Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Spoilercast | All Things Nintendo

Welcome to a very special episode of the All Things Nintendo podcast. I'm Brian Shea from Game Informer and this is the first ever episode to have a video version. So I hope you're enjoying this. You get to see our lovely faces. As you may already know, this is a weekly podcast to discuss all the biggest news and games from the world of Nintendo.

And there are no bigger games in the world of Nintendo in 2023 than The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. That game has been out for just about two months at this point. But when it first came out, we were very, very cautious to kind of dance around spoilers because this is a game that everybody should experience as fresh and unspoiled as possible.

However, it has been out for a while now and I kind of set a line in the sand here where I said we would do a full spoiler episode about the game when we had four people on staff who finished it. And that's exactly what we have today. Joining me for this episode are three Game Informer editors who have seen the story through to the end. We have Game Informer Editor-in-Chief Matt Miller. Matt, how are you doing today?

I'm great. Ready to ruin this game for some people. Is that what we're doing? That's what we're doing, right? I mean, hey, it is a spoiler cast through and through. We also have Game Inform Magazine content director Kyle Hilliard. Kyle, what's going on today? Hey, how's it going, man? I was looking up my, I believe I finished this game on May 3rd, I think is when I finished it. So I've really been sitting on this for a long time. You haven't seen for a while.

You really wanted to get that out of the way before May the 4th so you could focus on Star Wars Jedi. Right. A game that I have not returned to. Yes. And last but not least, we have Game Informer Associate Editor Charles Hart. How are you doing? Hello, I'm doing good. I'm feeling like Link with some yellow temporary hearts. Which is to say better than good, I think. Or just that I ate a good mushroom.

That's a good way to start a recording. That's the vibe today. Oh wait, I just realized that sounds weird. It's a hearty mushroom. It's a hearty truffle. Again, I cannot emphasize this enough. This is your one. And only warning, we are going to be spoiling pretty much every aspect of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I'm talking stories, missions, gameplay, everything is on the table for this episode.

So if you are not ready to experience the full spoiler discussion of this game, this is your chance to pause this episode and come back when you're ready. So... fair warning give you a couple more seconds to kind of reach for your podcast uh stop button or pause button but we are going to jump right in uh i guess first up how many hours have you guys put into this game Ooh, I think I'm at 180. But you also, Kyle, you have also, we'll set the table here. You have gotten every shrine.

Yes, every shrine. I haven't done every side quest. I got every shrine and I was like, alright, I'm going to take a break. Maybe I'll come back and do those side quests later. But yes, I've gotten every shrine in the game. Wow. That takes a lot of patience, and that is reflected in your 180-hour playthrough. Yeah. No, I love it. I miss it dearly. I'm already kind of like, is it time to go back already? I miss it.

You had a piece you wrote at one point when you were still looking for the last few shrines. How did you find them? Well, I can tell you, actually. Let's go into the spoilers now. So I did hit a point where I was just combing the landscape looking for shrines and had my shrine tracker on. And then it is... It is the one quote-unquote thing that got like spoiled for me is someone pointed out that all the underground plants point to shrines above ground.

Which I didn't realize. So I had filled out the underground entirely. And I was short like two or three shrines. And then I just basically had to go back and forth between the underground and overground map to find where they connected. It was truly the one thing that like I... was told to me by accident like i read it in a comment but otherwise i truly did not look anything up um

That's just how I like to play those games. I was so grateful, honestly, to have reviewed it and played it early because I couldn't even have the temptation of looking anything up, and I really loved that. You would literally have to have emailed Nintendo and be like, hey, I can't figure this out. Can you... tell me how to do it. And you'd really have to make a concerted effort to do it if you needed some help, but you didn't do that.

As an aside, by the way, that's a unique thing about the way that we sometimes play games, right? As a general rule, I don't like to look stuff up on the internet, but my line in the sand over the years has become, if I'm not having fun anymore...

Right? Like, if I've crossed the threshold from like, oh, well, this is a really interesting puzzle. I can't figure it out. And it's taking a little longer, but that's okay. I'll just keep rolling on it. But then you cross that threshold where it's like, I'm just not enjoying this game at this point.

And sometimes I'll look something up and... that is not an option when you're playing a game before launch right like you can think of it i would think most people have at least from time to time feel like ah you know i'll pull my phone out quick and figure out what what's the first step to this thing no shame in that by the way

This is very much a self-like thing. Like I just, when it comes to Zelda in particular, I don't, and it led, and we'll get into it, I'm sure, but it led to truly one of my favorite Zelda moments, period, for like me personally. um it's not necessarily like oh this cool cut scene happened the way i approached the end of the game was really bizarre and i i love the way it ended up turning out for me which we can get into it a little bit later

Yeah, well, we're going to go through a little bit of the story as well. But before we get to that, Charles, how long has your playthrough been?

Yeah, so I think right now it's probably at like 120. I definitely hit a point where I could beat the game though at 80 hours and I was like... i felt weird i was like i'm not ready to end it and that's not a thing i usually have of like i feel like in the past few years as it's like playing video games has been like a professional thing for me i've been like

I just got to finish this so I can like talk about it. And there's so many other things I got to do. And this is one where I was like, well, I, I. Got one piece of this armor set underground that would be pretty cool to finish the game in. I was basically like shopping for like my wedding tux of like, this is going to be the big day. This is the set I'm going to wear.

and then i finally got it and i was like oh man it's gonna take a lot of amber to upgrade this but i did kind of want to just wander around this area for a while and i just wasted i mean wasted i spent 40 hours not really doing any particular thing but got this stuff upgraded to the point where i was ready to finish it and yeah what was the armor what was the It was the Ocarina of Time armor. Because I got the pants. And I think I did end up looking up.

where those were because I spent enough time underground just kind of messing around. And I was like, this is going to take forever. This is the whole map of the game.

i will say this that and during that was when i realized the the shrine connection thing because i didn't have that spoiled for me and i think it's one one example of the ways this game made me feel like the smartest person in the whole world of like when you get a puzzle right of like oh actually i'm an engineering genius i knew to put this wheel on this plank and it worked out so great um which is

incredibly hard to do so consistently like making me feel smart because you designed something so well it's wild yeah i mean that's exactly some people call this game like oh that that actually works like that's what they should have called it yeah absolutely yeah well that is Yeah, it has that fascinating quality where they've tricked you into playing an engineering game, right?

It's like, oh, it's a fantasy action adventure. No, it's not. It's an engineering game, basically. The thing that you're going to spend the most time on is sort of like trying to solve those. Those things where they've made it seem like something's broken. And that, oh yeah, you can't do that anymore. You can't...

That mind track doesn't work anymore. See, look, there's a break in the mind track. You can't go there. And then you're like, hold on, you know, hold my beer. I will. I will do that. Right. And it's really, honestly, it's the thing that I think made me like Tears of the Kingdom a lot better than Breath of the Wild. That single thing. Not talking bad about Breath of the Wild at all, but I like Tears of the Kingdom a lot more.

because of that creative component in that sense that I'm always sort of breaking the game, but of course I'm not breaking it. I'm doing it the way they have designed it to be done, which is to come up with an interesting way to get past something. And with that in mind, Matt, how long was your playthrough?

You know, I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention. I'm guessing somewhere in the vicinity of, I mean, just on the number of days I spent on it, probably around 100 hours. I would bet that I didn't... hit up quite the number of things that some other folks did. But I had a lot of hearts by the end, and I did a lot of shrines. So I think it was probably somewhere in that vicinity.

Okay, so I actually think I have the least amount of hours logged in this game. I'm somewhere between 75 and 80. That's shameful. I know. Do you even have a full row of hearts, Brian? I do. I do have a full row of hearts. I've started creeping into that second row. But yeah, I actually did focus a lot on the stamina meter because I wanted to...

That was a lesson that I learned very early on in Breath of the Wild was like, oh, I should definitely be upgrading my stamina meter above all else, even though I'm typically a kind of guy who's going to like if I'm getting like a skill tree and it's like there's one that's going to give me like more health. That's typically one that I'll go to.

very very early on but this time i was like nope i i learned my lesson i'm gonna be climbing all the time in this game i'm just gonna invest like my first several uh orbs or or whatever they're called into Spirit orbs, that's what they're called? Into stamina vessels. I think it was spirit orbs in the last game, but that's not important. My stamina limiter wasn't climbing, it was gliding. Oh yeah.

that was the thing for me i i mean i'd be curious what you're all's go-to approach to getting around was um because i know again there's a lot of creative ways to navigate this game world for me it was very much like i got real familiar with the different um sky view towers and

And then just getting to a place where I could, okay, I'm going to fast travel to this Skyview Tower, go way up in the air, and then fly as close to this thing, glide as close as I can to this thing that I need to drop down onto. I know a lot of people did more like, I'm going to build vehicles that I fly around on. That that was a way. And I guess there's people who are like, I'm a horse guy. I just like to ride my horse around. You can't trust those people.

You know, the one thing about the horse thing is that I think I like the horse riding, but I think the constant need to go back to a stable and pull my horse back out makes it, I don't know, kind of an irrelevant... um form of transportation for me i felt that way even about breath in the wild after a certain point but uh yeah for me the big thing was like upgrading batteries and then i would just take a platform

a hot air balloon and a and a flame jet and that would that gets you really high up in the air um uh like that was a i use that a lot underground But yeah, but you do need to upgrade your batteries a bit to make that really worthwhile. Yeah, and I mean, I guess that segs perfectly into our discussion about Ultra Hand, which...

I mean, there's the three core abilities that are in this game. There's Ultra Hand, there's Recall, and there's Fuse. And all of them, there's also Ascend, the four core abilities there. But it... Ascend really changes the way that you explore this world. But nothing is more impactful than Ultrahand. Just being able to build stuff and augment things together and just, I mean, even with like the village that was under siege.

