Ben summons Justin Charity for a spoiler-free but in-depth discussion about Nintendo’s new The Legend of Zelda release for Switch, Echoes of Wisdom. After they give their high-level capsule reviews of the game, they catch up on some recent news, including the teaser for The Last of Us Season 2, the announcement of (and trailer for) Ghost of Yotei, the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld maker Pocket Pair (6:00). After that, they describe their experiences with Echoes, explore how it synthesizes aspects of its open-world and top-down predecessors, examine the contrast between playing as Zelda and playing as Link, and share their hopes for the future of the franchise (33:40).
Host: Ben Lindbergh Guest: Justin Charity Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal
Something that always stuns me are the ways dedicated players find ways to push the limits of the games they play. Whether it’s Animal Crossing designers who know the perfect way to line up buildings to fake certain perspectives, or a Tears of the Kingdom player who created an ultra-fast flying machine by holding the fan up in a particular way, I’ve always appreciated the commitment and creativity that goes into pushing a game to its limit. I was doing the rounds on Reddit when I saw something that truly astounded me: Reddit user Scalhoun03 created a completely wind-powered airship in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
The airship requires no energy to fly — meaning no Zonai charges or energy cells are needed to run it. It can fly through the air and sustain sustain flight at high altitudes seemingly indefinitely. The original post shows the ship flying through the skies of Hyrule with no input or energy. It’s only interrupted at the end when Scalhoun03 said they accidentally bumped the control stick. You can see a video of the build in action below.
The contraption appears to defy the laws of (Zelda) physics itself. Energy cells are a crucial and foundational aspect to building machines in the game. If you want to use Zonai devices like a fan or flame emitter, you have to increase Link’s maximum energy cell capacity. This is why you see so many of the top builders with big, long rows of tiny battery icons as they run their massive machines.
So how does a ship fly with no Zonai charges or any energy elements? According to its creator, its propulsion relies upon a twisting forced generating by its steering stick. “Basically it uses the steering stick’s energy to power the props. When you move the steering stick it puts a twisting force on the entire build. This force is transfered to the wagon wheel axles thus running the [propellors],” Scalhoun03 said via Reddit DMs.
Getting the materials required a journey of its own across Hyrule. Scalhoun03 scrounged up propellers from Gemimik Shrine in the Akkala Highlands region and journeyed to the Depths to collect the raft and rails. Then came the actual building.
“The hardest part was finding the balance to keep the props spinning without interfering. The props have to be in the right positions or they hit each other. When building with auto built parts you have to be careful about how you break them off or they disappear. The raft is an auto built part and if the props are in the wrong places you risk breaking your raft.”
Scalhoun03 emphasized how important the Hyrule Engineering subreddit and larger community was in the process of building the ship. Throughout its design, others contributed their own innovations that helped the builder hone in on its design. For example, YouTuber KingX discovered a person could build a machine that launches without any “catalyst,” like rockets or sending a ship off the side of a floating island. Others would provide feedback on clips.
“Without the suggestions of the community, things like this are a lot more difficult to make. The community has given me motivation to keep working on powerless flight builds and I hope everyone can try them out and have fun flying around Hyrule without having to worry about anything except having fun flying!”
A new month is nearly here, as well as a new year, and that means updates to the PlayStation Plus catalog. January kicks off 2024 with three new games available for Premium, Extra, and Essential members to download starting on January 2, as well as some goodies if you happen to be a space ninja. – Claire Jackson Read More
Pokémon’s profit margins probably don’t reflect it, but the franchise had a rough year in 2023. Without a new mainline role-playing game to dominate the series’ headlines, Pikachu and friends were, instead, shrouded in controversies throughout the past 12 months. Between Pokémon Go angering swaths of its community, scalpers making a public embarrassment of the franchise to people who don’t even pay attention to it, and Scarlet and Violet’s DLC underlining the problems ingrained within the Pokémon pipeline, the screws are coming loose on the hype train. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Throughout 2023, in honor of the magnificent Tears of the Kingdom, Polygon has been celebrating Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series. It’s been fascinating. Perhaps no other video game series is so rewarding to revisit, or presents such wildly different, refracted visions of its core idea — which nevertheless remains consistent throughout.
Created by the great Shigeru Miyamoto in the 1980s as an expression of his childhood love of exploring without a map, Zelda has always held a revered position in gaming culture, although it never quite enjoyed popular success to match — not, that is, until its unlikely rebirth in 2017, thanks to the runaway success of the Nintendo Switch and the revolutionary design of Breath of the Wild.
The series’ strong traditions are balanced by an ingrained habit of hitting the reset button. Across 16 mainline entries, only a small handful (Majora’s Mask, Phantom Hourglass, Tears of the Kingdom) are true sequels, and even these delight in reinvention. The Zelda timeline is more a tangle of rumor and myth than an established canon, and its lore is constantly rewritten.
Ranking these brilliant, shapeshifting games is, in some ways, an absurd task. They’re all great (well, perhaps all but one); the top seven or so are masterpieces that could be arranged in just about any order. But it’s an interesting exercise in exploring a series of games that exist in a unique, echoing conversation with each other. In putting this ranking together, we paid at least as much attention to how fun the games are to play now as to their historical import.
A few points of order: Though they’re technically part of the main Zelda canon, we have excluded the multiplayer games Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures, and Tri Force Heroes. They’re difficult to play as their makers intended now, and honestly feel more like spinoffs (though Four Swords Adventures, in particular, absolutely rules). Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, which were released as a pair, Pokémon-style, are counted as a single entry. And actual spinoffs like Link’s Crossbow Training or Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland are also excluded. The Zelda series is gloriously weird — but maybe not that weird.
16. Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 1987, on NES Where to play now: Nintendo Switch Online
If the original The Legend of Zelda is the series at its most youthful, exuberant, and promising, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link represents the games’ awkward teen years. Fittingly, the Link we play in Zelda 2 is 16 years old, fumbling his way through new gameplay territory, as Nintendo explores the lite role-playing mechanics from a side-scrolling perspective. Spread across overworld segments of dangerous exploration and equally harrowing side-scrolling dungeon crawling, Zelda 2 is a more challenging, more obtuse style of adventure.
