The Ringer-Verse - ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’ Discussion and Analysis

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Put down your Purah Pads, warriors—after weeks of gameplay, your Hyrule trio is back! Ben Lindbergh, Justin Charity, and Matt James team up once again to further break down, explore, and react to ��The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.’ They discuss gameplay likes and dislikes (3:20), where the game ranks overall in the ‘Zelda’ franchise (46:00), their hopes for future ‘Zelda’ releases, whether they want a ‘Zelda’ movie adaptation (1:04:00), and more. Hosts: Ben Lindbergh, Justin Charity, and Matt James Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Made to keep up with whatever comes next. New sweet green wraps hit different. Order now at order. Sweetgreen.com. Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Minberg, a senior editor at the Ringer, and I am forming one point of a Triforce today because I'm joined once again by Ringer senior staff writer Justin Charity and Ringer deputy art lead Matt James.

Hello, guys. Ben, hello. Hello, happy to be back. Thanks for putting down your pourapads and rejoining me. I appreciate it. We have gathered today to discuss Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. But Ben, the real Ringerverse heads are saying, didn't the three of you already discuss Tears of the Kingdom? So we did.

Great memory. But a game this massive demands multiple podcasts. So we have cast recall or exploited a duplication glitch or reassembled the sages for a second episode that will dive even deeper into Tears of the Kingdom than we could a few days after getting the game. And last time we talked, we were weaklings or weaklings with a handful of hearts who got winded, climbing small walls. Now we can climb mountains and Bo Coblins cower at our approach. So we have much to discuss. Here's the kingdom has been out for almost three weeks.

We have seen much more of it. And so we're also going to talk about much more of it, which means you can expect some light story spoilers, I would say. But look, it's a Zelda game. So on a plot level, it's almost pre-spoiled. you kind of know from the beginning how it's going to go. I don't think Tears of the Kingdom is a very spoilable experience. And I don't think there's anything we'll say today that I wouldn't have wanted to hear

when I was just starting out. Plus, we won't talk about the actual ending because none of us has seen it yet. So for all I know, Link is never reunited with Zelda and the Demon King kills him and rules, high rule forever. And the tears of the kingdom are the ones we shed after the tragic last scene. We'll just have to stay tuned. And you'll have to stay tuned to the ringerverse feed because there's one more podcast coming this week.

On Friday, the Midnight Boys will be back to discuss another young hero who's great at climbing walls and sticking stuff together. Spider-Man. Actually, Spider-Men and Spider-Women and Assorted Spider-Beings because the guys are going to give you their instant reactions to Across the Spider-verse. And I saw it on Tuesday. So here is my instant reaction. It's as good as sequel to Intuitive.

the Spider-verse as Tears of the Kingdom is to Breath of the Wild. So get excited. Go see it this weekend and you'll be ready on Monday when House of R drops their Spider-Verse deep dive. So let's quickly update everyone on where each of us is in this game. Matt, how many hours have you sunk into this thing and where are you in the story? My switch tells me I'm 75 plus hours in. I have completed two of the four temples. I have 18 hard. It's two stamina rings. I got the Pura Pad all decked out. I've just been exploring a lot

and haven't really put much pressure on myself to try and beat the game. Yeah. I'm enjoying the ride. And I need to find this place where I can build a house because that'll be another 40-hour detour for me. Yeah, I started to build my house, but it's just a little two-room house now.

You just go in and you see it all. So I haven't spent a ton of time there. Justin, where are you? Didn't check my playtime. I've completed four corners of the, you know, ground level. I've rematched two of the bosses in the depths. I've really gotten obsessed with illuminating the depths, you know? Like that scratching, the itch scratching of I need the map to be complete is really hard if you're in the depths just because of how slowly you unlock all of that and how dark it is and dangerous it is down there.

But yeah, you know, it's like I'm still like a ways off from the actual ending of the game, but I've done a lot in it. Well, we're going to talk about the depths because I have some thoughts. But when we last met I was but the learner, now I have the master sword. Not to brag, but my stamina is maxed out so I can last a long time. My switch says I've played for more than 80 hours. So I guess I've sunk about as much time into this as you have mad. And as you can testify, I've grown a Tears of the Kingdom beard, just a full beard, basically, haven't had time to shave too much questing to do.

So I haven't beaten it, but I've all but beaten it, collected the sages, got the sword, upgraded the pura pad, just have to find and defeat Ganedor for the Demon King or whatever we're calling him. We can't call him DK because that's taken by another Nintendo character. So I just haven't had time for the final boss yet. and also I'm a little reluctant to take him on because once I finish a single player game story, I often feel a little less motivated to play.

And I don't want that to happen with Tears of the Kingdom. Plus, from what I understand, beating the game works the same way as in Breath of the Wild. You just get a star on your save file and you go back to where you were. I wish you could keep roaming around after beating the Big Bad as you can in many other open world games, but I guess that would have meant more work. So anyway, even when I or we beat the game,

We won't have come close to finishing the game. I knew it was big going in, and I knew it was big after a few days of playing. But I'm not sure I understood the scope and the scale of Tears of the Kingdom the way I do now. This is a single-player game that makes most live-service games that are designed to keep you playing forever seem small. So, Justin, we will get into the depths, but do you feel like this game is the right size or too big or somehow too small? That would be quite a take if you said it was too small, just in terms of content and quests and also sheer surface area. Bro, who is saying this game is too small?

I have not heard that take. Who is answering? Show yourself. That would be the hottest. I mean, look, you have some takes. You've had some takes in your life. So I would not be shocked if you had that one. Well, remember on the first episode, I was airing on the side of saying perhaps the game is

too big. And now I am in the camp of, no, I think it's just right. I think the real difference between tears and Breath of the Wild is just tiers. I think it takes longer probably for most people to settle into not just the maps, like the multi-tiered maps, right? Sky, ground depths, but also just how many more mechanics there are in tiers. So it takes longer to get acclimated to, but once you get acclimated to it, I really do feel like the scale is very manageable.