And then they're like, hey, we need some help like rebuilding this stuff. Like we need all these logs from these trees. I was like, I'm not going to carry all these logs. And I was like, oh, wait, no, let me just fuse like 12 logs together. or ultra hand 12 logs together and then carry it as one mass down to them and that's what i ended up doing and they're like oh great this is all the the wood that we need but yeah it really transforms the way that you do almost everything in this game

Yeah, I think, you know, Nintendo likes having an interesting gimmick in new installments of long-running franchises. You know, you can think about something like... uh the mario games right like super mario odyssey you've got your hat right or super mario uh sunshine you've got your uh you're gonna blow water everywhere right and and i think of those as like unique

gimmicks to those spaces and i think you could kind of say ultra hand is like that in tears of the kingdom except the difference is i don't know that you can ever make a zelda game again without ultra hand at this point right it's so it so fundamentally changes the way that you understand the the game and your approach to it um that it in a single game, it feels foundational now to the series, almost. I mean, obviously, there'll be new Zelda games in the future.

But it would be very strange to me to play one of those games and not have something like that, right? Maybe they don't call it Ultra Hand, but I don't think it's a gimmick like Mario's Cappy Buddy, right? that you could just like, oh, we're moving on past Cappy. I've made that point about several games on the Switch where it's like...

How are they going to do a new version without X? Like Super Smash Brothers. How are they going to do another Smash Brothers game without so many characters? How are they going to do another Mario Kart game without every course ever at this point with all the DLC that they've released? But you're right. This feels like a foundational gameplay thing that I don't know how people would play a Zelda game without Ultra Hand or something similar and not be like, something's missing from this game.

I don't know. What was your experience with Ultrahand Charles in terms of feeling out the mechanics and really testing the limits of what you could do with it?

Yeah, I I think I think in Kyle's review or his video review that I did I think he or something he's expressed a few times is like early on You're kind of like intimidated by ultra hand of like it's kind of scary to be able to just do all this stuff am I going to be good at it I definitely had some of that where I was like look I like Legos as much as the next guy I don't want to play a Lego game I want to play a Zelda game and I it

quickly changed my mind. I wouldn't say quickly change my mind. It slowly changed my mind. Once I left the first island in the sky, I was not like ultra handing everything all the time like I thought it would be like it wasn't such a it wasn't always that there was a puzzle and then a specific ultra hand solution but i think it was like once i started

getting a lot of the like zonai orbs just in my inventory and being like oh i can just make a plane i don't have to deal with this i don't have to climb mountains anymore like that's not a thing i have to worry about um And yeah, I think I do think they could make a new Zelda game without Ultra Hand. I think I would slightly push back on that point just because I think that is so...

I believe in the Zelda series to be able to move on past it in that way. I don't know if I would say that about every series, but I do think it is the reason to play this game.

It doesn't feel as foundational as something like Z-targeting, which was introduced in Ocarina of Time and then used in pretty much every subsequent 3D action game. But it does feel like something that is going to be... thing that people always look back at tears the kingdom be like oh that was the the main contribution to this series was the introduction of ultra hand yeah and and i was i was gonna mention this earlier of like

i don't know if any of you guys have seen like speed run footage of this game or parts of this game um but breath of the wild was all about like physics glitches and how like you can jump in the air and drop one bomb and then drop another bomb and then explode the back bomb to hit you with the front bomb that would launch you across the map really fast And this one is all like...

It's not a lot of those glitches got taken out There's also a thing of like if you equip a weapon right before you land you don't take fall damage But now the button that would be the weapon equipping is nose diving into the ground So you can't do that anymore, but people have figured out like

If you do like a rocket on a shield and then you shield surf for like a split second, it launches you up and forward and doesn't use that much durability. And so there's people that are like doing shrines and like. four seconds if you have the right like shields and zone I advice is equipped. And that's that's so fun to watch. I'm excited to see like three years from now what this is even going to look like anymore.

Yeah, it's a game that definitely invites people in. Like, I had friends who are certainly not super hardcore gamers anymore, like guys who maybe played in college and don't play a lot anymore. um who were sending me videos of like tears of the kingdom stuff like what is going on here that this you know like this It looks like they're making a mech to go take on this dragon over here. Is that what's happening? And I'm like, yep. That's pretty much what's happening.

And so it had this phenomenon and continues to have this phenomenon of being a game that is really fun to play, but it's also really fun to see somebody who's done something interesting. play the game and watch them which is you know uh very much in keeping with the times and the way people are engaging with games right now well that's why it's such a game of the moment as well as like it's like They marketed it to perfection because...

They knew that this game is going to be a really well-loved game. They knew they made an amazing game. But on top of that, it's so shareable on social media that they knew... They would be like the heavy sense of FOMO where people would see people creating these incredible devices and incredible structures and incredible vehicles on social media and just basically seeing how they can break this system.

And they'd be like, oh, that looks like a lot of fun. I want to do that too. And then they'd go buy the game. I'm really excited to see like how the sales have progressed because normally when a game comes out, especially a very highly anticipated game like Tears of the Kingdom. We'll see a sharp spike in sales on that first week, week and a half. And then you'll see it start to taper off. But I think that this is a game that's going to have a lot of legs just because of...

the fact that it's such a social media game. Yeah. I mean, as of... this morning at the time of this recording it is the second best-selling game of 2023 which is crazy considering it is a single platform game the one ahead of it is hogwarts legacy which is a multi-platform game and i'm sure like Resident Evil is up there too, but it's doing gangbusters, expectedly. Yeah, so we talked about Ultra Hand kind of just fundamentally changing the Zelda formula.

But with this game being so focused on exploration, I think Ascend was the one that took me the longest to be like... I'd be like looking up at the ceiling, I'd be like... how am I going to get up there? I need to figure out a way to get to the top of this thing. And then after thinking about it for five seconds, I'm like, oh yeah, I have a send. Let me just do that instead of trying to figure out the climbing puzzle that I was so used to and conditioned to with Breath of the Wild.

Were there any examples, Matt, that you had where it was just like this kind of broke the game in any kind of way? I don't know that Ascend broke the game for me. It broke my head in the same way that you're describing. Or to put it another way, it was the easiest capability to forget for me. And I would be surprised if there's too many serious players of this game that didn't have some moments that were just...

You were embarrassed for yourself with how much time you sat there trying to do exactly what Brian is describing, where you're like, there's no way for me to get up there. It's like, I mean, it's like 30 feet up there. I can't climb these walls. Do they want me to go to some mountain nearby? No, there's no mountain. Can't jump off the mountain, glide down. I don't even know what to do. And I just sit there.

and stare and completely forget about this and i don't know why it was that way maybe because ultra hand i mean i didn't have that happen with ultra hand you know like when there was a clear like they laid out a bunch of pieces for me to build something i would definitely be like oh yeah okay i get what you you're wanting me to build a minecart here right or you want me to build a helicopter or you want me to whatever like um

That didn't happen with Ascend for some reason. Even late in the game. I think it's just, it's so simple. And it... it works so consistently and it feels like game breaking. Like you, every time, like I would have those instances where I was like, Oh, right. Ascend. Like I would also have that moment of like, I can't believe it was truly that easy, you know, because like,

so often and maybe it's like the breath of the wild in the back of your head it's like if you go underground or something which you know you didn't do a lot in breath the wild really but it was like getting back out was like a whole puzzle in itself

And it's like a send just sort of deletes that part of the process. And it's like, that's why you kind of forget about it because you're just like, surely it's not that easy. But it's like, no, no, it is. Just punch your way through the ceiling. It's fine. I think it's also so contrary to what Breath of the Wild was, which is like, hey, Breath of the Wild, you can climb anything. Now it's, you have Ascend, you don't have to climb everything. It immediately flipped.

I think it's that way that you look at a tall structure and the Breath of the Wild in you is like, immediately, how do I climb that? Where are the spots where I can climb up and then regain my stamina meter? And then you realize, oh, it's close enough to the ground that I can just go.

under it. I also thought Ascend was... if i was link with is the power that i've had as link that would make me the most uncomfortable you know what i mean like that that's uh maybe it's just like some weird uh element of claustrophobia hiding away in my mind but it like genuinely made me kind of uncomfortable at times where you're like man this is a really long ascend you know like i'm in the ground going through the ground and the sound

Yeah. Squelchy. Yeah. Squelchy. Like, yeah, I really hope this ability does not break down on me and I'm just entombed in this mountain now. Yeah. They cut. It's nice. Thank you, Nintendo, for not connecting it to stamina. in some way oh man that would have been really bad like trying to climb because there's a couple of instances where you can go from the depths to the surface and it it's a long climb and it's like yeah i mean

I guess they could have connected it to stamina, but it just would have felt silly, I think. It just would have been needlessly difficult.

And then the third ability that we want to talk about is Fuse, which I think they did actually, in contrast to Ascend, they did a very good job of encouraging you to use Fuse at every turn, because most of the weapons that you find, especially early on... are uh affected by the gloom so it's like they're kind of like decayed and therefore they don't have very high attack power and they break very easily so it's like yeah if you want this to do any kind of damage or last for any amount of time

fuse it to something and that was something that after like the first few hours i was like oh yeah just fuse every weapon to everything that you can uh especially like bokoblin horns and and lizalfo horns and things like that like What was your experience, Charles, with Fuse? Yeah, I definitely...

I remember the realization of like, man, I'm not doing that much damage. And then realizing like, oh, I should just be fusing everything. There's not an incentive to have an unfused weapon in your inventory nine times out.