Long considered the black sheep of the Legend of Zelda games, The Adventure of Link was a harder, clumsier experiment for Nintendo. It was envisioned as an action game infused with role-playing game stats, and the end result feels like Nintendo’s designers copying others’ work (e.g., Dragon Quest, Kung-Fu Master) instead of flexing the company’s trademark originality. Zelda 2 is not a failed experiment, however. Nintendo clearly learned the right lessons from it, as well as influencing other games, including Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest, Faxanadu, and Shovel Knight. Even the worst Zelda games have their importance. —Michael McWhertor
15. Phantom Hourglass
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2007, on Nintendo DS Where to play now: Unavailable — track down a used copy
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass represents a somewhat awkward era of Zelda. As a direct sequel to The Wind Waker, it had big shoes to fill, and wore them a little clumsily. Phantom Hourglass was the first mainline Zelda game to be released on the Nintendo DS family of handhelds and the first Zelda game to take advantage of the console’s touch controls. Overall, the controls fit in nicely with the Zelda formula and allow players to scribble on dungeon maps and tap to fight. However, the game suffers from uneven pacing while traveling on your customizable steamboat ship, or revisiting the Temple of the Ocean King, a dungeon that requires you to come back to it multiple times. Still, I’ll remember it for its willingness to try new gameplay and test the Zelda waters. —Ana Diaz
14. Twilight Princess
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2006, on GameCube and Wii Where to play now: Unavailable — track down a used copy of Twilight Princess HD for Wii U
Link spends a pretty big chunk of time in wolf form in Twilight Princess, which you’d think would be a selling point (because he looks so darn cute), but it’s actually pretty weird. After all, Link can’t do all of the best parts of being Link when he’s a wolf: throwing a boomerang, say, or twirling his sword around in a circle while shouting “Hiyah!” Twilight Princess also introduces Midna, a helper character in the vein of Navi, but a lot more condescending. I find Midna’s snarky comments to be deeply satisfying, and the conclusion of her arc at the game’s end feels more fulfilling than most of Princess Zelda’s arcs. The Legend of Zelda series does not always allow its female side characters to have much to do, but by the end of Twilight Princess, it’s actually more Midna’s story than anyone else’s. —Maddy Myers
13. Oracle of Ages / Oracle of Seasons
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2001, on Game Boy Color Where to play now: Nintendo Switch Online
In 2001, Nintendo lent the proverbial Zelda keys to Capcom. As it turns out, Capcom didn’t need them: It kicked down the door to one of gaming’s most hallowed series and made itself right at home. Billed as a double feature focused on time- and season-based puzzles, respectively, Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons are tight and sophisticated enough to have emerged from the offices of Nintendo itself. (Series creator Shigeru Miyamoto had big-picture production input, to be fair.)
Ages’ time-traveling puzzles are among the finest in the 2D Zelda pantheon, and Seasons’ more action-oriented approach makes it a fresh entry in the otherwise “left-brained” franchise. Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi would go on to direct a handful of later Zelda games (The Minish Cap, Skyward Sword, and — checks notes — Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom among them), but as far as “classic” Zelda goes, few entries capture the series on a grand scale like Capcom’s dark horse two-parter. —Mike Mahardy
12. Spirit Tracks
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2009, on Nintendo DS Where to play now: Unavailable — track down a used copy
As follow-ups in this endlessly changeable series go, Spirit Tracks has one of the most straightforward, cut-and-paste premises: it’s Phantom Hourglass but with a train instead of a boat. Like its immediate predecessor, it leans hard on stylus control, course-plotting map traversal, and a style of adventure that’s breezily approachable until it suddenly isn’t, in the grim, stealthy, piecemeal ascent of its central tower dungeon.
If Spirit Tracks ultimately surpasses Phantom Hourglass, it’s because of its sheer, ebullient charm. The appeal of its steam-train playset is irresistable, and this is also the only game in the series in which Link and Zelda — the latter admittedly in ghost form — get to hang out for the whole thing. Zelda even gets to be semi-playable, by possessing clanking suits of armor, while the pair have an adorable, innocent chemistry. Choo choo! —Oli Welsh
11. The Legend of Zelda
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 1986, on NES Where to play now: Nintendo Switch Online
It’s the rare game that impresses me more with each passing year. But as trends come and go, genres flourish and stagnate, and open worlds continue to distance themselves from their late-2010s growing pains, The Legend of Zelda continually grows in my estimation. It’s opaque by today’s standards, replete as it is with hidden doorways and labyrinthine shifts from one screen to another. And given the choice, it’s fairly far down the list of “fun” Zelda games. But it stands as a progenitor of most of today’s best games, open-world or otherwise, and it took Nintendo 31 years to circle back to its elegant conceit of a sprawling, mysterious world worth exploring in Breath of the Wild. —M. Mahardy
10. Skyward Sword
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2011, on Nintendo Wii Where to play now: Skyward Sword HD on Nintendo Switch
It’s time to reclaim perhaps the most consistently underrated game in the Legend of Zelda series. There are reasons Skyward Sword’s reputation has suffered. First, its original motion controls, while well implemented, are just not how anyone wants to play an epic adventure like this. Second, it has a ridiculously overwrought climax worthy of a Hideo Kojima game. Third, it arrived at just the point when the Zelda games’ Ocarina of Time-inspired design was starting to show its age.
Skyward Sword ended up being a swan song for that era of Zelda — but what a swan song. It’s a dense and satisfying game, expertly designed, with intricate, cleverly conceived dungeons that rank alongside the very best in the series’ history. And it also has a soaring, romantic spirit. Skyward Sword is perhaps the purest expression of Zelda’s high-fantasy aesthetic — and the only time the series fully owned up to being a love story. —OW
9. A Link Between Worlds
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2013, on Nintendo 3DS Where to play now: Boxed 3DS edition is still in print
I always found A Link Between Worlds to be a special game because of the way it iterates on the classic Zelda theme of traversing parallel worlds. Instead of using a mirror to flip between worlds, this game allows Link to transform into a 2D painting, in which form he can walk along walls and into the glittering crevices of Hyrule and its counterpart, Lorule.