Yeah. And is this game in the Goldilocks zone? for you. I'm pretty content with the size and scale of it, although I do think if I fully grasped it as someone who's had that open world fatigue, I think I would have been a bit more reluctant to jump in. But now that I'm in it and I have a sense of the full scale, I'm not mad at it simply because I'm not bored yet. And I think that's the big difference when you're talking about open world games and scale. It's just that it's okay to have an incredibly large world if you fill it with things. If you have a lot to do, if, you know, there are interesting dynamics between all of the

different kinds of things that you're trying to do, whereas a lot of open world games are just, you have side quests, you have main quests, you have three different kinds of dots on the map, and 40 hours in, you're ready to be done with it, you know? It's just a testament to the fact that this game's incredibly well designed and incredibly well made, that something of this scale is not instantly off-footing to me. Yeah, I unlocked the surface map as quickly as I could, but unlocking the map is very different from actually feeling like you've seen everything. I think I've done about half of the shrines. There are apparently 152 this time. I don't know how I've missed half of them, because every time I see one, I make a point of completing

it, and yet I just haven't come across a lot of them. I've obviously found a fraction of the coroc seeds, I have dozens of open quests. I'm not a completionist. And this game, as you were saying, it just, it doesn't make me feel any pressure to be. I think you can kind of distinguish between types of open world games based on whether there's a completion percentage in the menu that you can see tick up 10th of a percent by 10th of a percent. And Zelda games don't do that. So there are a thousand coroc seeds. But I think that's less because they want you to feel like you got to catch a all so that there will just be enough for you to come across them fairly frequently on this huge map. But I'm very aware that there are lots of things in the game that I just haven't done,

even though I've spent way longer with this game than I do with most. I haven't been on a horse once somehow. I don't know about you guys, whether you're big equestrians in Zelda or not, but there's a whole horse system, as there was in Breath of the Wilds, have not been on the back of a horse once. I've been collecting bubble gems from bubble frogs in the caves, feeling bad about killing them every time I do. And I don't know what to do. They seem very nice.

They do, right? They're just there underground, minding their own business. And then you shoot them and you kill them. And then they morph into a bunny and run away. But they leave behind these bubble gems. And I don't know what to do with them. I'm sure there's someone you talk to and some quest you complete. And I can look it up easily.

But I just haven't encountered that. So I keep coming across headlines about quest lines or outfits or tactics that I have missed entirely. For instance, there are cherry blossoms that tell you where the caves in an area are. And I'm like, wow, I never knew that. Or it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that you could throw things instead of attaching them to arrows, or that you could attach zonai devices to arrows, or that you could use recall and ascend to kill the constructs quickly, those sky beasts made of blocks, or take the Mr. Hudson signs that you can help prop up.

That guy. He'll love that guy, Addison. He is perpetually shocked that we have helped him prop up the signs without looking it up. I don't know how many of those are or whether I get something special for doing all of them, but whenever I come across one, it's a fun diversion. So it just makes me feel like there's always more to see, which is exciting. And even when I try to stick to a certain quest, I always take a detour to a tower or a shrine or a well or a cave or a chest or a side quest. So I don't know if you can even call it a detour when it's really just part of the design.

What about the abilities, though? Because I wouldn't say spatial reasoning is my strength. So the beginning of the game was a challenge. And Matt, I think you were in sort of the same boat with your resistance to crafting that you had to overcome. So do you feel like your brain has rewired itself as you have played? Have you learned to play the game? Absolutely. And speaking of the horses specifically, the reason I'm not using the horses is because I can't

attach a beam emitter to it. I can't attach. Let me fuse to my horse or I'm not going to use my horse. Are you one of the people on TikTok who is constructing incredible machines that make me feel bad about myself? No. but I am constructing some interesting machines that are inefficient, I would say, but creative. But yeah, I just want to talk about that horse thing because they keep trying to make you use your horse and

like, oh, you got a new saddle. Yeah. They're going to, you know, the stables and everything. It's just interesting to me how many elements of this game seem almost disposable to me. And most of the time it's because of the, you know, rewards you get for doing. something, right? So there's no real impetus for me to deck out all my horses, get the tightest, best, most stamina-abled horse. There's no motivation for that. But at the same time, like, every time I see that guy trying to keep his sign up, I'm going to help that guy out, even though he's going to

give me like 20 bucks in a meal. Right. Whereas every time I see like a Korok who's like, I got to get to my friend. I'm like, oh, I got time for that. Yeah. No. I know. Good luck. Those can be very frustrating at times when you have to get the Korok who's separated from his friend up or down and they fall and they roll. But yeah, you got to do it. Those two things take the same amount of time, helping the Korok find his friend and propping the sign up.

It's pretty much the same in terms of time commitment. And yet, obviously, the Korok seeds is a better reward than $20 in a meal. But for some reason, like, that's just the way I'm playing this game. And there are so many things like that. But regarding the crafting, yeah, I don't have a problem with the crafting at all in this game. It's just gotten more and more fun. And I feel like I don't need to craft food as much as in previous games, which was a big turnoff for me, crafting the food. And like I said in the previous podcast, the crafting of the weapons is actually empowering because of the customization you have.

It doesn't feel like a chore. You're not just rebuilding something constantly. You're building for whatever like scenario you're in at the moment. So, yeah, it's given me a whole new life on crafting games. And I'm pretty positive that the second I turn on any other game that has crafting, I'm going to give it a shot and it's going to feel tiresome again. Yeah. Matt, can I connect that point actually that you made about both the horses and the crafting?

Because to me, this kind of goes back to one thing we talked about in the first episode about tears, right? which is like, it's one thing for this game to be huge and to have all of these mechanics, these gameplay elements, but there's a sort of tension in the fact that it's also, all the new stuff is built on top of an old infrastructure that had entirely different abilities in mind. So the horse thing to me is such an example of that, right?

Where it's sort of the game, it's like Breath of the Wild head horses. That's why this game has horses. But then this game also gives you a B2 stealth bomber. And the game that gives you a B2 stealth bomber, You're just not going to really have that much of a reason to want to ride a horse. You know what I mean? I think that ends up being the issue. Yeah.

And I've got dozens and dozens of save points now. So wherever I want to go, I can travel there pretty quickly. I always feel bad for the designer who, you know, spent months or years of their life, like, crafting this system painstakingly. And it's like, yeah, I just, I'd never use that. I mean, hopefully it's ported over from Breath of the Wild and it wasn't much extra work. And also, 10 million people bought this game in the game. first three days. So even if some percentage don't use something, some large percentage will, and many people will enjoy it. But it's not too late for a patch. We can patch it so that we can

put rockets on horse butts. I'll get on a horse if I can put a rocket on it. That'll open up a whole new genre of TikTok so we can give the Kurox a break. But I don't use the auto build ability much. I still find ultra hand a bit cumbersome, but I've gotten used to it, at least. mentally, and I've gotten accustomed to it enough that I now fantasize about using it in real life. So, you know, when you play a lot of Grand Theft Auto and then you walk around and just wish you could carjack, is that just me? I don't know. But the other day, my daughter's stroller was folded up and locked and I couldn't unfold it. And I was like, if I could just use ultra hand on this thing, I could just rotate this wheel. This would be a cinch. And there's a building a block away that has this

flat metal rectangle just jutting out of the facade. And I always think about ascending when I walk under it and then I'm disappointed that I can't. Assend is the best ability. I'm just going to say, most underrated ability, right? Like, ultrahand and fuse get all the attention. Yeah. They get all the sexy videos. No, ascend.