10 and i i also really appreciate that like the monster horn designs were all like little like blades of weapons like it was a trident or a a sword or a spear or something like that i think that also kind of you see you know a blue lazalfos horn and i'm like that looks like a katana and now i'm gonna put it on my sword and that's the way it's supposed to be

But yeah, I enjoyed it. I think it was cool. The one mistake that I made for a large portion of the game was I was almost exclusively fusing weapons to other weapons.

like a sword to a sword that I found on the ground just because it's like oh I can pick up more weapons and it does make it stronger but really the thing that you want to do is fuse it to like bokoblin horns and like you said charles like that actually increases the power significantly more than having a sword attached to a sword for me it's also like

That's definitely true numerically. For me, it was like an aesthetic thing of like, man, I don't want to have a stick sword. That looks so ugly. Yeah, I think I was like one of the early cut scenes in the game. where i don't remember where it was it was like when you land on the ground there was some big cut scene and i was like ah

I have just, like, a super long staff that's, like, clipping into the ground, like, during this cutscene. I remember what it was. It was a shield that had a flamethrower on it. So I had this big backpack on Link's back, and I was like, man, that looks stupid.

That's always the problem, right? When you have a cutscene and your character looks like just garbage. I think I had that at the finale of Breath of the Wild where I was just like, oh man, this would be so much cooler if Link didn't look like a big goof. No, yeah, I made sure, like Charles, I had my, I just like the blue tunic and the pants, like the sort of standard pants that I had upgraded really high. And I was like, well, I'm going to make sure I'm wearing this to fight Ganondorf for sure.

so the fuse the fuse thing like goes counter to my instincts my like gaming hoarder instincts and i had to get past that a little bit um I think I chart that back to like some early Final Fantasy games where I would like run out of potions before, you know, and I got near to the end of the game and didn't have enough and I couldn't go back and get any and that kind of thing. So these days...

It's still like ingrained in me to like, oh, you got this consumable thing. Better not use it because you might need that really good consumable that you can attach your weapon later. I would say it was like halfway through the game until I got really comfortable being like, I killed this monster. I got a cool horn from him. It says it's going to massively upgrade my weapon. I'm going to just put it on a weapon.

Because you get enough that you don't need to worry about that. I understand the frustration people have with the breakable items and weapons. I don't think that is a... like a bad complaint if you don't like that mechanic I understand why that would bring down the sort of overall enjoyment of the game for you but for me the way that it makes me use everything I really appreciate like in the way like I'm really struggling

with like Diablo 4 as a comparison right now I am not getting into that game at all and it's because everything just feels like crap that I'm just like carrying around with me or not using or getting rid of immediately where like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom has this sort of same

like there is an approach to like having loot and using loot, but everything feels valuable and usable. And the, and the sort of the, the con in that column is like, that means stuff will break if you use it. But the pro is like, yeah, but you use everything and you experiment with everything. I actually much prefer that than just having a big cache of crap that I just immediately sell or never even look at.

Yeah, it's also the way that like I they've really separated the numbers from the like weapon abilities because you'll have like. I can't remember specifically, but something like all the Royal Guard weapons, they'll have like charge attack up or all of these weapons you can throw really far, all these weapons or whatever. And for the.

For the most part, like your swords, the base sword is going to be anywhere from like, you know, eight damage to 12 damage. And the real boost is going to be that like Lionel horn or whatever that adds the 50. So if you're like, I really like having. like stamina attack up you can get those kinds of weapons and it doesn't have to be i would love to do this but the number is not high enough because you are controlling that on your end

And that brings us to what I think was the ability that I use the least, but has probably the biggest impact on the story, and that is recall. And I don't know, like I... Whenever I remembered to use it, I felt like I made a really good impact with it, but I felt like it was the least necessary of all of Link's new abilities.

And I don't know if I'm alone in thinking that, but like I just like there were times where like, you know, I talked about this in my preview that I did for Tears of the Kingdom before it came out where like. Moblin would throw a thing at me and I would recall it right back to him and explode right in front of him, right? Like it would kill him that way. Or, you know, there's obviously times where I would combine it with...

with ultra hand and make it so that i could like have something rewind at just the right time so i could go in under a door or something like that but were there any instances, Matt, where you were like, this recall ability is just essential for me to have the Tears of the Kingdom experience.

I don't think so. I agree with your assessment not only that it's the least used, but it also feels to me like... and i was surprised about this by the way um i i went into the game thinking like oh maybe they must use this in a bunch of different places but it was the one that i felt like i only used when the designer was telling me to use it if that makes

any sense right like there were shrines where it was like oh clearly i need to do recall here right and so i did and that solved it um but it had a little bit less of that like kind of um making me twist my head to think about things from a new perspective, which is of course what makes Ultra Hand especially cool, Ascend maybe to a lesser extent and Fuse to a lesser extent.

but there there's that like creative quality to those um and recall maybe i just didn't ever get around to using it in the way that it could be used but it never really clicked in that way as anything other than like oh that's just a tool i need to use when

the game shows me I have to use it. It's a puzzle item. It feels almost like more of like an old school Zelda item in that way. It's like I use this to solve puzzles and it's fun in that way. I found a lot of use in it later of like... really getting into the far away sky islands and stuff where you have to like have good batteries and vehicles where like stuff would fall out of the sky and i would use a recall to get it back to me like delivering the big

green gems to shrines and stuff like if my thing was falling out of the sky early I would recall it back to me or like if a Korok rolled away from me I would use it to get it back for me it was like more of like a perfunctory kind of like tool rather than Like you said, Matt, like something that you would use creatively. I only use it creatively every now and then. And it's interesting because this is the ability that I feel like got the most marketing.

from nintendo like the statue that we see of link his amiibo it's all in the the stance of using recall and it seems like nintendo is putting a huge emphasis on it and you know we're going to get into the story in just a second but like that probably is the reason is that it was so integral to the way the story played out but charles what were you going to say i was going to say i did i liked it for convenience sake

And I do feel like I used it a lot just in terms of like I would drop something or I think there's a lot of ways you can manipulate it too of like when you combine it with Ultra Hand of like, I don't have a ramp to launch my... wing off of but if you like ultra hand and hold it in the air for a few seconds then you can recall it and then it's floating in the air you don't have to deal with that

I also mentioned I had the Ocarina of Time armor that I wanted to upgrade, which uses a lot of amber. So I spent a lot of time fighting taluses. And you can throw their arms back at them. So I did use it an absurd number of times for that. But I don't know. I do understand the point you're saying. I do feel like I used it.

specifically with ultra also in the depths there's all the mountains turn into like big valleys which are fun to get to the bottom of but annoying to get back out of and i would always drop stuff And Recall has like a basically unlimited range. Like if you can see it, you can bring it back to you, which I appreciated. But yeah. It's a, you know, like on a sort of meta level around thinking about Zelda.

um the an understanding of time uh and and playing with ideas of time are uh it's it's very core to the the identity of the franchise at this point right uh i mean even back to a link to the past right ocarina of time you know majora's mask is uh is all about

a time loop, right? I think it's fair to say that almost every Zelda game plays around with time in some way and tries to say something there and and you know like you said brian we're going to talk about story here and certainly time time is a fundamental aspect of of the storytelling here But any negative or not negative, but anything that like made recall not quite as interesting.

It almost doesn't matter because for the way that the power adds to that sense that like we're... alerting the player to be paying attention to time and the passage of time and the way things can kind of go in both directions and both the past and the future are important and those just sort of ideas. are grounded in gameplay through the recall ability. For sure. And let's get into story.

It starts off with a bang. What a cutscene that is. Basically, let's just set the premise. Hyrule's been kind of through this rebuilding phase after the events of Breath of the Wild and the defeat of Calamity Ganon. But at certain points, it seems like the residents of Hyrule are starting to get sick, and they trace it back to this substance that has been leaking out of the underground called gloom. And a very popular video game thing lately is just darkness.

creeping in like i i think it's in destiny right matt isn't it maybe i like uh a wayfinder a game that's coming up has a creeping mist that everyone has to fight it's it's very popular i don't know why It is. And so Link and Zelda, they uncover a kind of like a hidden entrance, a previously hidden entrance to the underground area. And they go down there and they're finding all these like Zonai artifacts. And this is a playable...

cut scene essentially where you're descending into the the underground area with zelda you've got the full two rows of hearts which as kyle has pointed out you can't even attain in breath of the wild and then spoiler alert your your stamina is maxed out as well you have the master sword

And, you know, Zelda is just kind of talking about like, oh, in my studies, like, you know, these these must be what the zone I look like when they find some some of the statues that are under there. And then they find the mural on the wall. And there's a couple. pan or three panels i believe that are blocked off by some debris that had fallen that those panels it's it's like the breakable rocks

And the agony I felt seeing it in the cutscene and then walking past it and being like, I don't have my bombs. I don't know why I don't have my bombs. It's like, that's like... as as much as time is core to the zelda series bombable walls are also um yeah i love that

But yeah, so basically the mural depicts the scenes of the imprisoning war, which people who are versed in the Zelda timeline know is like kind of a war that Hyrule was waging against Ganondorf and the sages were waging against Ganondorf.

previously depicted in other games but this time we're kind of getting a different take on it and it ultimately was kind of like how Ganondorf was sealed away and Then we kind of continue on and Link's Master Sword starts glowing, which if you play Breath of the Wild, you know. uh-oh, something bad is about to happen, and usually it means the presence of Ganon or a Ganon-like creature, like one of the bosses in the Divine Beast dungeons that we had in Breath of the Wild.