For me, Lorule is one of the more interesting versions of Zelda’s classic Dark World. It isn’t just a barren wasteland filled with monsters; it’s also the home of kind and heroic people who want a better way of life. The game plays well, with perhaps the best-integrated touch controls in a Zelda game. On top of all that, it features an unconventional weapon rental system that allows you to explore wherever you want early on. The game’s title nods to the revered A Link to the Past,and it certainly doesn’t fail to live up to its namesake. —AD
8. The Minish Cap
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2004, on Game Boy Advance Where to play now: Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack
The Minish Cap is a hidden gem of the Zelda series. Developed by Capcom, this Zelda game follows Link after he meets a talking hat named Ezlo that grants him the power to shrink to the size of a pea. Exploring as a tiny hero literally changes our perspective on Hyrule and allows the developers to conjure up a sensorial and vivid world where you’ll fight Vaati and dodge the deathly plop of raindrops.
Similarly to The Wind Waker, The Minish Cap leans into a cartoony charm; you’ll meet zany sword instructors and talk to cows chewing cud. This game also contains one of the Legend of Zelda’s goofiest items, a magical cane that turns objects upside down. Combine these charms with some great dungeon design, and you have the makings of a fantastic Zelda game. It might not usually be counted among the Zelda greats, but The Minish Cap finds its brilliance in the tiny details. —AD
7. Link’s Awakening
Image: Grezzo/Nintendo
Original release: 1993, on Game Boy Where to play now: Choose between its 1998 DX form for Game Boy Color on Nintendo Switch Online or the modernized 2019 Nintendo Switch remake
This was the first-ever Zelda game I played, so all of the references to other games flew over my head, as well as the very obvious signposting about how the story would end. I felt confused, as so many players do, about why the name “Zelda” was in the title (I did think maybe the owl was named Zelda). And yet — although I experienced the classic Zelda tropes and mechanics in the dreamlike setting of Koholint Island, rather than in the larger and more defined kingdom of Hyrule — their magic captivated me completely. Like many others on this list, Link’s Awakening is a weird Zelda game, and it’s proof that being weird and silly is just as much a part of the patchwork of “being a Zelda game” as environmental puzzles or a magic sword wielded by an eternally reincarnating hero. —M. Myers
6. The Wind Waker
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2002, on GameCube Where to play now: Unavailable — track down a used copy of The Wind Waker HD for Wii U
The Wind Waker oozes a charm and sense of character that distinguishes it from other Zelda games and makes it a series great. It dared to take the Legend of Zelda in a bold new visual direction with its wonderfully expressive, cartoony graphics, and introduced one of my favorite Zelda casts. Tetra is an inspired take on the role of Zelda: an adventurous and capable pirate captain who helps Link along his journey. This Link, too, is one of my favorite Links, with his comic book expressions and bumbling antics.
The game moved me emotionally in ways that no other Zelda game has, and I still think about Link’s big send-off, as he waves his tiny arms goodbye to his granny. All this, and it’s thoroughly enjoyable to play. Flourishes like the adaptive soundtrack that plays stringed instruments as Link hits his enemies only add to its zippy combat. This game — from its snot-nosed kids to its timeless art style — is endlessly endearing. To me, its ingredients make for the perfect elixir of a Zelda game. —AD
5. Ocarina of Time
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 1998, on Nintendo 64 Where to play now: Choose between the original version on Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, or the Ocarina of Time 3D remaster on 3DS (boxed edition still in print)
Just as Twilight Princess is secretly Midna’s game, Ocarina of Time is secretly Zelda’s game — or perhaps it belongs to Sheik. It may not be the best Zelda game by modern standards, but Ocarina of Time set a benchmark by which all subsequent entries have been measured, particularly when it comes to storytelling and world-building. It offers up the illusion of an open-world Hyrule, planting the seeds for a garden that would bloom in Breath of the Wild. And it’s the game with a time-travel story that splintered the entire series into disparate arcs — perhaps the most important linchpin in the greater Ganondorf saga. And it still holds up after all these years. Too bad its best version is relegated to the Nintendo 3DS — at least, for now. —M. Myers
4. Breath of the Wild
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2017, on Nintendo Switch and Wii U Where to play now: Nintendo Switch
Breath of the Wildrepresents the most consequential overhaul the Zelda series has had since it moved into 3D with Ocarina of Time; in fact, it might be the most consequential ever, bravely scrapping most of the design hallmarks of a revered game series. Nintendo was seeking to modernize Zelda, but also to cut through 30 years of accumulated tradition, all the way back to the untamed adventure of the very first game.
It hardly needs to be said what a success it was: Breath of the Wild catapulted the Zelda series to a new level of popularity and challenged the assumptions of a lot of open-world and role-playing game design in a way that the rest of the industry is still digesting. It’s a dynamic, organic, thrillingly pure adventure, and the only reason it doesn’t top this list is because of what followed. —OW
3. A Link to the Past
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 1991, on SNES Where to play now: Nintendo Switch Online
Writing entries for this ranked list has me thinking about just what it is that makes a Zelda game great, and I think it’s the moment of realization. A Link to the Past serves up delicious moments of realization over and over and over again. You figure out that a cracked wall can be blown open to reveal a hidden passageway — oooh! You get a brand-new tool and you realize exactly how you need to use it — aha! You suddenly figure out the trick to a boss fight — take that! And then you realize that you have not even come close — not even close — to seeing all of the discoveries on offer here. A Link to the Past delivers on the pure dopamine rush of discovery, forcing a grin onto your face at every new revelation. It just feels good. —M. Myers
2. Majora’s Mask
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
Original release: 2000, on Nintendo 64 Where to play now: Choose between the original version on Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, or the Majora’s Mask 3D remaster on 3DS (boxed edition still in print)
As we’re talking about a series so centered on music, allow me a metaphor: Whereas Ocarina of Time’s time travel was classical in its approach (elegant, balletic, and nimble), Majora’s Mask’s time loop was more reminiscent of jazz: fractured, messy, and challenging, but revelatory all the same. Arriving two decades before the time-loop craze comprising Outer Wilds, Deathloop, and 12 Minutes, Majora’s Mask puts Link in a three-day cycle that unwinds and respools in a strange dream world replete with characters contemplating the impending apocalypse. Compared to most games in the series, Majora largely revolves around side quests, which are largely predicated on the collection of masks. Said quests reset themselves every time Link travels back to the dawn of the first day, (hopefully) armed with the necessary knowledge to bolster his collection and save a life or two in the process.