Ascend. That's great, right? I need a send in my social life. It only works on cave. But when you're in a cave or a well, it's so nice to get back to the surface that way, which is why it's there. It was basically a cheat code that the developers used during testing to save themselves time. And then they thought, why don't we put this in the game, which I can't imagine how much more complicated that made the design of every level, knowing that people could just float through the roof. It's so gratifying.

I wish you did like a little piece animation that you just did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be tight. It, like, forces you to think vertically. And it very regularly makes me feel dumb, but in a good way, because I'll be wondering around a room, not knowing where to go and getting frustrated about being stuck. And then it will suddenly dawn on me for the 50th time that I can just go up and that that's what I was supposed to do all along. So I'm still, again, struggling with the spatial aspects. But yeah, it's sort of wild when you get to, when you get to like an area where they've specifically designed that you're supposed to use a send in an area to solve a puzzle, you feel like, oh, my God.

God. Like, you guys know about that? Like, I thought this is my secret, like, you know, it feels like they're not supposed to know that we do that somehow. Yeah. So we mostly raved about the game last time. We've mostly raved about it this time. Everyone else has mostly raved about it and it's justified raves. But let's share some complaints if we have any case. Great as this game is, I do have a few. Justin, do you have any nitpicks or rants? that you want to get off your chest, or is this just smooth sailing? I think the points about the scale being good

once you grow into it, all of that stands. One thing that grows with the scale of the game in tears, though, in a way that's really, that bugs me, is just how much inventory you have and how it feels in a fight when you want to attach something to an arrow to have to scroll through 140 items in your inventory on the fly.

At least it like pauses, right? If this were Eldon Ring, it does. It would be like, oh my God. You get killed while you're trying to find a fire acorn or whatever the heck. But to the point about it, pausing, right? Think about how long we've all lived with video games implementing, I guess what we call like the weapon wheel, right?

The thing that either freezes or slows time while in the middle of sort of real-time combat, you do some stuff in your menu. You change Aloys' bow. You change, you know, somebody's gun, something like that, right? And it's sort of bad already. it's pretty artificial, but it's a nice compromise, right? In a way, you're sort of selecting between eight things, you slow down time. It's just the video gamey thing.

And I think, yeah, there are times where, again, the fact that you are scrolling through 120 items in your menu, just to attach something to a bow, right? And then have to bring that menu back up again. It feels like that's where I start to go, oh, this is kind of really, this is kind of pushing to the limit, I think. that kind of inventory management in real-time combat. Yeah. Feels like I need a keyboard sometimes.

There aren't enough buttons on a console controller to handle everything I need to do. Matt, do you have any complaints? Any pet peeves? Oh, yeah. I got a rant. Oh, wow. Okay. But first, I want to address the sorting through all the things you're attaching to the arrows.

I started using the sort option a lot. Me too. You tap Y and it goes to either the highest power or the most recent. And if they didn't have that, it would be so unbearably cumbersome. That one feature is so useful. Am I wrong, though, or does it not stay the way that you sort it? You have to keep resorting it, or at least it feels like that. That's the issue I've had, right, is the instability of it.

Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is a little. It could definitely be worse, though. But my big rant is, it's basically the weapon wheel, right? Okay. So if you're playing the game on your D-pad, the right direction is your weapon, which depending on which weapon you're currently wielding, if it's a bow, it'll be your bow.

If it's your whatever's in your hand, it'll be whatever's in your hand. And then up on the D-pad is your items. And then left on the D-pad is your shield. And then down on the D-pad calls your horse. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, I know where you're going. We are putting bows. We're putting swords on the same directional pad.

Just in case while I'm in the heat of battle, I need to call my horse over. It's so good. And when we need to file out, horses are not. Why is this? Put the bows on down and then take the call horse function and throw it on the L1 wheel. I don't need map to be an option in the L1 wheel when the minus button calls the map up. So throw the horse call onto that L1 wheel and give me my own.

directional pad for the bows. Like in the heat of battle, when you're like swinging your sword and you need to get a bow out, but your bow broke, you have to like feign like you're pulling your bow out just to be able to then select a new bow. It just gets so messy in battle when you're switching between your bow and your primary weapon. If your horse was torrent, if it was torrent, though, we could talk, right? Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Or if I could have a beam emitter on that horse, we could also talk. But there's no beam emitter on my horse. And I'm just whistling in the middle of battle when I could be pulling a bow out. It's dumb. This is my biggest complaint with the game. The two primary weapon systems are on the same directional button. Because I don't have a horse.

The whistle is just a taunt now, basically. It's just a taunt button like in Super Smash Brothers. But yeah, I feel you. I remaps the jump button just because I always get confused, just switching from Switch to another. system, but more customizable might be better. I have three things, none of which has

stopped me from loving and playing the heck out of this game, but I don't love the sky to depths ratio. So before the game came out, the marketing emphasis was all on the sky. Maybe this was partly my expectations coming in. The biggest

surprise for me has been how huge the depths are. The map is like an iceberg. What you see on the surface is only a fraction of the hole. was shocked that the depths were as big as the surface. I thought this was going to be just a self-contained little area. And I thought, like, when I unlocked one little area and lit the light route, I was like, oh, okay, this is like a large part of the map.

And then I zoomed out. It was just not. No, not at all. I mean, it's like the dark world and a link to the past. But I'd say that although there's an emphasis on verticality in this game, the sky and the surface and the depths, it could be a bit better. integrated in that there are long stretches of the game where I've stayed on the surface. If you include caves and wells, I like caves and wells, no problem with those.

The thing is, though, that I just, I don't really like it down in the depths. And if you guys are pro-depth and want to defend the depths, please, okay, good, because I copped it to the dark world in a link to the past, but it looks more like the upside down from stranger things with those scary, floaty stuff everywhere. It's not a pleasant place. It's kind of drab and monotonous design. Losing hearts to gloom is annoying. You either have to keep placing light sources or you end up traipsing around in the dark and

getting lost. So I unlock the surface map as quickly as I could, but I haven't even come close to the depths because I just, I don't want to spend that much time there. So I go down there when I have to, but I haven't done a whole lot of roaming around just for fun. So give me the pro-depth position, please. So I think this actually relates back to your. ad read at the top of this episode for talking about Spider-Verse on the Ring ofverse feed, right?

Because it's like, my wife and I joke about this all the time. We joked about this in Breath of the Wild about how, oh, yeah, this game has turned Link into Spider-Man, and that's like a weirdly good idea, right? He's just Spider-Man. He sticks to everything. He will rarely fall off of anything unless it's raining, right? He can climb any surface. And so once you get two or more stamina wheels,

you really are just Spider-Man. You can just crawl all over Hyrule, right? Mm-hmm. But part of what that means, I think, in certainly playing a sequel that's, you know, largely modeled, like, physically off of Breath of the Wild is you get really good at all of that kind of climbing stuff. And then that kind of risks trivializing exploration, right?