And so they come across this giant open area and we see the corpse of a dehydrated body of Ganondorf. Man, when he comes alive, that is just a chilling cutscene. And I love how they depict him and introduce him into this world.

yeah it is it is one of the the scarier things that's been in a zelda game right uh part of that is the the voice acting's kind of terrifying right um part of it's the presentation of this figure that is you know that looks like a dead person and they're you know coming alive and causing problems and um but yeah agreed it's it's an awesome

uh it's an awesome scene and it uh uh serves as a really great foundation to like launch things off right um and get you get you going into the game relatively quickly gives it a good grounding to like, you know, it's a challenge anytime you have a franchise like this where it's like, okay, we're going to have a sequel, but we got to have the main character.

start over right like that's always the choice right do i do we start over or do we do something more like uh well like for instance the recent uh jedi survivor game right like you don't start over in that game right and they they make choices with how you're continuing to upgrade your character

around uh you know you pretty much have the stuff you had at the end of the last game um and so if you're gonna go the way where you you're kind of doing a reset you got to come up with a narrative reason for it and so this one's as good as any i think By the way, I love, and Zell is certainly not the first to do this, but I feel like it doesn't happen enough. I adore how when, like, it's clear that you're being, you know, Metroided, you're being, like, reset.

the UI displays your hearts going away. Because as a player, that is my main interaction with how... my health is represented in the game. So like use that UI, like in the cut scene. Like, I feel like I don't see that enough. You know what I mean? Like I would love, I like it's, it's rare. I feel like, I feel like it happens in Metal Gear Solid maybe a couple of times. Like if a character gets like.

punched in a cut scene like their health bar should like go down and it should show me because like i said that is my sort of interaction with the how a character feels pain in the game so like that little touch in the beginning was was really charming to me i really love that uh

They play with health meters more, again, at the end of the game in a way that I thought was really hilarious and surprising, but also intimidating and cool. Yeah, and it's, you know... it also has that like painful quality right especially if you were somebody who spent a lot of time in breath of the wild like getting those hearts it's like oh It's hitting you where it hurts. It establishes very early on that gloom is something that's going to physically incapacitate you.

And that's ultimately what it does. When you encounter it in the game, it takes away your hearts. It doesn't just hurt you like Malice did in Breath of the Wild. It actually takes away hearts until you're exposed to sunlight again. I will say, though, by the end of the game when I had like almost like a full row and then like a three quarters row of hearts.

I was just walking through gloom. It was fine. It like really, truly didn't matter after a certain point. I was just like, I'm not even going to build anything to... travel over this i'll just walk right through i'll be all right i'm i'm curious maybe you know i don't know that i encountered it but maybe it was it was like side quests or things like that that i've never ran into but

Do you have a sense of how explicit they are about the connection between Ganondorf in this game and the stuff in Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon, and all that kind of thing? Is it meant to be...

I mean, I read it, certainly read it. I interpreted it as like, you know, all that stuff in Breath of the Wild was almost like just the... uh the evil of ganondorf exuding that out into the world and almost was like a hint of where we were going to be going but i don't know is that so Calamity Ganon, from my understanding, was essentially like the essence of Ganondorf's hatred from beneath.

hyrule castle and every several thousand years that essence escapes and causes a calamity and the one that ended up creating the events and actually overthrowing the kingdom of hyrule was the great calamity that was depicted in breath of the wild and all the other times like you know when they had the divine beasts and the guardians they were able to stop one of the calamities

And then Ganon was like, oh, well, I've learned my lesson. I'm going to actually infect those and turn them against the people of Hyrule. And that's what ended up sealing Hyrule's fate prior to the events of Breath of the Wild. So that was kind of the way it was. kind of manifesting out of Ganondorf. And if you there's actually a tablet that you can find in Hyrule Castle that says Hyrule Castle was built exactly where it was.

Because that is where Ganondorf was buried and they wanted to put something there so that people would never. stumble upon them or it would be really hard to stumble upon him either by accident or in the search of finding him and resurrecting him so you know that that is kind of like the the reason that it was built there and not somewhere maybe like

the great plateau where you would expect like a kingdom to be, to be based. Right. Yeah. I mean, look, hindsight's 2020, but when we want to get rid of nuclear reactors, we don't build them under like major, you know, inhabited castles. We kind of put them out.

the middle of nowhere where people can interact them but you know i'm i'm not a a city builder for hyrule so what do i know but by the way that would be a very fun genre i've always talked about like other genres the zelda series could go like

a Hyrule-building sim game would be very fun. I've talked about roguelite games where you control Ganon trying to overthrow Hyrule Castle, and every time you die... you you are reborn in a different art style and you're reborn and there's a different link that you have to try to beat and like you just keep going until you win and like every time you learn like a different strategy you could take out i've talked about that like i've talked about other

genres of the Zelda franchise but yeah Hyrule buildings or yeah building sim would be very fun now that you mention it. Oh, I should introduce you to a little game called Tears of the Kingdom, Brian, where you can build whatever you want with Ultrahand. So in that moment, when Ganondorf just covers Link with Gloom...

We get three major events. One, it removes his hearts and his stamina. It makes him kind of back to the base version of this character that we saw in the beginning of Breath of the Wild. And close for some inexplicable reason. Rauru never explains why he has... to take link's shirt and pants yeah you know whatever well we had to keep this game rated e 10 plus right yeah so let him keep his clothes that's the that's what added the 10 plus way to do it um

but also i think the real reason that raru had to like change his clothes is link's arm was just destroyed in this and he had to have his arm replaced completely so that probably involves some sort of surgical procedure or magic incantation of like Yeah, doctors usually remove your pants when they do surgery on your arm. They were covered in gloom, Kyle. It probably was covered in gloom. I actually will genuinely accept that as a... You gotta launder those gloom clothes.

They didn't have a chemical shower down there. It's not revealed, but they're actually at the dry cleaners and you can get them back later. You got to go to the Hyrule dry cleaners over in Hateno Village. Yeah, you can't just throw those in the washing machine. Gotcha. You got a light too. torches and you gotta uncover a chest yeah right and then finally it also destroys the master sword which is a very very big moment um we see that the master sword even in a destroyed state as the shard

flies at Ganondorf, it does cut his cheek. And you see the blood boiling, which means like, you know, it does even in a destroyed state have the power to destroy evil. It just, you know, if it was only like... two inches to the left maybe it would have been a little bit more successful in doing it in this early early state but like you know that

moment when Ganondorf feels it cut across his cheek and he's just like he has kind of his Thanos in Infinity War moment where he's like all that for a drop of blood he was like is that the blade that repels evil and is like such a puny weapon could never stand a chance against my might and you're like oh god this this guy is is kind of horrific just give me 70 to 100 hours and we'll meet again we'll see in a little bit yeah

But yeah, that moment really stuck out to me as like, this is kind of the proper way to introduce Ganondorf and show that he is a threat when he immediately destroys the weapon that the goddess Hylia forged to defeat him. And he's like, oh yeah. I may be a dehydrated mess and I haven't been able to stand upright for thousands upon thousands of years, but I can easily just basically throw out this stuff that comes out of me. I don't know how we describe it.

But it immediately destroys Link's arm, the hero who is destined to defeat Ganondorf, destroys the weapon that was forged by a goddess to defeat him. And it, you know, sets all this in motion. And then Ganondorf... raises hyrule castle out of the ground and basically starts spreading the gloom and his influence of over the creatures that his minions across the land of hyrule and then also destroys the tomb that was that was

designed to seal him away. And it pulls Zelda basically towards the depths. But before Link tries to jump and save her, she, and by the way, he fails in saving her. She teleports somewhere, we think. And the arm of Rauru, as we come to find out, which was the arm that was stealing Ganondorf in place, saves Link, pulls him back up, and then we just kind of cut to the next part, right?

and we see that link has awakened in the great sky island and we have to find these these memories or what we assume are memories but they're actually glimpses into the past where we kind of really get the the namesake of the franchise the legend of zelda and we we learn about her history as she has traveled back tens of thousands of years back to what is the founding of hyrule essentially

Yeah, I think that first memory that you find, that first tear that you find, where you pretty quickly are like, oh, I see what's happening here. Like, I thought that was a really good hook.

uh into like explaining what's going on where zelda is why you want to go pursue the rest of the tiers like i i thought that was really interesting and then like on a larger scale i also appreciated that it was like sort of solved the problem of breath of the wild and frankly a lot of zelda games where it's like why is link just like

messing around like what you know like why is he off buying property and like helping someone campaign for like a real mayor re-election at deno where it's like well zelda's in trouble but like she's she's not here

You know, at least you don't think she's there. She's in the past. And I liked sort of sort of peeling back that onion of like, what is happening? Why is she there? Are we going to meet her again? Like, I like that sort of build up. Yeah, I. I really dig the sort of epic quality it adds to the experience of having this sense of, you know, this gradually unfolding story of Zelda in the past.

you know you really almost get you get more story in this game about zelda than you do about like link i mean link certainly goes on adventures and meet some weird people who have him go on side quests and things like that right but there's not a lot of that that's especially memorable whereas like i think if you especially for people who took the time and i think probably most people do to track down all those different tiers

Those are the big story beats are the ones that happened, you know, a long, long, long time ago. And the idea that, you know. it's it's feeding into this like the thing that you need to bring down this great evil um that is that's literally zelda pouring her her heart into it uh over over thousands of years effectively right um is a is a really um powerful and exciting idea um and and a way to emphasize the importance of her as a involved party in sort of winning the day at the end.

So I don't know. I really like that whole loop. I did find myself wondering, to circle back to the whole thing about Ganondorf and the space underneath the castle, like... What's Ganondorf doing all this time? I mean, if you think about it, you kind of just find him where you initially found him, right? Does he do anything in the interim other than just kind of hanging out down in a cave? I think he's just leaking.

I think he's just hurting and leaking his calamity everywhere. He's like being Zelda. He's like tricking people out. Yeah. I mean, is that truly him though? Or is it like a vision of Zelda? I was never totally clear on that point. It's probably like a Last Jedi situation, right? Yeah, that's how I read it. that like he's like uh sending that it's like a spell that he's sending out into the world or something yeah it's almost like a gloom like clone a doppelganger manifested by gloom because

We see Zelda pop up several places and not the least of which is in one of these flashbacks where, you know, we see Sonya having a private meeting with Zelda. And then the moment Sonya turns her back. Zelda, this Zelda that we think is the real Zelda turns out to be the doppelganger and tries to assassinate her. And then the real Zelda saves her using the recall ability. However...

as soon as Sonya turns back around and is like, oh, I knew you weren't the real Zelda, Ganondorf strikes from the shadow. So it wasn't actually the real, it wasn't actually Ganondorf in that role, right? So the way that I picked up, it was a projection. So the way that I kind of...

thought of like what ganondorf is doing is he's just using all this time to kind of regain his strength after being sealed away for tens of thousands of years and you know when we finally do get to the face off it you've seen that he has regained his strength Yeah, it feels to me like you should maybe just put some bombs at the top of his cavern and set him off.

problem solved let's put the pieces of the master sword in like a frag grenade yeah and it'll kind of spread out i was gonna ask uh just in terms of the order of stuff you guys did Because if you do the tears of the dragon, you can figure out Zelda story and what happened to her. And then separately from that, after you do the temples and then go to Hyrule Castle, there's kind of like the face off of, oh, this wasn't Zelda.