Majora was the feverish answer to a confounding question: “How do we follow the resounding success of Ocarina of Time and also bridge the gap between the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube?” No one could have predicted the answer: a melancholy, tick-tock ballet of thwarted dreams and desperate lives in the face of the apocalypse, the most intimate and personal Zelda has ever been. It remains the strangest and darkest entry in the series, and I doubt we’ll ever see anything like it again. —M. Mahardy
1. Tears of the Kingdom
Image: Nintendo
Original release: 2023, on Nintendo Switch Where to play now: Nintendo Switch
Every Zelda game has built upon the foundations of the games before it, with even the characters in its world acknowledging the myths of yore. No one believes more in the concept of predicting the future based on the past than the developers of Zelda — as well as Princess Zelda herself, who opens Tears of the Kingdom by guiding Link through a series of historical underground murals.
And yet even Princess Zelda in her wisdom couldn’t possibly have predicted how incredible and miraculous her story would become. Tears of the Kingdom is a reflection of this continued promise: You may imagine you understand — based on the history of Zelda games — how ambitious and creative and world-warping a Zelda game could be. And yet that very world will still surprise you. Tears of the Kingdom still surprises me. It’s a gift that I can’t believe we all got.—M. Myers
I love the idea of annual top 10 lists until it comes time to actually make one. Then my perpetually indecisive brain freaks out about whether the game I spent 100 hours playing was actually any good, the tension between an interesting game and a fun one, and the cries of all the games I never finished or even got around to starting, still begging for my attention.
Tears Of The Kingdom’s Newspaper Questline And The State Of Hyrulean Journalism
I spent 2023 tracking some of the best new games that came out every month, attempting to at least try as many of them as I could while also measuring how my feelings changed about them as the year went on. And I ended up playing a bunch of them while still not getting around to what no doubt would have been strong personal GOTY contenders.
With a not-so-short short list assembled by early December, the task then becomes figuring out which games I actually thought were the best. I’ve worked hard to convince myself over the years that the process is more art than science. Inevitably I tally up the perceived merits and flaws of a game and then try to compare the vague calculations, an exercise that always ends in a mix of conflicted self-doubt and second-guessing.
Eventually I silence the internal dissent and retreat into a more abstract sense of what feels right. Recently this has meant giving in more to my personal tastes and subjectivity, championing the games I love rather than the ones I feel I ought to like, and praising them for the one or two things they do very well instead of letting all the smaller things they don’t do so well hold them back. This doesn’t impose any more order on the chaos of comparing a roguelite loot shooter to a visual novel adventure, but it does give me fewer pangs of guilt when I eventually settle on rating one above the other.
Here, in alphabetical order, are the top 10 games that moved me the most in 2023.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
Screenshot: FromSoftware / Kotaku
I’ve always understood and appreciated the Soulsborne formula and its many flavors on an intellectual level, but Armored Core VI was the game that finally made me feel and love the initial hopelessness and eventual satisfaction that comes from mastering a FromSoftware game. The mech shooter is razor sharp and ultra polished when it comes to zipping around environments and engaging in moment-to-moment combat. You actually feel yourself becoming more in-sync with the custom robot’s strengths and limitations the more you play, each successive boss fight pushing you to come to a deeper understanding of what’s important and what’s just noise. I spent several nights trying to beat Balteus. I don’t regret any of them. And I remain blown away by Armored Core VI’s vibes-based storytelling and branching new game plus mode. Its economical arcade design rewards you for every additional minute you put into it and doesn’t waste time on anything superfluous.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Screenshot: Larian Studios
Sometimes superfluous is good, though. In fact, sometimes it can be transcendent. The promise of a dozen roads not taken in a video game pays off in making the one you did walk feel unique, unlikely, and unmistakably yours. I love that Baldur’s Gate 3 contains entire games’ worth of conversations, interactions, and outcomes I will never experience. It makes the small journey I have been on feel that much more intimate and personal. None of this would matter, of course, if Baldur’s Gate 3 was not well written, painstakingly choreographed, and expertly voice acted. It’s a dense RPG full of gear and skills to manage alongside quests and boss fights to navigate, and all of it, no matter how it plays out, feels like it was meant to happen that way. It’s the new gold standard for role-playing video games.
Chants of Sennaar
Screenshot: Rundisc
I don’t normally like language-based games. (Ironic considering I’m a writer.) I despise crossword puzzles. The inherent fluidity and ambiguousness of language mashed up with the rigid constraints of a game almost always leave me feeling underwhelmed and frustrated. I was shocked, then, to find out just how much I enjoyed Chants of Sennaar, a puzzle adventure about deciphering unknown languages between various factions in a Tower of Babel that oozes highly saturated yellows, blues, and reds. What I appreciated most was how quickly context and intuition helped whittle down possible solutions to problems, making limited communication gratifyingly achievable even when there was no foundation to begin building on. Rather than punish you for the shifty and slippery nature of language, Chants of Sennaar allows those elements to color your overall experience and interpretation of the game without blocking your moment-to-moment progress.
Cocoon
Screenshot: Geometric Interactive
Cocoon feels like it was chiseled from a rock over thousands of years. Everything unessential has been methodically removed. All that’s left is a seamless sequence of puzzles gently nudging you toward new discoveries and brain-twisting realizations. Remnants of conventional game design like screen icons and boss fight deaths have been elegantly eradicated. Evocative musical queues punctuate each new milestone on your journey. And the rules governing its world are supremely simple but always manage to combine into solutions that feel just outside the realm of possibility. Cocoon is probably one of the best puzzle adventures ever made.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Image: CD Projekt Red
I finished Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time last year. Despite some fantastic missions and an overwhelmingly intricate open world, it left little impression on me. That seemed a symptom of the underlying structure of the game rather than anything that could be patched out with new abilities or a more impressive sci-fi open world simulation. Night City felt fundamentally alienating to me, and none of the individual characters, story arcs, or RPG progressions managed to pull me out of that feeling of malaise. That is, until Phantom Liberty and the game’s 2.0 update in 2023. The culmination of every new addition, from takedown animations and parrying bullets with katanas to jacked-up car chases and an entire subway system, is an open-world RPG that passes some imaginary threshold from feeling static and paper-thin to one that’s lively and responsive. It helps that Phantom Liberty is a streamlined campaign in a specific part of the map that, dispensing with the MacGuffins of the main plot, can instead weave an interesting and nuanced tale of political intrigue, betrayal, and necessary consequences. Taken together, it’s the game I was hoping Cyberpunk 2077 could be ever since I finished The Witcher 3’s amazing Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions.
