it will be painful to lose some of the innovations with the next game. And while the Ultrahand may not return, there is really some good stuff here that definitely should return in future titles of the series, first and foremost the excellent usage of materials and the improved sky diving mechanics. But there is also a lot of potential left with Ascend and Recall, where it would be interesting to see them evolve even further.

Gloomy Christmas!

As an early Christmas gift this year, I got an awesome Gloom Spawn figurine. As far as I know, it's something you can only find on Etsy, so it's not official merchandise, but it really should be. The material is very solid and glow-through, where it looks like the real deal with some lighting behind it. There is also some great attention to detail with this one, where for example you can spot the rings on some of the fingers.

It's about twice as large as your usual amiibo figurines, but this fits perfectly to place it right next to some, as you can see above. I really like this thing, it's also a fantastic gift for a Zelda fan to end this year of Tears of the Kingdom.

Tears of the Kingdom – New Artwork Wallpapers

Oh, I was hoping for this... After the Game Awards, Nintendo has published this new artwork for Tears of the Kingdom, which just looks absolutely amazing, perfectly capturing the spirit of the game. And Nintendo of Europe has now made it available as wallpapers in different sizes and formats on My Nintendo. It's entirely free, so just go and grab it.

Now, this will decorate my desktop for quite some time. I wouldn't even mind if they were to use this artwork for the cover of a potential remaster in the future. I thought it was a bit lazy when they didn't introduce some new artwork for Skyward Sword HD, but in this case it's simply too good.

My Nintendo Switch Year 2023

Nintendo lets you view your year in review for the Nintendo Switch now. I've never shared this before, but thought that I should make the extent of my addiction public to create awareness. In all seriousness, there is no big surprise here, since I've been quite busy playing Zelda this year, as you can see. I'm also still regularly playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, mostly just a daily check for anything new, but this accumulates.

May is looking crazy, I wonder what happened there? Well, the combo of rushing both through Breath of the Wild again and starting Tears of the Kingdom was overly excessive. I won't ever do that again, but this was a special circumstance with a new Zelda coming out that gets unannounced connectivity to the previous title, which I had only completed on the previous system... Luckily, I had already started one month earlier with fixing that mistake, which is why I had so much activity there as well.

You can also observe how my motivation hit a low in late summer, though I've also been on vacation for about three weeks during this time, where I haven't played much. But I really was burnt out from playing the same Zelda world so much and I can still feel that. October then saw a big boost in play time again, but this was really a mix of things, including Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But it's also where I have made the last larger steps in Tears of the Kingdom, finally wrapping up the story in November.

Anyway, here is the list of every game that I've played for more than ten hours on the Nintendo Switch in 2023, with links to the corresponding articles on this blog, in case you want to read more about the experience:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (374 hours)
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (171 hours)
3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (135 hours)
   
4. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (61 hours)
5. Fire Emblem Engage (56 hours)
6. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon (47 hours)
7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (44 hours)
8. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (25 hours)
9. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (16 hours)
10. Metroid Prime Remastered (16 hours)
11. Death's Door (12 hours)
    

I've started the year with replaying both Link's Awakening and Death's Door on the Nintendo Switch, two of my favorite Action Adventures that are just short and sweet. Then came Fire Emblem Engage, which I still I have to finish, but this is true for absolutely every Fire Emblem game in my collection. And I had made some good progress, before I got interrupted by Metroid Prime Remastered and Bayonetta Origins in March and early April, which were both very wholesome and a good excuse. The latter is even my sleeper hit of the year.

The Booster Course Pass is really what made me play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe so much throughout the entire year and I hope that this might continue in 2024, but probably not. If there's no more new content, it won't be able to compete with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the multiplayer department for me, which I keep playing because I like the gameplay and I truly want to get better at the game, so it was mostly just practice and no novelty.

Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 28

This won't be an actual update, but more of an appendix to the last one. With the Sea-Breeze Shield in my possession, I had everything I wanted for my weapons gallery, which meant that it was finally time to share my current "dream home" with you. If you don't care about this topic, then feel free to skip this post, because I haven't made any actual progress since yesterday.