The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom takes place in the identical Hyrule as its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. It’s true that the map has been extensively modified by the occasions of the Upheaval: Zonai ruins have fallen from the sky, sky islands float overhead, and rifts have opened as much as a pitch-black underworld. However all the pieces continues to be the place it was: Hyrule Fortress, the jagged, leaning spires of the Dueling Peaks, the baking wastes of the Gerudo Desert. It’s recognizably the identical place. For a full-fat sequel that took Nintendo six years to make, this stage of content material recycling is uncommon, to say the least.
Previous to Tears of the Kingdom’s launch, some followers puzzled if the sequel would really feel extra like a glorified enlargement. Because the recreation’s launch, nonetheless, this subject has barely come up. Even the anticipated flood of comparability pictures, or the laundry lists of what has and hasn’t modified, haven’t actually materialized (though gamers have observed that Zelda modified the decor after transferring into Hyperlink’s pad). Swept up within the dizzying prospects of Tears of the Kingdom’s new toolkit, or the shock and thriller of its new quests, gamers don’t appear to note, or thoughts, that they’re actually retreading outdated floor.
To start with, I felt the identical. Perhaps it was one thing to do with the sport’s opening, excessive within the heavens on Nice Sky Island. The untethered, windblown novelty of this lofty place, capped off with a sensational skydive to the extra acquainted world of Hyrule under, set the tone and made all the pieces that adopted really feel contemporary as a breeze. Perhaps it was the liberating pleasure of being again within the fingers of grasp designers with the boldness to offer gamers the liberty to discover their world, and the craftsmanship to information their eyes towards the entire thrilling issues to do there.
Both manner, I started to hungrily gobble up the sport’s secrets and techniques and diversions, marveling on the sense of discovery it may generate, with out even contemplating how doubly exhausting it should have been to make such a well-trodden panorama really feel by some means completely different. It regarded acquainted but felt new, and I didn’t give {that a} second thought — till I arrived, by happenstance, on the Nice Plateau.
This hit completely different. The Nice Plateau is Breath of the Wild’s Nice Sky Island — a secure, sunny, contained space, raised above the fray, the place gamers can be taught the sport’s methods and Hyperlink’s core skills in relative peace. Greater than another a part of Hyrule, it’s scored into my mind; it’s formative in a literal sense, as a result of that is the place I discovered cook dinner, to paraglide, and to combat, and discovered how Hyperlink would relate to the world round him within the recreation. I can image the geography of this pocket world clearly in my thoughts’s eye. Encountering it in a radically completely different context was jarring — even emotional.
In Tears of the Kingdom, the Plateau feels wild and forbidding. There are some medium-to-high-level monsters right here now, and Hyperlink is hounded by the masked assassins of the Yiga Clan. Perhaps I got here slightly too early, however I needed to transfer cautiously and make preparations as I explored. The ruins, as soon as picturesque, now look by some means uncooked and jagged, and there are ugly splashes of gloom round a number of gaping chasms. It even felt completely different to ascend to this newly hostile place, quite than sail down from it, as I had within the first recreation.
Exploring the Nice Plateau is essentially the most thrilling journey I’ve had in Tears of the Kingdom to this point, and that has quite a bit to do with my reminiscences of the world from Breath of the Wild. Arriving at a spot I knew so effectively and discovering it turned the other way up, approaching it from a special approach and seeing it from a brand new perspective, relearning my manner across the house with a mix of familiarity and uncertainty — it was like going again to a childhood hang-out. Every part was the identical however completely different, acquainted however impossibly unusual. This was a strong feeling, extra highly effective even than the marvel of exploring someplace completely new.
There’s just one different recreation panorama that has made me really feel like this, and it’s World of Warcraft’s Azeroth. Azeroth was upended, in an analogous option to Hyrule, by 2010’s Cataclysm enlargement — however different, extra delicate modifications through the years have had an analogous impact on me. I’m positive long-term gamers of another massively multiplayer recreation will acknowledge the sensation. If you dwell with a recreation house over time, spend so lengthy there that it turns into deeply enmeshed along with your reminiscences of your life, after which come again to seek out it’s nonetheless there however has moved on with out you — for me, that is what elevates digital worlds to locations that, psychologically talking, may as effectively be actual.
Coming down from the Nice Plateau to renew my exploration of the remainder of Hyrule, I felt I understood why Nintendo had chosen to stay with Breath of the Wild’s map. Not as a result of it’s a masterpiece (though it’s), or as a result of it could have been an excessive amount of work (it should have been simply as troublesome to transform it meaningfully), however as a result of bringing it again genuinely provides extra to the sport than an all-new world may have completed. It brings historical past; it brings resonance; it brings which means. It’s been stated, accurately, that Hyrule itself was the true star of Breath of the Wild. What would the sequel have been with out its star?