Darkest Dungeon II
Image: Red Hook Studios
It only took one caravan ride in Red Hook Studios sequel to convince me it was something special. Darkest Dungeon II takes everything I loved about the first game and puts it in motion, propelling its brutal emergent storytelling and grim probability-based combat over all of the divots and ditches that occasionally ensnared its predecessor. Playing Darkest Dungeon II late at night with the lights turned off made me feel like I was racing through the gothic fall of humankind to save my soul. While it loses some of the managerial depth of the first game, it more than makes up for it with its more cinematic presentation and economical focus. I wish every game could create such an unmistakable sense of place, atmosphere, and engaging stakes with similar efficiency, and made failure feel so rewarding and profound.
Final Fantasy XVI
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
This is the problematic fave on this list. Final Fantasy XVI disappointed me in so many ways. From its shallow RPG systems to its dreary and cumbersome second half, the latest game in the Square Enix series felt like it left so much untapped potential on the table. It makes me dream of what the team might accomplish if given the time and resources to mount Cyberpunk 2077’s three-year turn around from Early Access to 2.0 victory lap. Instead of droning on about all the things I disliked about this game, I’ll simply say that it’s highs were higher than almost anything else I played this year and kept me coming back through a new game plus run which has reminded me why I love it, from the incredibly sleek and satisfying action to the magnificent cinematic boss fights. When the writing isn’t falling down flat on its face and the sky isn’t overcast with an impenetrable gloom, there is more than one flicker of the return to form Final Fantasy fans like me have been waiting more than a decade for.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Image: Nintendo
I almost left this one off the list. It feels like a cheating. Every stage in Super Mario Bros. Wonder is juiced to the max, carefully engineered to delight, entertain, and continually surprise you, all while maintaining the series’ tightly calibrated platforming feel and bespoke attention to detail. Super Mario Bros. Wonder doesn’t catapult the formula forward or feel as inventive as recent puzzle boxes like Super Mario 3D World and Bowser’s Fury. Its most remarkable moments don’t quite measure up to the peaks in Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World. But it’s exquisitely crafted, and every level is packed to the brim with new quirks and fun ideas. No game brought me more unburdened joy this year.
The Banished Vault
Screenshot: Lunar Division
Obtuse, slow, and occasionally clumsy, The Banished Vault nevertheless takes spreadsheet navigation and adds an irresistible sense of existential dread to the proceedings. You play religious outcasts scavenging solar systems for resources to survive until the next cryo-sleep-induced hyper-light jump. The greatest terrors I felt in any game this year came from the prospect of miscalculating fuel reserves and how long I have until the next supernova. The Banished Vault can feel straightforward once you unravel its economy, but that process of demystification is complex and enthralling, and richly infused with meaning thanks to the austere presentation and haunting soundtrack. It made contemplating certain doom not just thrilling but spiritually soothing.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was a slam dunk. It surpassed my wildest expectations, taking what impressed me about Breath of the Wild and finding even more ways to surprise, delight, and gently lead me through its whimsical, dangerous, beautiful world. Game critics love to reward novelty, ambition, and bold experimentation. The nature of playing so many things and being exposed to so much naturally places a premium on the new and unexpected. Tears of the Kingdom has plenty of that, but more than anything it shows masters of their craft assessing, refining, and iterating on a formula they’ve spent decades on, like Chevy working on a new Corvette or Porsche making the latest 911. I’m still stunned that there’s a Zelda game where you can make your own rocket ship and somehow it doesn’t feel like a gimmick but rather like the most obvious and natural thing you could do in an open world fantasy adventure.
Honorable mentions:Season: A Letter to the Future, Humanity, Jusant, Planet of Lana, Saltsea Chronicles, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew.
Needed more time with:Alan Wake 2, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Remnant II, Lies of P, Laika: Aged Through Blood, Dredge.
Didn’t get to:Terra Nil, Against the Storm, Fading Afternoon, A Space for the Unbound, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, The Talos Principle 2, Slay the Princess, Void Stranger, and many more.
Liked but didn’t love:Spider-Man 2, Starfield, Diablo IV, Sea of Stars, Hi-Fi Rush, Moonring, Thirsty Suitors.
Until very recently, I’d thought that Alan Wake 2 would reside in the #2 slot here, while Tears of the Kingdom would remain my personal game of the year. However, a chance encounter recently with writer Cole Kronman (who wrote this great piece on Xenogears and the games of Tetsuya Takahashi for us) helped me clarify my own feelings. I realized that for me, these two games are in close conversation with each other, strange mirrors of each other’s greatness, and that together, they define the best that 2023’s games had to offer in my mind. I’m not going to spoil plot points for either game, but to engage with why and how this is the case, I need to mention a crucial line of dialogue from the end of Alan Wake 2, one that mirrors the first game’s climactic mic drop of “It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean.” If you haven’t yet finished Alan Wake 2 and want to discover this line for yourself, turn back now.
In the final moments of Alan Wake 2 (and potentially earlier, depending on how thorough you are in exploring and absorbing Remedy’s metaphysical horror odyssey), a character says, “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral.” Alan Wake 2 explores the difficulty and anguish many artists find in the creative process, the way it can sometimes feel like you’re just banging your head against the wall and not making a damn bit of progress, seeing no way out whatsoever as that blank page continues to taunt you.
And yet, sometimes at least, a way out does eventually reveal itself. Sometimes, after we’ve been spinning our wheels for what feels like forever, something in our subconscious will finally crack, a bit of light will shine through, and we will see, at long last, a path forward, knowing that we had to go through all of that internal turmoil to find our way out. What felt like a pointless, exhausting, excruciating loop was in fact a spiral all along. Before spotlighting this at the end by having a character speak the line, Alan Wake 2 hides this idea in plain sight, repeatedly putting you in environments that feel like loops that you have no choice but to run through again and again. Eventually, your persistence pays off, something suddenly changes, and a way out reveals itself. You thought you were going in circles but you were actually moving forward all along; it just took a lot of energy and grit to see that.