Was that the reveal for you or did you see the memories first? Memories first for me. Those were pretty beeline for me. Like once I understood that these were. like story things because i like zelda story i want to know what's going on so like i did the uh the towers and the tears and i think i maybe even did i might have done all of them before

even finishing all the dungeons, I think. I did as well. I had done all of the towers first, and then if I saw a glyph on a hillside or something, I would go do that while I was there. And then I did all the tiers. And then I was like, oh, I should probably go do the first dungeon. Oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, I think the folks I've talked to about the game, definitely, like, it feels like the chasing down the tiers becomes a very early priority. It's a good reward for doing them, yeah.

It is, and it's a potent case for me when, like, you know, I've sometimes had conversations with people over the years about, like, why do games always try to force these story stuff down my throat? Like, why do I care? And I think the fact that, like, so many people in a game where the story is handled thoughtfully and in an interesting way like this is, prioritize that.

ahead of you know getting some awesome weapon or getting the uh more hearts or something like that i think is a is a is a potent argument for why like um storytelling can be a reward in its own right right um and and that there is very good reason to invest in that and make sure that it's done in a way that's surprising and compelling in this case you know i think one of the most intricate and challenging things that the designers managed to do with Tears of the Kingdom.

is create these layers of like you're going through the dungeons you're going through the master sword quest you're going through the tears storyline to find out what happened to zelda in the past um and a few other slightly more minor things, and you can kind of hit them in any order, and it always works.

right um and that like the the rest of the system sort of adapt and understand that like um that's what's going on and and characters sort of respond in kind in ways that make sense for where you are in that that process i find that really really interesting um even the fact that like

the story itself of the finding these tiers there's not really an order that you find them in you don't go from like you know one two three four five you're finding the almost like pages of a book that you're pulling together and researching this moment in the past. And it doesn't matter what order you find them in, it ends up being cool because you're piecing it together like a puzzle.

So I just want to go over real quick some of the major beats of this kind of historical look at the founding of Hyrule in the era that was kind of like the rise of Ganondorf. So basically, you know, he's the Gerudo, the lone Gerudo male that exists at this point in time. And he's just kind of like a warrior that is... extremely skilled and also a powerful sorcerer and i think i may have your answer for what gloom even is

And that is when he gets the secret stone, which is first revealed to him as kind of Hyrule's power. It's like how they're so powerful is he sends this invading force of Maldugas, which are like those giant sandworms. towards the kingdom of Hyrule and Rauru, Sonya and Zelda combine their power to shoot like this light beam at them and just basically wreck these very powerful beasts. And that's when Gandalf was kind of like, oh, I need to get me one of those secret stones.

So he goes and like, you know, Rauru's ability is amplified by light. It turns out that it doesn't really give you power. It just amplifies power that you already have. So, you know, it amplifies Zelda and Sonya's ability to manipulate time and it.

gives it amplifies raru's command of light so he's able to blast these powerful light beams because the secret stone but the power of light was always in him it was just kind of like amplified by these stones so When Ganondorf does kill Sonya, as we discussed, and betrays Rauru and Sonya... He takes the stone and it rewrites it basically as like his stone, which basically is like an amplification of darkness. And that is the first time that we see him use gloom in this storyline.

is he blasts it at Rauru. Yeah, when Rauru appears before him and Rauru uses the light to kind of repel it, which also works in the gameplay, right? Because light is the only thing that can really destroy the effects of Gloom.

So when Ganondorf uses Gloom, that's probably his secret stone ability, right? He can, just as Rauru can blast forward a giant blast of light, Ganondorf can blast a giant... beam of darkness so that's essentially my read on what gloom is is it's his secret stone ability yeah that makes sense so uh yeah after that uh you know

Hyrule is basically on its last legs and Zelda and Rauru basically decide to gather the leaders of the various groups that are around Hyrule. So you have the Gorons, the Rito, the Zora. various other leaders Gerudo and the Rudos are like sorry yeah well apparently Ganondorf yeah well apparently Ganondorf killed or tried to kill all the Gerudo that did not join his cause

And so basically they gather the leaders from all these different groups around Hyrule and Rauru gives them all secret stones. And in addition to his sister Minoru, who is the only other Zonai remaining that we that we know of. And they try to mount a final offensive against Ganondorf. And basically, Ganondorf disposes of them pretty easily. And then Rauru's like, all right, well...

last-ditch effort, we have to seal this guy. So Rauru sacrifices himself to seal Ganondorf away with his hand, and that is ultimately what brings us forward to... kind of Ganondorf state that we find him in the beginning of tears, the kingdom. So yeah, a lot to cover there. And, but ultimately what happens is link.

in the present time, takes the Master Sword, which has been destroyed by Ganondorf's gloom, and sends it back in time through this pedestal. And essentially, it seems like it's maybe like an extremely powerful version of Recall, where he's sending it back in time.

And it arrives to Zelda. And Zelda is like, the only way that we can fix this is by restoring the power of the Master Sword, which... can be done through bathing it in sacred light that's how it was healed from the the damage that was done to it in the great calamity they just they put it in the the hyrule forest with the deku tree and it bathed in that sacred light for 100 years

It's in a much worse state this time, so it needs to go back even further to kind of bathe in sacred light. And Zelda is like, well, how do I get it to Link? And we want to talk about the other stuff that I just covered before we go to... what zelda's course of action was to to send the master sword forward in time big i don't know quote unquote twist right this is the wildest thing i haven't talked to anyone about this yet

I, the, the cut scene where her eyes change is so wild. I love it. It really is. But so essentially, uh, in a conversation with Minoru or Minoru, I forget how you pronounce it exactly, but, uh, Rauru's sister. She mentions of a forbidden practice called draconification, which is basically you swallow your secret stone and you lose yourself.

and become an eternal dragon. And that is what Zelda does. She's like, hey, well, I've got to just, like, basically bring the Master Sword to Link in real time. And so she does that. She swallows the secret stone, transforms into the Dragon of Light, and the Master Sword is embedded in her skull. She loses who she is, her mind, her body, her soul.

all transformed into this eternal dragon that is just going to fly around Hyrule for tens of thousands of years. Wow. What a plot twist there. It was cool. I finished the game and I was watching my wife. play and there's that really already iconic moment like right at the beginning where you do your first skydive and you're falling uh on sky islands and the logo appears and everything and zelda is flying there in the background

And I was like, God, that is so smart. Because it's like when you're as a new player, you're like, oh, cool. Yeah, the dragons are back. Oh, this looks so cool. But then like watching over my wife's shoulder, I was like.

oh wow that's like that they knew what they were doing there they're like of course they're gonna put her there you know when your wife was playing that moment did you say oh that's zelda oh god she's like yeah that's the game i'm playing right there do you all think there's meant to be an implication that the other dragons uh are also like kind of came out of that process

Yeah, that's interesting. That hadn't really occurred to me because they are also in Breath of the Wild, and that doesn't mean that they couldn't have been.

but i think they have dragons come from in this would that mean there are more secret stones that's my question i think so i think absolutely there were because you know raru had several of the secret stones but who's to say he had all of them yeah i don't know that's also the they're like the three goddess i don't think it's the exact names but their names are similar to the three goddesses from like ocarina of time so i don't know if that was like

how they ascended to godliness was becoming the dragon, but I don't know. Yeah, it's entirely possible. I mean, there are so many theories out there about like...

how this all fits in with the continuity of the rest of the timeline. Like some people swear that this breaks the timeline. Other people say, no, it's not retconning anything. It's more just like kind of just like... playing off the themes that these are legends that have somewhat been lost to history so there's going to be some inconsistent telling of these tales and so like the imprisoning war

Maybe it's the same imprisoning war that we've seen in other games. Maybe it's a completely different imprisoning war. Maybe these are different Ganondorf's that have appeared over the entire long history of Hyrule. And they've both been imprisoned or they've all been imprisoned in different ways. Like, you know, we've seen, Kyle and I did a very long episode about the Zelda timeline leading up to Tears of the Kingdom. You could find that on the podcast feed of All Things Nintendo.

if you want to learn more about that. But yeah, there's several different versions of Ganondorf that pop up over the course of the Zelda timeline, as well as different Ganons. Who's to say these are all the same version of Ganondorf? Who's to say it's the same retelling of the same imprisoning war? It could just be different wars happening that have the same name because...

Hyrule's been around for a long time, it turns out. And a lot of these stories may just be lost to legend. Like you saw in the school, when you go to the school. they there's like kids even though it's only been a few years since the great since like calamity ganon was defeated they're like The Great Calamity was just like a fairy tale, right? And you have to go and show them a picture of like, oh no, it was a real thing that happened. Yeah, that's funny that you have to convince the class.

I want to share quickly my bizarre trajectory. I'll try to do this as quickly as possible because I got all the tears. I learned about Zelda. I understood that like she had the master sword in some way, right?

uh or something like it's related to this sort of revelation and so where i was at in the game at that point is i'd beaten the four dungeons and i went to the castle and met you know the zelda projection and i i did the fight in the in the apex of the castle where you fight the the the ganons and i didn't finish it i i think i died i i had gotten it down to like half health or something i was like you know what i i think i'm supposed to have the

Master Sword for this, so I'm going to go explore for a while and try to find the Master Sword. I could not find Zelda Dragon. For whatever reason, the dragon's kind of like, it's not random, but I didn't know the cadence where they showed up. I just never, I didn't see her again. for whatever reason. And I was like, I don't think the Master Sword is going to be in the Lost Woods again. That would just be too obvious, you know, after Breath of the Wild. And then in the sort of souther...

yeah, southern region in the sky, there's a very cloudy, stormy area. And, um...