Like, I definitely felt like in the first 10 hours of tears, I had down Pat how to get a wrong. around how to overcome the environment, just based on the muscle memory of Breath of the Wild, where it took a while to sort of, like, build my sense of like, what are the optimal ways to get over certain kinds of peaks or certain heights in Zelda, right? And I think that, like, the depths are interesting

because they just don't work the same way. Like, getting around, getting from one checkpoint to the next. Climb up and anything and just glide to where you want to go. And even the parts that are high walls, you know, like high slopes, that you know, you could crawl. Sometimes they're just way too high. Sometimes even if you do go into it with a lot of stamina, you're going to find that like you just have to, that's where stuff like Ascend is actually really helpful, right?

I think to me of three sections, the depths just has the highest challenge in terms of sort of acknowledging that you probably have a lot of experience with all of that Spider-Man stuff in Breath of the Wild and saying, okay, we're going to remix this a bit. and make you have to sort of think of different ways to get around and overcome this environment, just because, again, it's like the slopes are very different. The fact that you have to avoid gloom is different. The fact that you have to illuminate,

you kind of have to ration out, like, what parts are worth illuminating and that? Yeah, I don't know. It's a nice remix, I think, of the exploration. It's definitely different. I mean, it certainly sets itself apart. It's not just sort of a re-skinned surface, so it's a different gameplay style.

it's a different look, although a lot of the things that I like about traversing the surface are just really hard to do, as you said, in the depths, and I just don't enjoy it as much. So it makes me appreciate being on the surface, like out in the open air where there's nice grass and sun in views. And I guess it's good thematically that I feel relieved when I return to the surface. But I don't know. I just, I don't want to spend as much time there. If it were sort of just you go down every now and then, which is all you have to do, right? So it's been fine there. It's just that I haven't really wanted to go beyond the minimum or much beyond the minimum.

Maybe it's a me problem. Maybe there are people who are like, get rid of the surface. I love the depths. Just give me more deaths. But I'm surprised that it's as big as it is. And I don't know that it's necessary for it to be as big as it is. But again, it's not really a detriment because you can just kind of leave it alone if you want to. I think for me, the only, like, I appreciate that they are taking away your field of vision under there.

Like, when you're on the top side, you can see everything for miles or as far as the eye can see. And that's gratifying and everything. I do appreciate that they take that away from you down there. And it becomes disorienting and it becomes a different dynamic. I think my only issue with the depths is simply that the environments down there don't fluctuate that much in terms of feel and design. That I think is really the big criticism that I have. You can walk around forever down there and someone could see, oh, you're in the depths. If they're looking at your screen, they don't know where in the depths you are.

Like on the above world, you have, you can be, there's like beach areas, there's mountain areas that are snowy. there's fire areas, there's desert, right? There's all this variation that really makes exploration rewarding and feel like you're actually progressing through the world. When you're down in the depths, it's a bit to one note. Like, you can have a depth down there that feels like the depths, it has gloom that is more themed in certain areas, I guess. And that would really go a long way towards feeling that it's just this endless expanse

of this one kind of area. And so the rewarding nature of exploration isn't as pronounced down there because you don't feel like you're getting into a new area as much as exploration gives you that sense above ground. Right. It's basically the same size as the surface with a tiny fraction of the variety.

So that's my main quibble with it. My second mini complaint is story-related, not the story itself, but the way that it's told, you learn a lot of it via optional cutscenes you unlock by exploring the geoglyphs that are spread around the map, which is fine. I like finding those. The weird thing is that the cutscenes are tied to certain geoglyphs instead of being unlocked in chronological order.

So you end up seeing the story all out of sequence and having to figure out what happened when, which is weird. The other issue is that each time you clear a temple and find a sage, you have to watch an almost identical cutscene about the imprisoning war and the unsuccessful battle against Scandendendorff. So instead of being excited to see what comes next after I beat a boss or to learn something new about the lore, I'm like, here we go again. We're just going to see that same confrontation. So it's strangely repetitive, I would say, as each sage finds out about the past sage and learns about their legacy and their mission. So I don't know why it's organized exactly

that way. You know, Breath of the Wild was sort of similar, where you you'd have these snapshots and you could trigger these cutscenes if you wanted to and you didn't really have to. And I guess that goes along with just the loosely structured open world nature of the game. You don't know where anyone's going to go and what they're going to want to do so you can't make everything mandatory and linear. But I'm not sure why you unlock the cutscenes in a just uncertain sequence based on when you find the geoglyphs. Did you guys notice this? Did this bother you at all? It bothered me because I found all the geoglyphs in a particularly random order.

Yeah. Like it wasn't, it wasn't even close to chronological. Right. And in fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to have unlocked them

in a less ideal order than I was like sitting there like, you can obviously, you can rewatch the cut scenes once you unlock them. But I was sitting there like, oh man, I just,

this happened, but that happened? And it was like, right. And then this time, yeah. I don't know what the upside to that is. I've never tried.

I've never struggled to piece together a Zelda the story before. And that's not necessarily a bad thing this time around. Like, good for you. You have a story that someone could potentially get confused about. That feels like a first for the Zelda franchise. Right. Yeah.

But I also feel like, you know, they're also kind of lengthy cutscenes, right? That you're just kind of sitting and watching. And I kind of had a thought at one point. I've noticed a lot of games recently when they have a lot of story to tell, rather than dropping a cut scene. If something has taken place in the past, you'll see a lot of games now doing the thing where you see like a projection of something that happened in a place

and you're walking around while the previous projections of events are sort of in the environment that you're in. And at times I wondered if maybe that would have been a better choice for some of these things just to have you more in, infested in what was going on at the time. We'd be able to walk around an environment while it was happening. I just felt like I've never sat and watched cutscenes more in a Zelda game. And especially for a game that is not lighting the world on fire with its story,

it feels a bit much to just sit there and watch these cutscenes. Yeah, I wouldn't mind watching them if they weren't all the same. Or at least the ones that you unlock after you meet a temple are sort of the same. So I guess the last thing that I'd mention, and this is really minor because it's something that you can change if you want. But by the end of the game, by where I am, Link is really rolling deep. Like he has a whole posse of five stages falling him around. And I'm a big fan of NPC companions, maybe because I was an only child. And also I get creeped out by spooky games.

So like having an NPC companion playing with me when I was buying. myself. Maybe this sounds sad. I did have friends, but I didn't always get to play video games with friends. And so I like having AI company there, but five at once is a little much. Granted, you can toggle them on or off. But I'm torn because on the one hand, I want the help. And on the other hand, you need the distractions. Yeah, the screen gets kind of cluttered. Like, whenever I have a fight now, there is many AI force ghosts running around as there are enemies. And sometimes I find myself just sitting back and letting my allies fight for me. Or I want to use a support power, but I don't see the sage I want,

or I confuse the Garudo one for the Rito one and activate the wind power when I want the lightning power. So at first, I thought it would only let you use one at a time. And then you would just choose your favorite or the one that made the most sense for that situation. But no, you can use all five. So maybe I just need to learn to limit myself. Again, the game doesn't force this on you.

but it does give you some incentive to do it, and yet when I do it, I feel like it backfires. Can we, in this sec, because that's a lot to unpack, can this be the section where we talk about just the merits of your MPC companions? Yes, please. In combat, too, because I have, this is where I really have some thoughts. You got to dismiss electric home girl. I forget her name.