I don’t have any particular insight into what the struggle to get Alan Wake 2 made was like for creative director Sam Lake and the other folks at Remedy, but it’s no secret that this is a game the studio had been hoping to make for a very long time. I have to imagine that at times, the setbacks and struggles were crushing, that they felt like defeat. And yet, it’s undeniable that if Remedy had been able to make a sequel to 2010’s Alan Wake some 10 or six years ago, it would not be the game that it is today. Alan Wake 2 is extraordinary in no small part because it is a game that took 13 years to get made, and because, in its creative energy, you can feel the restless struggle, the accumulation of ideas, the desperate search for a way out. Alan Wake 2 is about many things, but perhaps none of them is more crucial to its identity than being about the struggle to make Alan Wake 2.
In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, players didn’t just play through another story set in Hyrule. The sequel to Breath of the Wild took the previous game’s sandbox elements several steps further, allowing players to use a new set of powers to construct machines, weapons, and tools using items in the world. By introducing this, Tears of the Kingdom encouraged players to be truly creative and push the limits of building in the game.
Fans responded to this new level of freedom by devising awe-inspiring creations and sharing them online. In the time since Nintendo released the game, fans have made nifty items like skateboards to intricate machines like a mechanized kaiju that looks like Godzilla. Given the game’s emphasis on creativity, Polygon asked Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma and game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi about the possibility that fans would ever get a Zelda game that purely focused on building their own creations, like Super Mario Maker. From the sounds of their answers, it seems unlikely Nintendo will release a Zelda game that’s purely about creating levels or dungeons.
“When we’re creating games like Tears of the Kingdom, I think it’s important that we don’t make creativity a requirement. Instead, we put things into the game that encourage people to be creative, and give them the opportunity to be creative, without forcing them to,” Aonuma told Polygon through an interpreter in an in-person interview.
Image: Nintendo/Nintendo EDP
In Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2, players can design their own Mario levels from scratch using an in-game editor. This has allowed players to create custom levels of all sorts in Mario. Players can make ultra-difficult levels that challenge the most seasoned Mario players or zany creations where a Mario level becomes an homage to Splatoon. No matter the approach, a huge aspect of the Super Mario Maker games is thatthey rely on player creativity.
Now, it’s no secret that the developers of Tears of the Kingdom were inspired by fan responses to Breath of the Wild. Developers saw players stretch the creative limits of Breath of the Wild, and they later created a game that doubled down on these sandbox elements. Given this, Zelda fans have long wondered if a version of Zelda that works like Mario Maker — where players could create or design dungeons or worlds — could ever come out. But when asked directly about a Mario Maker-style game for Zelda, Aonuma had an interesting answer about the nature of Zelda games and what they offer to players.
Image: Nintendo
“There are people who want the ability to create from scratch, but that’s not everyone,” Aonuma said. “I think everyone delights in the discovery of finding your own way through a game, and that is something we tried to make sure was included in Tears of the Kingdom; there isn’t one right way to play. If you are a creative person, you have the ability to go down that path. But that’s not what you have to do; you’re also able to proceed to the game in many other different ways. And so I don’t think that it would be a good fit for The Legend of Zelda to necessarily require people to build things from scratch and force them to be creative.”
Given Aonuma’s response, it seems unlikely that Zelda will ever get its Mario Maker equivalent. If we did get more creative elements, it seems they would have to be nestled into a larger game where players could proceed in multiple ways. So those holding out hope for a Zelda builder might be better off finding other games that currently offer similar options — which, luckily for us, already exist.
It’s been a surprisingly strong year for the Nintendo Switch even as sales slow and fans eagerly await its successor, and today the company promoted a bunch of indie games that will fill out the console’s release calendar heading into 2024, from a new Shantae action-platformer to a port of beloved cult-hit sci-fi mystery game Outer Wilds. Unfortunately, everyone’s favorite Hollow Knight sequel, Silksong, is still MIA.
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Last month’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder was the fastest-selling game in the franchise’s history, and a remake of the beloved SNES classic Super Mario RPG arriving later this month rounds out another great year for the Switch. But plenty of smaller games are also coming to the device this holiday season and beyond, and Nintendo highlighted some of the big ones in its latest Indie World Showcase.
Here’s everything we saw during Nintendo’s brief presentation today:
Shantae: Risky Revolution (WayForward)
The 2D half-genie is getting another retro follow-up to the original 2002 Game Boy Color adventure (which goes for four digits on eBay and still isn’t part of the Switch Online catalog). Risky Revolution will be a mix of old and new, with creature transformations and big boss fights as well as a four-player co-op mode and the ability to jump between the background and foreground. It’s out sometime next year.
Outer Wilds was an excellent space exploration puzzler and one of the best games of 2019. Now it’s finally coming to Switch next month on December 7. Archaeologist Edition will include the Echoes of the Eye expansion, and will be a must-play on Switch for anyone who hasn’t already experienced its compelling mysteries, deep secrets, and incredible ending, assuming the performance and visuals are still intact on Switch.
On Your Tail (Memorable Games/Humble Games)
Gif: Memorable Games / Kotaku
This is a new one about exploring the seaside village of Borgo Marina trying to unmask who’s been menacing the place by collecting clues in the form of trading cards. On Your Tail has you play as the young detective Diana, who can chill, fish, and meet new friends in this detective life sim hybrid. It’ll be a timed Switch exclusive in 2024.
A Highland Song (Inkle)
Another 2.5D narrative-led platformer? Sign me up. A Highland Song is about guiding a character named Moira on a journey through the Scottish Highlands. There’s rhythm-action elements with the music affecting how quickly you can progress, and inclement weather forcing you to change up your approach. A Highland Song comes to Switch on December 5.
Backpack Hero (Jaspel/Different Tales)
Another deck-building roguelike? Sign me up for that too! Backpack Hero looks similar to a Dungeons & Dragons campaign turned into a Magic: The Gathering deck builder except your arsenal will be dependent on how you organize the limited space in your backpack. Loot you collect from dungeons is brought back to help repair your village, which you can expand and decorate as you see fit. The game goes live today.