Now, there is a quest where you can go along and you can actually remove the storms from that location. And it makes it much more navigable. But, like, I didn't do that. And I went to that area and... um made my way through it with the storm raging and it was it was actually pretty cool and exciting and difficult to get through it with limited visibility and electricity like sparking all the time but i got through there

and that's when i found like the owl mask which sends you on the path to do the fifth dungeon and i was like as i was doing it i was like this does not feel like i'm heading towards the master sword i don't know what i found here and I was like halfway through the dungeon. I had partially built the robot when I looked at the map and realized I was in a fifth dungeon. I didn't even realize what was happening. And I...

Loved that. And that's just something that wouldn't have happened to me if I had looked anything up or had a walkthrough or anything like that. In my sort of... fight to find the master sword i stumbled across the game's like surprise fifth dungeon and it was just such an awesome way to do that and then

And then after that, I figured out how to get into the Lost Woods. You go underneath, and then you come above, and then I talk to the Deku tree, and he actually marked Zelda on my map. Like, that's one way to do it. Like, you can come across her naturally, but he will mark her. And then I went and got the Master Sword.

and then I went and defeated the Ganons in the castle and then the cutscene after that they were like surprised there's a fifth sage and there's a fifth dungeon and it was it was great i loved it because the cut scene is like they're talking they're talking and then you know link does that thing where he talks but it's just like animation there's you know there's it's an implication that he's saying things and everyone was like

Oh, you already found it. That's incredible. Like we didn't even know it existed. You already found it. And I was like, Oh, I love that. That's the path that I took. I, I, it, it just like, it cemented my like love of like, don't look things up. Because then you might stumble across these like crazy secrets out of order. And I just adored that that's the way I ended up finding out. I love that that was my trajectory of playing it. I wanted to ask. Yeah, Kyle, I wanted to ask you specifically of.

So you had Monero when you went to do the like Phantom Zelda fight. Yeah. Was was she in any cut scenes or did it just like omit her and then she was in the battle with you? The Phantom Ganon fight, there's not really a lot of cut scenes. So I don't think she was there, but I could be wrong about that. I think there's one like when you show up and then the actual sages come to help you. But I guess if you had already started it, maybe that didn't happen a second time.

Yeah, I mean, once you go underground, she's there in all the cutscenes and everything. I mean, to me, it was like, oh, this is a weird way to do it, but I guess this is how you're supposed to do it. So, yeah, it was weird. And I also wanted to ask, had you been to Hyrule Castle before that? Or was that your first visit there? I had been there before. I went there pretty early because I found the blue tunic by accident.

uh by just like you know you see torches in a zelda game like those suckers up and i found the tunic and then it was funny because i when i visited zelda's house later you go find her diary and she's like oh i i've you know i've i've remade link's tunic he's going to be so excited when i give it to him it's in the castle he's got to light these two torches and again just like you know earlier when everyone was surprised that i'd already found the fifth sage i was like

I'm wearing it, Zelda. I didn't need this diary entry. So let's talk a little bit about Link's journey here. I think a lot of the story is hidden behind all the Zelda stuff that we already covered. But Link's basic journey is he's going to these four... So you have Rito Village, Goron City, Gerudo Town, and Zora's Domain. And you're basically helping these people who are dealing with the various effects of the gloom that is escaping.

So what is it? The sandstorm in the Gerudo Desert that has the Gibdo invading. You have the poisoned water in Zora's Domain.

You have the giant storm that's raging over top of Rito Village, which is causing a huge cold front in the village, and everybody's really freezing. And then you have... um what's what's the last goron city having the kind of the stones that are like mind-altering drugs essentially uh yeah it was interesting i loved seeing how all of the different people and races were affected by the gloom that Ganondorf was sending out into the world.

Some of them were even like, oh, yeah, we saw Zelda. She was telling us to do this. And it's so interesting that we get that back from it. But also... you know, we get the return of dungeons. And these dungeons do play into the final battle as well. So did you guys all have a favorite dungeon? Go to Matt first. I had a least favorite dungeon. Yeah, I know you did. What was that one?

the uh what's it even called it's the one that's underground fire dungeon fire dungeon yeah i i i found that one to it was all one of the only places in the game that i was like i don't like this i'm not having fun with this The other dungeons I thought were stellar. And most other navigable spaces in the game world I was really impressed by. But I found myself really like...

Maybe I was just approaching it wrong, but there was something that felt really slow and stilted about the Fire Dungeon. Is it like being on the tracks and having to get on the tracks?

i think it was partially that and like always needing to like okay well now i don't have my minecart anymore so i gotta go back and find a different minecart and um you know they they it's designed in such a way that there's lots of spaces where you need to get up high but you can't use ascend like we were talking about earlier in the conversation and so you're just like okay well i guess i just gotta climb this thing the outside of this structure

to get up to this spot and and you know especially after having the freedom of doing things in a way where you're not having to climb that way i it felt um i don't know not fun um but uh I really, on the other hand, I think my favorite, I really liked all the stuff down in Gerudo Town. I liked the... Especially for some reason, I found the going out into the sandstorm and creating the pyramid of light connection thing. I thought that was really fun and creative.

i was stuck on that for so long it was like it was definitely one of those things where it's like it doesn't hold your hand too much right you just got to kind of like okay well i guess i'm going out here and

Well, now it's pointing off in this direction. I guess I'll run off into the sand this way. And that whole sequence was cool. And then the idea of once you actually get into the dungeon itself... that kind of the verticality of that one was really interesting to me and creating i mean the light beam puzzles are a um

I don't know, kind of a video game staple in many ways. And that also means that they can be very tired and very sort of boring if they're not done well. And the ones in that section of the game are done really well.

They were fun and interesting and not stuff that I felt like I'd seen a billion times before in other games. So yeah, that was my take. What about you, Kyle? Do you have a favorite dungeon? So the Minoru... one that we're talking about where you're building the robot it's not that i really loved that dungeon necessarily but it had one puzzle that was it was pretty simple that just i really loved where you have a few fans and you have a hook

and you're trying to get the hook to stay on the rack, or I guess you're carrying one of the body parts down. And I just loved the sort of experimentation I ended up doing with that, where I was like...

I ended up putting a fan on top of the hook to kind of push it down so it wouldn't fly off. I don't know if you guys solved it the same way. But it was a moment very late in the game where I was just like, God, Ultrahand is so... like interesting and diverse and like in the way you can approach puzzles and just even just solving that one puzzle where i tried a dozen things and eventually landed on like using the two fans in very specific ways like that was just like

It's just a reminder of everything I love about a good Zelda puzzle where it's just like, it's fun to experiment with it. It's fun to have the revelation that this is less complicated than I thought it was going to be. And it was fun too.

ultimately solve it which is like that's like the best kind of zelda puzzle you know where you you overthink it then it becomes it's actually ultimately a simple solution and you feel a little dumb but you're also really proud of yourself like yeah so i that that happened uh late in the game for me which i really enjoyed

So both the ones that you guys have brought up, Matt on the negative side, the fire, the fire dungeon and Kyle with the kind of the rebuilding of the robot for the fifth sage. I cheesed both of those. There was one. part in particular where i i could not figure out in the uh in the fire dungeon at matt i did the exact same thing you did where i was like i don't know how to get up there i don't feel like figuring out this railway system i'm just going to climb up the structure

and find little ways that I can like rest and recover my stamina and then climb some more. But for the fifth sage, there was one part where there were like two narrow walls and I had to get it across this lava. pit that was like in the middle and i was like i've tried everything i have no idea so i just used uh rockets i had a bunch of rockets and i like just aimed them and it i i threaded the needle so perfect i was so proud of myself but then afterwards i was like

How the hell did you actually, were you supposed to solve that? Because I tried it for probably a good 30 minutes, like different things that I thought I was supposed to do with like the wheels that they provided and everything. And it just, I couldn't figure it out. So I just. blasted it across with rockets that's the solution man yep exactly there's definitely i i would be really surprised if any given player doesn't have at least a couple spots in the game

that you feel that way about where you're like, I didn't ever really solve that, but I solved it. You know what I mean? Like, like it was clear that there was a more intentional way to approach this. And instead I, you know, I knew how to turn this into a plane, so I did that. Well, and AGO Numa told me...

AGL Numa in my interview with him told me that that is by design. Like they're like, yeah, we wanted to give people like a way to like, yeah, there's an intentional way, like a way that we designed it that you're supposed to solve it.

But people love figuring out things on their own and we want to give them the opportunity to do so. If they want to figure out some way that we never thought of, then that's cool. They like cheating and we want to give them the ability to cheat these puzzles. What about you, Charles?

I was going to say, just on the note of that, I would love to play a modded version of this game where you have infinite Zonai rockets and just see how much I could cheese stuff and how fast I could get through things of like... Yeah, I just think it's fun. My favorite was also probably the Garuda one. I really liked how something about that one really felt like I was exploring a temple.

where things were being hidden from me rather than like this is a puzzle in a video game where I'm supposed to make my way through it like the way I would be like oh okay I can see on the map there's something on this level so I'm going to climb up here and then push this rock out of the way like I thought that was really fun.

um the moment that stood out to me the most out of all of them though is the boss fight in the rito dungeon yes that was like the music there goes so hard i love like good a good flying section in a game where you're just like coasting through the air um i also i i played the game and then i would watch my partner play the game and i was ahead of her because i just have more free time and watching her do things made me feel

stronger about the things i liked and or disliked so like the the goron dungeon i i was similar to you guys i was like i don't know maybe i'm just stupid like maybe i'm missing something obvious and then she also struggled with it and i was like okay um but with kolgera

I just did arrows on all those weak points because I was like, Yeah, that's what you I don't know. It's a boss. You shoot him with your weapon. And then she was like, Oh, no, I'm just going to dive through all of these. And it like didn't even occur to me. And I love seeing that. Yeah, it went through it.