You got to dismiss her. Like, that ability does not work. I'm sorry. Like, the way it sort of is it adversized to you when you first, are in the, like, the Grito part in the game. And then sort of later in the game where it just feels like it, it just gets nerfed hard. And like, you could catch 10 enemies in the lightning, but it does like one each. Right.

It looks better than it actually is. Yeah. So just dismiss her. Just get rid of her. And then, like, you're right. It sort of, the problem to me is less about, like, the problem is when you end up tripping over the abilities, when you think you're activating your nobu, but. Oh, actually, you accidentally activated side-ons.

And it's just like, that, that gets aggravating quickly. But you're right. It's like, I don't know what the... I do like, I do like those fights where you feel like you're rolling deep. You know what I mean? I like it when it feels like you're stopping someone out with a bunch of people on screen. It's actually really nice. With a little bird and...

Yeah, it's just like... And Tullin, you want to get rid of Tullin because wind is that helpful, but then he crits so much. He hits so many crits on people's battle. Plus, for Navig. for like traversal purposes to have that like yes right yeah does that still happen if he's dismissed I don't think so right can you use his gust while you're on your power you can't that's the thing you need to like bring him when you're trying to like

explore right and you're not in a fight necessarily or especially if you're up in the sky definitely have tullin but it just feels like once you're I don't know if you're running around like a hiral castle you got to get rid of him because it's just so aggravating Yeah. So I want to devote most of the rest of our time to some big picture conversations about the legend of Zelda, just what we want out of the franchise in the future, where this game ranks among Zelda games. Do you guys have any last thoughts, just specific individual thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom itself? Anything that you've seen in the community that you want to call out? Because that's been one of the best parts of this for me, which I guess is sort of similar to Eldon Ring. You know, there's no community messaging in-game system in Tears of the Kingdom the way that there was in Elton Ring. So, you know, those people try to trick you into falling down a pit or anything. But it feels like just everyone is in conversation about this game. Like video game developers are just extolling the virtues of it and are just so amazed and impressed by everything Nintendo pulled off here.

The tricksters, the speed runners are just pulling off incredible feats and showing them to all of. of us, giving us ideas, things that never would have occurred to me. So what about this experience? Have you enjoyed that we haven't touched on? Well, I've definitely enjoyed the communal feeling of Zelda. Zelda comes out and it feels like a cultural moment in the way that only a few games recently have Eldon Ring, Animal Crossing, hitting during pandemic. Like, there have been these games that have just been such unifiers where every,

It feels like everyone is playing it and playing it in different ways. And, you know, people who are casual gamers are playing it, hardcore gamers are playing it. It just feels like a real celebration that is really fun to be part of. And I think that's why at the end of the year, I think this is still going to be the front runner for game of the year, even though it is a thick year of game of the year contenders. I know.

Just like this past month and the next month, probably as strong. field as we had all of last year, potentially, when it came to our game of the year conversation at the end of the year. Yeah, but that sense of a moment in community, I think, is what's going to give this the edge at the end of the year, but we'll see. Plus, we might not have beaten it by then. We might still be playing.

Just that they'll be roaming around the depths, planting bright blossom seeds or whatever. I know Charity's trying to beat this before FF16, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, it's a final finish. Street fighter. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'll say on that note, too, it's sort of the point about, you know, the future of Zelda,

future of open world games, right? Like, there's something about, I feel like for a decade, right? Single player games have this problem of graphics getting better, scale getting bigger. And apart from open world space, right, you had the, you kind of had the problem of, I guess, like the Final Fantasy, you know, 12 through 13, right, of people being able to like single-player games are becoming cutscenes simulators. They're becoming, you know, hallway simulators where you kind of just walk in a direction and sort of you're being sort of steered through a narrative more than you're

playing a game, right? And I think the appeal of open world games for a long time was creating a more open-ended structure, giving players more room to breathe. But then I think open world games, you know, open world games of the past several years, I think succumb to their own tropes in design. And I think, I don't know, there's something about both Breath of the Wild and especially Tears of the Kingdom with all of the building stuff that sort of feels like it's getting back in touch with just why open world games

are a great idea in the first place, right? Which is like, on the one hand, yeah, it's single player. You are trying to tell a story. But also, you are trying to give a player away, you're trying to like create something that's expressive right and I think tears of the kingdom is nothing if not expressive you really you know to Matt's point earlier about ascend right how you feel sometimes like you're using this ability you're like do the devs know about this you know it's like you want to it's the fact that you can walk around this world and like you could call it a sandbox

that's a bit reductive because there's so much intentionality and a lot of the design and yet you really do feel like you, more than you are putting through the paces of a story, more than you're trying to run to the four corners to get the thing, to unlock the thing, to rebuild the thing, to get Zell- More than you feel like you're doing any of that, right? You feel like you are just conquering a landscape. And that is just such a, frankly, more than you do really in any other open-world game, I think short of Eldon Ring, right? And that feeling of conquering a landscape, right, that feeling of just player expression, I think, is really special. And it's like the thing you always hope, right, that people, the other developers,

other studios take away from the success of both Breath of the Wild and tears, right? Is that a sense of trusting the player, right? Yes. Yeah, it's always easier said than done. It's like, just, you know, do what those games did, those all-time classics. All you have to do is have four decades of experience. and continuity and then devote six years to making the game. It's like easy, right?

Just, you know, have that Breath of the Wild Tears of the Kingdom quality. Just snap your fingers and it's done. So we have to have this conversation about where tiers ranks among Zelda games. And Charity, you got on board with the series with Breath of the Wild. So I won't ask you to compare tiers to earlier games. Thank you. You recently wrote about the significance of Zelda to Nintendo and to the larger gaming landscape so maybe we can start there. I know it's apples and oranges to compare the legend of Zelda

to a platformer or a full-on RPG or a fighting game or a shooter. But I still sort of feel like Breath of the Wild and Tears the Kingdom have solidified the Legend of Zelda's status as the goat game franchise. I mean, just in terms of the longevity and the legacy and the innovation and the quality. And I guess these latest Zelda games, they just kind of give me almost everything I want from a game in one package, you know, like that sense of exploration, the cerebral challenge of the puzzles, but also just that dynamic feeling of playing a game and controlling a character and getting to navigate around that world, right, that you might not get from a pure puzzle game. So there's a little bit of everything in a game this big. So

where do you think Zelda stands, I guess, in the pantheon of game franchises, but then also in the Nintendo catalog. I think I specifically was, you know, drawing that comparison between sort of the half-life of Mario on the Switch versus Zelda on the Switch, right? And I don't know. In the greater pantheon, though, of like long-running, long-running video game series, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's like, you don't need me to tell you that Zelda's up there. I don't know that it's necessarily, you're positing it as the goat. You're positing it as the number one video game series, right? It's clearly in the conversation, so to speak. Yeah, it's hard to think of something that's run for as long and as authoritatively

and had so many different iterations of itself while a lot of those iterations all being sort of like generation-defining and successful in the same way. You know what the thought is in the back of my mind is? It's like Resident Evil is very much. Resident Evil has some like rough stretches of. I'm certainly not comparing Resident Evil to Zelda, despite my love for Resident Evil. I don't know. Yeah.