Howl (Mi’pu’mi Games/Astragon Entertainment)
Gif: Mi’pu’mi Games / Kotaku
Howl is a turn-based tactics game that features a “living ink” art style that lets you see upcoming enemy attacks and plan multiple turns in advance, making every encounter into a little puzzle box. A plague is sweeping through the world and the only way to defeat it is to collect resources and upgrade your abilities. You know, the usual. Howl is out now and has a free demo.
Blade Chimera is basically a cyberpunk Castlevania. There have been a lot of these retro 2D action-platformers in recent years, but Blade Chimera’s art and abilities make it seem like it could stand out. A Lumina Sword helps the hero slice down enemies and also restore old parts of the environment to unlock new paths forward. It’s a Switch timed exclusive coming spring 2024.
Death Trick: Double Blind (Misty Mountain Studio/Neon Doctrine)
Gif: Misty Mountain / Kotaku
The circus is in town and someone’s dead…probably. Death Trick is a choose-your-own adventure visual novel in which you play a detective interviewing acrobats and fire-breathers to find out what happened to a missing performer. It’s coming to Switch in 2024, with a free demo out today.
The Star Named EOS (Silver Lining Studio/Playism)
Gif: Silver Lining Studio / Kotaku
Picture a storybook where you dive into the pages and learn about your past memories. That’s what The Star Named EOS looks like. The puzzle adventure “explores photography and the ways we can capture the fleeting moments that shape our lives.” It will probably make you cry. The Star Named EOS is headed to Switch by spring 2024.
Moonstone Island (Studio Supersoft/Raw Fury)
Gif: Studio Supersoft / Kotaku
Moonstone Island might just have it all: creature collecting, dungeon crawling, deck building, card-based combat, and life sim farming. Hopefully the adorable and colorful-looking mashup of Pokémon, Stardew Valley, and Slay the Spire is half as good as the recipe suggests. The initial reviews on PC have been great. It will be a Switch timed exclusive launching in spring 2024.
Core Keeper (Pugstorm/Fireshine Games)
You probably know this one already. If you don’t, Core Keeper is kind of like Minecraft meets Zelda. Another way of saying that is it’s like crafting sim Terraria if it were top-down instead of a side-scroller. You dig tunnels to collect materials, items, and treasure that can be used to make a home-turned-factory deep underground while you search for an ancient relic. It features up to eight player co-op, lots of RPG elements, and some neat environments. The Switch port of the Steam hit is coming in summer 2024.
But wait, there’s more!
A sizzle reel near the end of the livestream also teased a bunch of other games coming to Nintendo Switch at the end of 2023 and in the year ahead. Here’s the PR:
Enjoy the Diner, a mysterious narrative adventure with point-and-click elements, available on Nintendo Switch later today!
Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist, a painting adventure in which you’re invited to explore the charming town of Phénix while creating and selling works of art, available on Nintendo Switch later today!
Heavenly Bodies, a delightfully challenging physics-based space puzzler that asks you to complete a series of seemingly simple tasks aboard a 1970s space station, arriving to Nintendo Switch in February 2024.
Braid: Anniversary Edition, a remaster of the acclaimed puzzle-platformer, with updated graphics and sound, plus newly added developer commentary, launching for Nintendo Switch on April 30, 2024.
The Gecko Gods,a relaxed puzzle-platformer starring a tiny gecko who must explore a set of mysterious islands and temples on a mission to save its friends, launching on Nintendo Switch in spring 2024.
Planet of Lana, a cinematic puzzle-adventure framed by an epic sci-fi saga that stretches across centuries and galaxies, launching on Nintendo Switch in spring 2024.
Urban Myth Dissolution Center, a captivating mystery game in which you’re tasked with investigating curses, haunted houses and other urban myths, coming to Nintendo Switch in 2024.
While most of these games are still a couple of seasons away, Backpack Hero, Enjoy the Diner, and Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist are all out today. Howl and Death Trick: Double Blind also have free demos out today. The heavily rumored “Switch 2” could get revealed any day now, but there’s still a ton of games coming to the existing hardware. Hopefully all of them will be backward compatible on whatever new console Nintendo is currently cooking up.
Zelda fans already got a stellar new game with “Tears of the Kingdom” this year, but Nintendo just dropped another exciting nugget of news: the gaming giant is working on a live-action movie based on the Legend of Zelda franchise.
Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the 37-year-old franchise, announced the news this evening.
“I have been working on the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda for many years now with Avi Arad-san, who has produced many mega hit films,” he wrote on X in a statement translated from Japanese. “I have asked Avi-san to produce this film with me, and we have now officially started the development of the film with Nintendo itself heavily involved in the production. It will take time until its completion, but I hope you look forward to seeing it.”
Avi Arad has produced films like “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, along with dozens more Marvel movies.
While unexpected, this move makes a lot of sense for Nintendo. Though Link’s story has been unfolding for decades, the franchise is hotter than ever. Breath of the Wild, the 2017 game released on Nintendo Switch, has been hailed by both fans and critics as one of the greatest video games of all time (more realistically, it’s one of the best games to come out on Nintendo Switch, which is still high praise). When the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, dropped earlier this year, it somehow managed to live up to fans’ huge expectations, selling 20 million copies from May through September.
So, if Nintendo saw fit to make a movie all about Mario, a working-class plumber, why not tell the story of Link, a legendary hero spanning time and space?
This is Miyamoto. I have been working on the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda for many years now with Avi Arad-san, who has produced many mega hit films. [1]
When Nintendo announced it was making “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” a few years back, fans seemed a bit jaded — and also confused as to the casting of Chris Pratt as Mario. But the movie was shockingly successful, even for a product built on such iconic IP. The movie grossed more than $1.3 billion, surpassing “Frozen” as the second-highest-grossing animated film ever (“Frozen II” holds the crown). The Pokémon franchise, another Nintendo cash cow, has been churning out movies and television shows at breakneck speed for decades, even tapping Ryan Gosling to be Pikachu… So why not give Link the spotlight this time?
We’re just hoping Chris Pratt doesn’t audition to play Link.
Nintendo is registering several new patents from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that are extremely broad, to the point where they seem unreasonable for other developers to be beholden to.