When the shells come off, because if you think about it, there's all the puzzles where there's the breakable ice that you can dive through and then there's the bouncy thing. So that's like a whole thing of... when his shells break off you can just dive down through him and i was like that's so cool that makes me like i loved this and now i like it more that was by far my favorite boss fight for that very reason yeah i i i you

I don't know how much you guys explored the underground, but you come across those bosses again underground multiple times. And Kolgara was one where every time I saw him in the distance, I think there's like two or three Kolgaras down there. I was like, hell yeah.

Let's do it. That fight's fun. But I never tried diving through. That's cool. I wish I had tried that. So let's talk about the depths a little bit here. We've talked about the dungeons. By the way, my favorite was probably also the Gerudo one, but I really liked the Rito one as well. I actually really didn't like the Zora boss. I thought that boss was really annoying to fight with all like the kind of the. Yeah.

whatever it was it wasn't gloom that it was spraying everywhere right it was it was like mud apparently uh alex what is superpower alex van aiken built a like a vehicle to drive around and he had like the the sort of hoses like off the side so he could just drive around and like clean it up i was like oh that's that's that's so smart it worked really well apparently um

Yeah, the depths. I was not ready for that. We knew about the Sky Islands, and I was already intimidated at the prospect of exploring those. And then I already knew Hyrule was huge from my time playing Breath of the Wild.

When you go under the depths and you find out about them through like, you know, going to lookout landing for the first time after you come down off the Great Sky Island, they're like, oh yeah, we need you to go down and like explore the depths a little bit. I think they want a picture of something, right? and so you're like yeah there's this chasm over here you can go down there and i'm like thinking it's just gonna be like these little segmented caverns

And then you go down there, and it's just this long freefall, and you hear that single note play. It's so ominous when that note plays. The Inception trailer, right? Oh, God. Yeah, man. That... hits every single time when you descend and like you're like oh yeah this is like not a happy place that you're going to and

then you realize this is not just like segmented caverns, like kind of like the sky islands are like, you know, you can go from one to the other if you have like the right ultra hand abilities or like you launch yourself in the right way or whatever. But no, this is just one giant interconnected underground of Hyrule itself. And it almost makes the Breath of the Wild Hyrule feel small, which I never thought I would be able to say.

But the fact that you have basically a thing that's as large as Hyrule underneath Hyrule to explore, and that blew me away when I first realized that. I was... I found myself just thinking about how geologically unstable Hyrule is. Yeah. I mean, like, there's not a lot holding that thing up, but once you explore the depths for a while... I mean, there's a few pillars? Really? Everywhere there's a river. That's a giant pillar, right? Is that better?

If all the columns in your building, if all the structural supports are full of water, it's not really promising. Whoever built this world was not building it to last. I feel like that could be the sequel. is gone, everybody. It's finally just collapsed. But yeah, it's cool. It's a cool sense of discovery, right? Just the sense of scale there is exciting.

i don't know if i totally ever warmed to the like it's always dark here thing um personally i loved the sky island stuff right i love being able to get up high you're looking down the sense of like guy diving and the total ignorance of the idea of terminal velocity when you smash into water um like i love all that stuff uh but the like the stuff down way low

uh i was i was more ambivalent about because i really liked that sense of of like this is a really big space and as you're exploring it more and you're you know you are turning the lights on literally um you increasingly get that sense of the scale but it's also like um because it's not you know it's not populated in the same way right like obviously there's monsters down there and stuff but it

those towns and things like that that you have up on the surface, there's a weird kind of empty quality to the depths as well that made it maybe less fun for me to be in that space. No, I totally agree, Matt. And I found every... you know, I forget what they're called, but they're like, I found every light route. I explored it fully and I was kind of ultimately like underwhelmed because there's like the stuff you're finding down there is like bosses you've already fought.

uh enemies you don't feel like fighting there's there's clothing down there which is cool um but it was just ultimately like It was fine. The scale of it was impressive, but it was kind of like the last thing I did. right like i really tears the kingdom is one of those games that comes along every now and then they don't come along very often where it's like i'm finding things i want to do because i don't want to stop playing because i love it so much

And exploring underground was like the last of those things. I was like, well, I'm kind of out of stuff I really want to do. So I'm going to go and explore around down there. And there's like, there's some. fights you can do there's like some coliseum battles that have cool rewards like that's where you find stuff like majora's mask and that kind of thing um but it was yeah and because it is truly like a reflection of the above ground like one to one it's

It was just kind of like, it was cool, but not like the sort of, it was low on the list of things I like about Tears of the Kingdom. It's kind of low. Sure. And let's talk, let's transition. to talking about kind of like the end game here, right?

put in all this time kyle you said it so perfectly in your breath of the wild review where it's like by the time i was approaching hyrule castle it felt like a lifetime's worth of preparation to like get to that moment it felt like you had gone on this journey with link truly from like being physically incapacitated to like feeling like you're ready to take on ganon and in this case ganondorf and tears the kingdom replicates that feeling so well and

So there's really three main things that you need to do to wrap up the story here, right? You have to go to Hyrule Castle and investigate the Zelda Doppelganger. You need to retrieve the Master Sword. and you need to descend into the depths below Hyrule Castle to face Ganondorf once and for all. And I did these completely out of order. I was trying to get the Master Sword without talking to the Deku Tree, and...

I was going to Hyrule Castle to figure out the Zelda doppelganger. And then I was like, oh, there's like a chasm underneath Hyrule Castle. I bet there's something cool down there. Let me go down there. And then the more I went deeper, I was like, oh, there's a lot of really strong enemies down here. And then eventually it was like...

There's a battle about to happen with all the sages by my side. What's going on here? And then eventually I was like, oh, okay, this is the end game. So you didn't have the Master Sword at that point? I had the Master Sword. I did not go to Hyrule Castle. Did you have all four sages? I had all four sages. So I did the battle without the fifth sage because I didn't know the fifth sage existed because I didn't go to Hyrule Castle.

essentially what happens in that battle is like after you beat the waves of enemies which is such a cool way to play that out where it literally feels like you're leading your army Ganondorf sending his army at you but once you beat the waves of enemies

they like all the bosses show up and the sage is like i've got this i know how to defeat this guy but because i didn't have the fifth sage i had to fight like the robot thing at the end of those waves and i kept getting killed by i kept getting killed by the robot And then it reset me back to the start of the wave based battle. So I was like getting so frustrated, but I eventually beat.

the robot after beating all of the enemies and then it gave me a checkpoint before the final battle against Ganondorf so I highly recommend if you're listening to this for some reason and haven't beaten the game Make sure you go to Hyrule Castle before going underneath Hyrule Castle. Yeah, that fight seems like it would be tough on foot. Because when you do it in the dungeon, you have your mech or whatever. Yeah, no, that's rough.

Does it cover the floor in gloom too? Does he? I don't think so. No. Okay. Then it would be like door line impossible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a challenge. But yeah. So. What sticks out to you guys with those three quests? Getting the Master Sword, going to Hyrule Castle, and then going beneath Hyrule Castle for the final battle.

uh if i can go first yeah of course um the so my first thing i got i got the master sword after the second dungeon i did rito and then i did goron and one of the things i most enjoyed about the game is i would just think like the master sword's got to be around here somewhere like just feeling like i got to do stuff the first thing i did was i wanted to go to tarrytown because that was my favorite quest from the last game and i wanted to be like what's what is the town i built how was it

how is it doing um but i did get the master sword i liked that it's like stamina rings instead of the hearts which is i was i was stocking up on hearts of like once i get there i'm gonna get all the hearts and then i didn't um i think i found it before the fire temple and then i just needed more stamina and then i ended up getting it um had you done all the tears first or

I don't think so. I think I, well, so I got, there is a Master Sword shaped tier that is near Death Mountain. And that's where you see Zelda. holding it. And she has a little flashback to the moment where Monero is like, if you eat the stone, you're going to be a dragon and you shouldn't do that. And it doesn't say that she's doing it, but there are enough pieces there that I was like, oh, my God, is Zelda the dragon? Yeah. And then I went underneath Korok Forest.

killed the the gloom hands we haven't talked about at all those things are terrifying and then after doing that and then a phantom ganon shows up i was like this is the worst day of my life I also, I only had Tulin. It's a lot easier when you have more sages because they can take more of the hands. I only had Tulin and I was like, at least Tulin's got my back. And then they grabbed Tulin and I was like, oh no.

Anyways, fast forward through all that. I managed to barely win by throwing springs on the ground, jumping in the air, and then just like shooting them with arrows while I was suspended. They're tough. They are tough. And then I got the Master Sword. What was part two? Was it just the Sages? Going to Hyrule Castle. Going to Hyrule Castle. So I did that pretty much normal in order.

I did. I did actually discover. Yeah. And I had it. I had it for like two of the four or I guess three of the five. That's cool. Boss fights.

I did go underneath Hyrule Castle also, though, because I was like, I'm pretty sure I know where the Master Sword is. I got to find that Hylian shield. And then kept going and being like, at the end of this road, there's going to be a great shield waiting for me. And then all the... gloom boca blind spawn and there's a big health bar and i immediately teleported out um but i did that stuff all pretty much in order um

And yeah, I think after my early Master Sword, it's a pretty boring standard playthrough. I did watch someone do a no weapons run where... you he played the game didn't use weapons the whole time would only hurt people using like throwing items and like recall and eventually there's some other sage abilities you can get that do damage. But there's some dungeons you can't beat because you can't use arrows or whatever. So when they went down there and did that...