It's like it kind of speaks for itself as a series. Yeah, I mean, they really haven't whiffed on a game in the series since the literal second game in the series back on NES. Wait, do people consider Skyward so we're in a whiff? I don't think so. I mean, okay. Yeah, when it came out, it got rave reviews. And then I think in retrospect, everyone was like, maybe we got a little ahead of ourselves.

on that one. But even if it's... The old bio-shock infinite. But even if it's like a, you know, standard sort of formulaic Zelda game, it's still really good. Yeah, I just played through that recently. And it's still definitely a very good game.

It's just, I think we have such high hopes for every Zelda game because the bar of quality is so high consistently. They just won't let a bad Zelda game happen, even though they know that it is, you know, aside from Mario, it's probably like their most treasured IP. And, you know, maybe you're making the argument after this that it is. They're not going to let a bad Zelda drop. It's just not going to happen anymore.

I think, though, that I do have a bit of a concern with, like, the future of the Zelda franchise. Yes, I want to talk about that. Before we move to that, can you give me because you, You're like where it fits in that. Where would it fit just retrospectively? I mean, for me, I think we're talking top five all time. Like when I think of the best Zelda games, I'm thinking about the first one.

I'm thinking about a link to the past. Win Waker, Ocarina of Time. It is, for me, hands down, better than Breath of the Wild. Like, it's not even a debate for me. It's, which is surprising because, you know, Majors, doesn't hold that weight with me as, as much as O'Reilly. of time. But I really found that this was one of the most memorable Zelda experiences. And, you know, it's not because of the story. It's because of this freedom, this innovation

in game design. Like, outside of talking about this game as a Zelda game, like, I think it's an achievement in game design on a broad sense, like in a broad sense. Right. Yeah. My top five coming into tiers was probably pretty predictable in some order. a link to the past, Akarina, Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, and I think Oracle of Ages

slash seasons would have snuck into my top five, maybe. Really, really good one. So good. Yeah.

I really like the Link's Awakening remake on Switch as well. Yeah. Oracle of Ages slash seasons. That was the first Zelda game

or games that Hitamaro of Fuji Beashi, the director of Tears and Breath of the Wild worked on. I guess tears would probably

displace those from my five. And maybe it's cheating to put them both in anyway because it's two games. But the thing is, if you're asking me to pick a Desert Island disc from this franchise or telling me I can only play one Zelda game for the rest of my life, it'd be Tears of the Kingdom because I could wander around in the depths until a boat comes by and rescues me from the island, right? But I just get the most mileage out of it. When you take the quality and quantity into account, I think you could make the case for Tears at number

one. But of course, Tears is building on many, many Zelda. games and decades of previous Zelda development. So if you're asking me which game I have the warmest memories of, I think it's tough to top some of the ones I played and loved as a kid. And if you take innovation into account, can you displace the original or Akarina, the first 3D one, or even the first open world one? Because if you think this is better than Breath of the Wild, it's still obviously building on the framework of Breath of the Wild. And though it has its own innovations. I think Breath of Wild was probably more innovative just in the context of the series. So I guess it depends how you define it. But I think however you define it, it's got to be top

five and potentially higher than that. And I will, I will register just one. I will say that I, I marginally prefer Breath of the Wild to Tears. I like them both a lot, but I think Breath of the Wild, I think it's just the, even though it's, you're right, it doesn't have stuff like the build mechanic but I think that the I don't know I just felt like the just not as novel as being there the first time yeah I don't know well it's not even that I just thought like kind of the the boss temples and you know we're tighter in breath of the wild I kind of like the mix of abilities better I miss Ravali's gale still you know yeah yeah I don't know so I'll be the one I'll be the odd man out that's a fair assessment yeah I do think that the boss fights and temples aren't as strong in

Tears of the Kingdom. But for me, as someone who is more into the exploration of the franchise, so it's very understandable to me that people have split opinions on which of the two is better. Oh, the Zora and this one is good. I really liked all of that. Like the Zora section of Tears of the Kingdom was really nice, I thought. Yeah. So speaking of innovations, let's wrap up by discussing what we want for the future of this franchise, as you just brought up, Matt. In an interview with Game Informer, the head honcho of the franchise, A.G. A.G.

A. A. G. A. A. G. A. A. A. G. A. A.N.U.M.A. game. For some, the same style, like A. A.L.A.N. of the Wild has also created a format for the franchise to follow. So it sounds like open world is in for the foreseeable future. He also made the point that Zelda games were sort of striving for this freedom from the start, which suggests that this isn't so much a philosophical shift as it is the tech

catching up to the original vision. But Matt, since you were just about to bring this up, were you happy to hear that that we're going to get more games in this mold? Or are you already craving variety? I'm unhappy to hear that. And it's a very complicated thing for me because this is one of my favorite Zelda games ever. But it also is out of those

top Zelda games ever. It's also the Zelda game that feels the least like Zelda to me out of all of those. The reason I'm enjoying this game so much is not because it's such a Zelda game. It's because it's a well-designed and oiled machine

of a video game. I'm enjoying it on a level as an incredible video game, not as much as an incredible Zelda experience. And I think that this is just a problem that you're naturally going to run into as you have a gaming franchise that is decades into the flow, right? Like, it's going to take different directions. It's going to go in different places. And yet you still hopefully have ways to kind of appease the people who've been there

for the ride along the whole time. And I think that, I think that, like, what I, you know, I think I'm fine with them going off on this open world tangent and keeping the evolution going. I think I'm fine with that. I'm a little concerned that's going to make the development time just like how many more do I've left before I die in my life? Like two more Zelda's maybe? We're lucky. I could just see it like spiraling out of control if this is the template. It's going to be persona.

Yeah. It was going to be worse. Yeah. What I really would like them to do is follow kind of like. So in the past two years, I've played Metroid Dread and I played Metroid Prime remastered. And that's an example of they have a franchise in Metroid

that has its roots in 2D exploration. And it also has, you know, it's 3D games as well. And I think what I would like them to do is to sort of take Zelda. And now that we know that the development cycle for the 3D Zelda's is going to be just endless, like give us a new 2D style Zelda, a brand new story in the style of,

you know, traditional 2D Zeldas and drop that like in between the 3D Zeldas. Like because the Link's Awakening switch experience was so wonderful for me. Like it gave me all of the nostalgia. I'm not getting out of Tears of the Kingdom. I got out of Link's Awakening. And granted, it's a form that,

doesn't have too far to evolve, but they're still great games. And I think you can appease like the new and old fans that way. Yeah, I wanted to tee up our producer, Devin Ronaldo, for a second here, because as acclaimed and lucrative as these two games have been, there is a contingent of Zelda fans that wants the series to return to that more linear progression or curated design, you know, abilities you unlock gradually, sequentially, dungeons designed around specific tools or weapons, areas you access in a prescribed sequence.

And Devin, you were saying you're kind of in that camp to some extent. I am. I think that, and I'm going to tread lightly because I do feel that Zelda fans and Nintendo lovers are very passionate about this franchise. And I completely respect and love that. I think that my opinion on Tears of the Kingdom in terms of watching this gameplay and playing the game myself is that if you are not very seasoned or versed in the Zelda world, that the gameplay here is very alienating. And that's not the end of the world per se, but I don't think it leads to a very fun gaming experience overall. I think that the amount of mystery in this game and that, similar to what you guys were saying earlier, like the fact that everyone is playing this game in a very different game, way is super awesome. What I don't love is having to find walkthroughs every two minutes because things are just so challenging and things are so convoluted in this open world that it takes

you, you know, 20 minutes to find a shrine or you're going back to a map that you're supposed to be able to check everything off of and you're kind of the leader here in terms of what that looks like. I think it gets confusing very quickly. I had a friend say it feels like I need a background or a degree in engineering to play this game. And I think when you've gone that far, something isn't quite adding up. I do think that in terms of Zelda games, I would say, and I think this is just a result of like the Switch is the dominant gaming console right now.

The gameplay that you obviously get on Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are probably vastly different than what you're going to get on. We or GameCube or NES. But I don't think that it is a very, beginner-friendly game. I would argue that Tears of the Kingdom more than Breath of the Wild is very unbeginner-friendly. And I think the thing that Matt was saying, you know, when you're talking about the community of this game, and you're seeing so many people rally around it, the last thing you want to do is be the person that's not playing the game. Then you try to

play the game, and it's just too difficult to really, like, grasp. So I'm kind of in favor of at least some structure, even if that's like having a map that's already. set out so you can kind of see what you need to do or where those hot areas are going to be for you to get tools or whatnot. That's kind of where I would like to see the game go back to. I don't know if we will because it is, I do think open world is just where this game is going and like the freedom of that is amazing. But I do think that there is a lack of structure that leads to a real lack of enthusiasm for me as somebody that does not have a lot of patience. Yeah. I think there's a certain skill set or experience.

like Aounuma, he designed marionettes, right? And Fujibayashi, he designed theme parks. And I think their brains kind of work that way. And that's why those systems are implemented so well. But if your brain doesn't work that way, and I wouldn't say mine naturally works that way, then there's an adjustment. And you are just kind of set loose in this very big world. I would say it's less intimidating and there's less of a learning curve than, say,

Eldon Ring or something where, like, you might just, you know, get slaughtered while you're wandering around here, you can kind of just wander around and you'll find something to do. But it's probably not far enough away from that. You know, it's probably closer to being Eldon Ring than it probably should. I would make a point to, you know, like they're both similarly scaled games, right? They're both games where people have this reaction in the first few hours. If you, wow, you could do anything, you go go anywhere. You can wander around for 20 hours before you even get to the first beat of the main story.

It's so great. But I think something that works really well. an Eldon Ring is actually, like in terms of what Devin's talking about, about being beginner friendly, right? And people do describe Eldon Ring as like Baby's First From Soft game, right? If you're going to start with, you know, the From Software Games, Eldering is a good place to start. And I think paradoxically, the fact that Eldon Ring is a game that is willing to bully you actually ends up providing a lot of like subtle direction in terms of like, you know, stay away from this or do that. Like, it's a kind of negative reinforcement that ends up kind of asserting the,

I think the internal order that actually exists in exploration in Eldon Ring. And I think the issue sometimes with Tears maybe is that Tears has such a light touch. Tears is not the kind of game that's willing to bully you. That that is where I think with Devin's talking about comes from, right? Is that sense of, oh, you really can't do anything. and the game really doesn't have the same kind of feedback mechanisms that a game like Eldon Ring has, where Eldon Ring will tell you you're doing the wrong thing.

You know what I mean? It's just the feedback's very different. Yeah, which I think is so essential. I was thinking back to that first section before you even drop down when you're just kind of in the sky world. And this is before I even kind of got the Master Sword or anything that would actually help me. And I approached one of the thinking it was a shrine,

trying to get to the third shrine that you need to clear to get to the temple where Zelda is, thinking that that was a shrine went down and it completely was a, what do they call, the, it's essentially like your first boss, like. Oh, the construct. Yeah, the construct. Completely wasn't ready for it. And just was sitting there like, okay, well, I know that I can grab it and I can deconstruct it, but how do I beat this?

And so I'm sitting there for hours just trying to figure that out, but there's nothing telling me, hey, you need something over a level five weapon to kill, to defeat this thing. And if you don't have that, then you're screwed and you can't pass. But could you go find something else to do? Sure. But I do think that there is a necessity for some sort of guidance within it, especially because that area is supposed to be like the tutorial area to get you to where you need to be

to actually go down and play the game. I think when you're given no direction, essentially, I think that's going to be the thing that they're going to have to find the balance of because obviously they want everybody to play this game. Everybody, it seems like, or I shouldn't say everybody, but the gaming community is very passionate about Zelda. You don't want that FOMO, but if you're not used to playing this

or you haven't really played games like this or you're just tapping into Zelda, I think that learning curve is a bit steeper than it should be. I don't think there's a Zelda that's a worse entry point than this one. There's a literacy with the language of gaming that it definitely helps to have, which was true to some extent with any Zelda game. I mean, always the institutional knowledge of having played a lot of Zelda games

would help you realize, okay, I need to use the hook shot here. I've done a puzzle like this. I've done a dungeon like this before. But often there was only one way through, right? And so eventually you would figure out that's how to do it. Whereas in this game, you know, there are times in tears where you don't so much solve a puzzle as you bypass the puzzle. You're like, I'm not going to play your game Nintendo.

I'm just going to make my own passageway. And that could be satisfying, too. But I did sometimes miss that feeling of finding the single solution that the designers had in mind. And I'm with Matt. I was thinking the same thing. It could feel a little confining if the flagship blockbuster Zelda game went back to being like Skyward Sword or Twilight Princess.