It is cool to see that. Just like the first game, you have to fight all the bosses you haven't fought in order to get to Ganondorf, which I think is really cool. It's such an incredible... ending to this game, right? Doing all these things to square away the story and get final preparations to face off against Ganondorf. Yeah, I just want to touch quickly on like the, because I was in a position where I knew what I was into, right? I had done all the dungeons. I had the Master Sword.

I think they even say like, you got to go underground to finish the game. So like, I, I had no, I, it wasn't a mystery when I went down there, but I just love that sprint. Cause that's kind of how I approached it. I was just like, I wasn't stopping to fight the really powerful enemies on the way there.

but i loved it just like going deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and it was just like i love the way that felt just going down there and then yeah like you said brian the sort of the big conflict at the end with all the stages and everything was was a cool sort of uh appetizer to taking on Ganondorf do we want to talk about this Ganondorf battle before we wrap up like just kind of how it how it goes uh I know Matt's got to get out of here in a second but

Matt, how did you find this Ganondorf confrontation? I thought it was really cool. I would say the Ganondorf sword fight, I had different feelings about than the thing that follows it.

So to take the first part of that, I thought that the Ganondorf fight was very cool, and it made me kind of wish that the game had more true, like... master swordsman versus master swordsman sort of conflicts right because yeah there's some times that you you uh fight some other guys who have weapons but it's mostly just like little minions right um and i uh

I would have enjoyed, I think, having more of those fights where it's like, there's another guy who's got powers and who's got an awesome weapon, and I've got to just face off against them. I thought that part was very cool. I did think it was maybe...

a little strange to so profoundly double down on like the need for one consumable um in that fight right like i get that obviously you're fighting the guy that is the source of the gloom and all that kind of thing but i did feel a little strange to me that like i'd done all this work to to

get different food items and things like that but it was really only the ones that i'd infused sunday lions into yeah that had any relevance at all to that fight which felt a little strange to me and i didn't love that about that that combat um but not a big deal it was still a very cool fight and then it leads into i think one of the coolest moments in the last several years of gaming i mean the whole

um it's not hard per se it's it's really more of a payoff moment even though it's still in gameplay but that whole that whole sequence with the flying and the And the dragons and Zelda being there to help in her dragon form and all that kind of stuff is just really fun and brings you back. It kind of brings things full circle.

to the early part of the game when you appear up in the sky and you've got to figure out about skydiving and all that kind of stuff. And so I loved that whole sequence. And, you know, Brian, you and I have talked about this a little bit. One of the other things I really like about the way that the game wraps that section up is the way that it...

And this will seem like a weird thing, but it ties together a little bit with what Kyle was talking about with UI supporting the way that you feel as a player. And in this case, it was the way that they delivered objective completions at the end of the game I thought was really powerful and interesting. Because the concluding objective is not defeat Ganondorf. The final thing that you get...

is that you found and saved Zelda. And so it drives home that if you are Link and you are on this journey, like, yeah, yeah, I got to deal with the thing that's trying to destroy the world. kill Ganondorf, destroy the dragon, all that kind of stuff. But for Link, what it's really about is like saving and finding his princess. And for them reconnecting. And the fact that it has the one objective of you defeating...

Ganondorf, and then it's followed up by that objective completion of reconnecting with Zelda, I thought was really cool. So, you know, as a as a conclusion, I thought it really it worked really well. It supports it. Also, by the way, I think supports really well.

different interpretations of your understanding of the relationship between those two characters right they do a good job of keeping that open like is this just a a knight who is uh taking you know has sworn to protect this individual and that's what he's all about is this you know is there a romance there are they just really close that's left up to you to make that decision right um but any which way it it um allows you to maintain that the fantasy that you have about that

um and have it work so i thought i thought that whole that whole aspect that whole um concluding section was really fun yeah i also just on the ui topic which i i talked about earlier i love that in the ganondorf sword fight His health meter extends out like past what he thought it was supposed to. It was like it was funny.

Which I wasn't expecting. I was like, what a weird joke to have in the middle of this major boss fight. It felt like a joke to me, and I say that as a compliment. But then it is also intimidating. It is also scary, because it's like, oh my god, this guy has so much help.

So I just, I love that weird little touch. It just puts the, it makes it so the health bar is like it is centered, but then it like goes off center and it looks so stupid in the UI. I really love that bit. That was just, I was like. I was doing that fight at like two o'clock in the morning and it just like slayed me. I was like, this is so great. I love all this. Yeah. What a terrific finale to just an unbelievable game. The last question I'm going to ask you guys.

Nintendo said they kept the name secret for such a long time because it gave away too much about the game's story. Looking back now that we've all finished it, do you buy that explanation for why they kept the name secret?

I think you're misquoting them a little bit. I think it's like more nuanced than that. It's like, it's not that they was going to ruin the story. I think they were more saying like, we just don't want to reveal anything about the story. And this is a clue towards that. We want to keep everything a surprise.

So I don't know if it's quite, like, so black and white as that. But I will say, like, after finishing the sort of memories quest, I did have that moment, which I'm sure everyone did, where it's like, oh. That's why it's called Tears of the Kingdom. That makes sense. Fine, then I'll ask you guys one more question. They didn't answer. Now that we've had time to digest Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom for just under two months...

Where does this rank among your favorite games? Favorite Zelda games or favorite games? Either or. Wherever it would make the most sense relative to the list that you're going to present. I don't know if it's fundamentally like shakes up my personal favorite games of all time. But I do think it is objectively like that. When you strip away that whole kind of like rose-tinted glasses thing of the way we all have games that we look back on very fondly, it is objectively a...

easily among the best Zelda games if not the best Zelda game. It does so many of the things that have worked about prior entries. but introduces new ideas and handles them in such a way that they are just sort of seamless. The storytelling, as we've talked about pretty extensively, is much stronger here.

I think than it's really ever been before in terms of establishing the sort of like mythic legendary quality that you really feel like you're playing through and coming to understand a legend of Zelda. um and the creativity and the way that it has reach to people who like you know not even are playing the game but are still like wow this is so cool right look at the way they they built this super cool thing um

It's really strong. And it's the kind of game that, you know, if you're a... I mean, we've had a... Not for nothing, 2023 has had some very, very strong games for being halfway through the year. But I think if you're a game that's coming out in the second half of the year and hope, you know, crossing your fingers to get on a lot of, like, game of the year lists, you've got a hard path ahead. I mean, Zelda...

Even if it wasn't one of the, if it didn't totally hit for you personally, you almost kind of have to acknowledge that it really took over the conversation and people talking about games during the time that it was... it's been floating around out there and i think it'll continue to do so for a long while Kyle, real quick, where does it rank on your Zelda list and all-time list? I still don't know if I'm ready to answer that question, but it does not unseat Breath of the Wild for me.

personally but ocarina of time is your favorite right yeah that's just that's just locked in forever that's always going to be my favorite that's that's the game that's the reason i write about video games for a living like i just can't The impact of Ocarina of Time the first time I played it, it just will never be over.

We'll never be taken over by another game, and I've come to terms with that, and I understand that. But no, just right below Breath of the Wild for me is Tears of the Kingdom, because it feels like nothing will sort of...

overcome what was the first time I played Breath of the Wild. And the thing that I love about these games is the exploration aspect. And Tears of the Kingdom, just by the nature of taking place in the same world, sort of turns the volume down on the exploration aspect of it because I know the world pretty well.

And there's a lot of positives to that. And I think it's a cool thing. But I still, the first time I played Breath of the Wild versus the first time I played Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild is still sort of the winner for me personally. Sure. And Charles? Yeah, I mean, I think I like this game more than Breath of the Wild, but it's such a hard thing where I wouldn't like this game as much as I do if I hadn't also played Breath of the Wild. Like, it's so much of...

So much of my enjoyment of it is the way that it is such a good sequel in all the most important ways. But I lost my train of thought. Basically, you're saying that Breath of the Wild increased your enjoyment of Tears of the Kingdom. Yeah, I think... Here's what I was going to say. I've mentioned a shift in my personal game playing recently of being professional and thinking critically about most of the things I do. It's not very often I can sit down and play a game and...

That doesn't occur to me. Like, I'm not thinking like, woof, that's points off this or, oh, I think this could be.

you know implemented better this is like one of few games where i'm really sitting down and i'm like i love playing video games i want to play video games all the time this is the best thing in the whole world um and i think it is like rare and special for that to happen and this is one that like definitively does that yeah and for me you know breath of wild is still my favorite zelda game favorite game overall but i almost think that it's just because of like the foundational aspect of it

But I think Tears of the Kingdom might actually be, in a vacuum, a better game. But Breath of the Wild just wowed me in such a way when it came out that it... It's going to be hard to top. But I said that about Ocarina of Time 20 years prior and Breath of the Wild eventually unseated it.

But I think that's our rundown of kind of our spoiler-filled takes on The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. For those of you watching this on the Game Informer YouTube channel, You can actually get a weekly audio version of this show, which is called All Things Nintendo, either right here on YouTube. Or you can go to your favorite podcast platform. We're on Apple, we're on Google, we're on Spotify, you name it, pretty much everywhere else.

But thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in. Do me a favor if you haven't already. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, throw All Things Nintendo a five-star review. Hit that subscribe button. And if you want to get any questions or comments, then you can hit me up at allthingsnintendo at gameinformer.com or...

DM me on Instagram at Brian P. Shea. You can also join the Game Informer Community Discord, which is a perk for subscribing to our Twitch channel, even just for one month. Let's run down real quick. Matt, where can people find you online? I don't do a lot of social media stuff, but you can always check at Matthew R. Miller on Twitter. And otherwise, most of the things I have to share with the world, I do so through Game Informer channels.

Kyle, what about you? Twitter. I've been using Blue Sky a lot, so hit me up there. Yeah, Blue Sky is a fun one. I've recently started getting more active over there as well. And Charles, tell everyone where they can find you. ChuckDuck365 on Twitter. I did just make a Blue Sky, but I haven't really used it yet. But, yep. That is our show for this week. Thank you again, everyone, for tuning in. Take care. We'll see you next time.

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