But I do kind of wish there were a place for occasional new Zelda games in the old mold, something you could beat in 15. hours instead of 50 and that would take two years to make instead of six, right? The thing is, though, for a long time, you had separate home and handheld Nintendo systems with different technological capabilities. So console and handheld Zelda games would be different beasts by necessity, both great in their own ways. Whereas with the Switch, there's no real separation. And you have to figure that will also be true of the Switch's successor, given how many switches Nintendo has sold. So Nintendo may not see a reason to make some scaled-down Zelda game, aside from remakes and remasters,

when they're selling a gazillion copies of this and when there's no handheld console or mobile platform that forces them to do that. But as you said, Metroid Dredge, right? And I guess that could be just a product of the fact that Metroid's, you know, fully scaled up 3D-type games. There hasn't been one in quite a while, at least a new one. So that may just be, hey, we need to do something here. So I'm with you, though. It'd be nice to have, like, you know, one for us and one for them, except they would both be for me.

Exactly. So I do think, though, if you stick with open world Zelda, I wonder how you can keep it feeling fresh. I have complete confidence in Nintendo to answer that question somehow, but, you know, I'm sure it's something they're thinking about. Is the next Zelda also in the same high rule, except it's finally 4K? Or do you come up with a way to totally reinvent the map? can you take Ultra Hand away now that we're used to it?

Or will we miss it too much? Will it be like the phantom limb of future Zelda games if you don't have it? Is there something just as mind-blowing that they could do with new hardware? Or is there a new narrative approach you could try? Even if gameplay keeps coming first, I'm not saying I want Link to talk because some things are sacred. And frankly, game characters might be too talkative these days. You don't want Chris Fred to jump in his length? So unless the guy is for a link to turn into A.

Is this a Troy Baker? It's going to be in here. Yeah. Or like Atreus or Aloid and start thinking out loud about how to solve puzzles. Don't want that in my Zelda. Yes, please don't put that in. I wouldn't be averse to a Zelda game where the story or RPG elements were more substantial, just because that would be a break from the past.

It would be something new for Nintendo. So last question, you just kind of brought it up. Do you want a Zelda adaptation movie or TV? You know we're going to get more Mario movies after the first one made a fortune. I wrote recently about whether that means we're also going to get some sort of Nintendo Cinematic Universe. If we do, Zelda would be the obvious next step. So what do you think, Justin, do you want a Zelda movie or some sort of Zelda scripted on-screen

project? No, because I think, okay, if you take the Super Mario Brothers movie as an example, like one complaint definitely a lot of people had. I like that movie, but for sure, I get the complaints about the story and it feeling really kind of thin, right? Thin and also just exceedingly tropey even for a cartoon movie. But with Mario, I think people are, like, Mario can get away with that as source material in a way that I think, to your point about even in the games, right, about do we want Link to talk, right? Do we want like how much, what is it going to be like if one of these games actually decides to lean into being like story driven, lore driven, you know, more than the

kind of ambient quality that at least Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have. And I think if you go with a movie, like a movie adaptation of Zelda is basically going to call that bluff hard. Oh, do you think you can write an actual sort of compelling, you know, stand-alone story of Zelda and Link and I don't know. I don't know if I have the confidence. Zelda has the trappings of a fantasy story and that leads to

some expectations about the depth of the lore, right, and the rigidity of the magic system. Right. Yeah, and Zelda is sort of the same framework narratively speaking as Mario. It's just a mute hero who rescues a princess over and over and over again from

the same bad guy, basically. Yeah. But you sort of if you were to watch a Zelda movie, you I think expected to have expectations. Right. Yeah. So I think the Mario movie was fine for what it was and you're not working with just the richest source material in terms of pure story.

And I think, I mean, I did a whole podcast about that movie. I think it did well in kind of conveying the joy of Mario gameplay to the screen as well as you could without an interactive experience. But it did just sort of provide a Mario game story, which is not as great in movie form. If you were to make more Nintendo movies or a Zelda movie, I would love for it to be, you know, speaking of Spider-Verse, more of a Lord and Miller take on Nintendo IP, right? Which is a little different from Nintendo style storytelling. And I don't think Nintendo is interested in it.

They don't want that, right? You know, they don't want to take any risk, given you how the first Mario movie went and how this latest Mario movie went. I think they're going to be like, yep, that's the way to do it. We will stick with the template that works in our games, and we won't try to lampoon that or subvert expectations or anything. And so, hey, if it's a fun hour and a half, and it's fun for kids, that's fine. But it's not something I'm actively anticipating. Again, because a new Zelda game comes out, that's the next 100 hours for me.

If a Zelda movie comes out, that's the next 90 minutes for me, maybe. So even if it's good, the return on investment, the hype is not going to be nearly the same. And Nintendo's focus remains very much and very firmly on the games. And I'm sure that it will be no matter how many more billions they make from Mario movies, which is, I believe, for the best. Can I throw a quick question out there? I know we're wrapping up. But my question is, based off of everything that has been said and in terms of your own rankings,

and given the conversation we just had about kind of the future of Zelda, would you say that Tears of the Kingdom is representative of the franchise? No, I guess. Not in terms of maybe mechanics and structure. I think maybe in terms of just the ethos of it, like the philosophy of it, just the exploration and the wonder and the emphasis on gameplay, I think it is. But if I were going to illustrate to someone, this is Zelda. This is what Zelda has historically been.

I probably wouldn't pick Tears of the Kingdom, although it's one of my favorite Zelda games ever, one of my favorite games ever. I think in 15 years we might be able to say yes, but I think today, I think today the answer is no. Yeah. But it seems like that this is where it's going, but it definitely feels. like a departure for me, and the only reason I'm not upset about it is because the games are good. Is the answer to the question, Akorina then, like, to the person who's looking for the representation?

That are links awakening. I would argue are like the most, in my eyes, the most quintessential and accessible versions of the game to play. But I'm glad that the definition is changing because again, Zelda's been with us for decades of decades. So if the definition didn't change, we might get tired of it eventually. We have not gotten tired of Tears of the Kingdom. And our journeys with this game will continue, as will our hopefully lifelong Zelda gaming journeys. But our Ring orverse, Tears of the Kingdom quest is complete. Thank you, Justin and Matt, for being my non-AI companions for these podcasts. This was a lot of fun.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Justin, you keep activating the wind power when I want you to put a protective water aura around me. Anyway, thanks to our Judah, Ramgapal, for green lighting. Not one, but two tiers of the kingdom pods with more gaming coverage to come. Thanks to Devin Ronaldo for producing both of these episodes and chiming in on this one. Keep your ears peeled for our ringerverse spiderverse crossover content. And until I talk to you next, please leave the poor Purox alone. Like all of us, they're just looking for a friend.