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Automaton, a gaming website that focuses on Japanese games like Zelda, has a roundup of the 32 patents Nintendo put forth. Some of them are specific to Link’s latest adventure, including things like Riju’s lightning ability, which lets the player target enemies with a bow and bring down a lighting strike wherever the arrow lands. The weirder ones are related to baseline game design and coding that applies to plenty of other video games on the market. One of the hopeful patents relates to the physics of a character riding on top of a moving vehicle and reacting dynamically to it in a realistic manner.
The distinction, according to Automaton’s translation of Japanese site Hatena Blog user nayoa2k’s post on the matter, is down to how Tears of the Kingdom codes these interactions. Link and the objects he rides on move together at the same speed, rather than Link being technically stationary on top of a moving object as is common in the physics of other games. The two are functionally the same, but given that plenty of video games displayed characters who can walk around on top of moving vehicles, it’s highly unlikely this kind of approach hasn’t been utilized before.
On top of trying to patent the tech, Nintendo seeks to patent the loading screen that shows up when the player is fast-traveling across Hyrule. This specifically refers to the screen that shows the map transition from the player’s starting point to their destination. Sure, that’s pretty specific and not something every game utilizes, but it’s still such a general concept that it feels almost petty to patent it when it’s hardly an iconic draw of Tears of the Kingdom.
It’s not uncommon for game developers to try to patent mechanics and features. One of the most famous examples is when Bandai Namco had a patent on loading screen mini-games, which finally ended in 2015.
Who knows if these patents actually go anywhere? But when game design concepts are gatekept like this, it only leads to a loss of innovation for other devs. Though these specific patents are small in the grand scheme of things, they can be a slippery slope for things like WB patenting Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis System, which should be in more games.
When it comes to incredible cosplay, San Diego Comic-Con always delivers, and this year was no exception. The event, which ran from July 20 to July 23 and took place at the famed San Diego Convention Center, brought fun panels, cool interactive experiences, and almost provided us with an unofficial GTA: San Andreas restaurant before Rockstar’s lawyers shut it down. But what about the cosplay?
The video and photos brought to you today were all provided, as usual, by Minerablu (you can check out way more of his stuff on his Instagram page or on his YouTube channel). Click through to see The Fifth Element cosplays, The Last of Us looks, and much, much more.
The most recent The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom patch seems to have done away with a few popular glitches, a Reddit post suggests. Nintendo issued update 1.2.0 on July 5 in order to “improve the gameplay experience,” it wrote in its patch notes, and to burn through your infinite money reserves, apparently.
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“The autobuild frozen meat glitch was patched,” a Reddit user said. “Good thing I turned off automatic updates on my Switch a few days ago.”
As Kotaku senior editor Luke Plunkett previously reported, the “frozen meat glitch” allowed you to “trick the game into giving you loads of valuable resources by turning big hunks of meat into a weapon, then taking that weapon with you to the snow.” That’s the short of it.
The elaborate process involved attaching meat onto sticks and using “autobuild to ctrl+c, ctrl+v until you’ve built 21 meat clubs (the most the game can remember and place at any one time) and fused them all together,” Plunkett writes. Then, once you’ve retreated to and rested in a snowy area with your meat, it would freeze. You’d wake up to a beautiful bundle of frozen meat, or a 39,960 rupee value.
Not anymore, though. Say goodbye to your grill plans.
A ToTK duplication glitch might be gone, too
Update 1.2.0 also seems to remove the Tobio’s Hollow glitch, which let players duplicate their items in the late-game area Tobio’s Hollow Chasm.
Officially, 1.2.0 makes one general update and a few bug clean-ups. According to Nintendo’s patch notes, players who downloaded the update can expect these changes:
“Starting the game from within certain articles released on a specific Switch News channel (accessed via the HOME Menu) [will give players] a number of in-game items.”
“Downloading the update will allow players [experiencing bugs] to proceed past […] points” in quests like “A Mystery in the Depths” and “Lurelin Village Restoration Project”
“Fixed an issue preventing fairies from appearing under certain conditions when they originally should have appeared.”
“Fixed an issue preventing the meals provided by Kiana of Lurelin Village from changing under certain conditions.”
The Switch News channel update seems intriguing, though it will unlikely be a true replacement for 21 pieces of free meat. But while Nintendo is aggressive in bandaging every possible glitch, bug, and exploit, glitch hunters are determined. And Zelda has more secrets to offer, I’m sure.
I mean, it was only a matter of time, right? Nintendo’s hit open-world game Tears of the Kingdom features a surprisingly robust and dynamic physics system you can build with, so it stands to reason that if you create a few “if this then that” scenarios, then bam, you basically have the working fundamentals of a computer system. And that’s exactly what players are doing now. Go ahead and get the “can it run Doom?” joke out of your system. I’ll wait.
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Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t just repeat the same expansive open world formula of its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. With the ability to manipulate various objects, glue them together, and have them interact with a remarkably fluid and realistic physics simulation, players have found interesting ways to traverse the map, build incredibledeath contraptions, or do silly things like build a pilotable T-rex or, um, Metal Gear Ray. But now, Hyrulian engineers are turning their attention to programming logic, using the game’s building systems to now make more complex contraptions and even rudimentary computational processes. Think of it as Zelda’s version of redstone from Minecraft. And it’s working.
Tears of the Kingdom player builds a basic calculator in the game
The first example of such a device is this one-bit calculator built with rotating panels and lights.
Nintendo / c7fab
Now it may not be entirely obvious what’s going on here, so let’s try to break this down. As software developer Zenni told Kotaku, calculators are essentially “made out of inputs of 1 or 0 and go through logic gates which can determine an output.” She continues:
Instead of gates, [this example uses] mirrors to act as logic gates and a physical gate to determine which inputs to switch between. The example [in the original video] is 1 bit, so adding 1 + 0 which equals 1, or 1 + 1 = 0 with a carry of 1. If you could bypass the drop limit of TotK, you could actually make a working calculator, which is really cool.
As some in the comments of the original video have stated, this is an “Adder,” which, as you might’ve guessed, adds things together. It’s the most fundamental function of how a computer works.
Image: Nintendo / c7fab / Kotaku
Here’s a more basic example illustrating how rotating devices and light objects can be used to create scenarios that control different inputs and outputs:
Nintendo / c7fab
After building this, user c7fab was able to make a slightly less advanced version of the video above with a half adder:
Nintendo / c7fab
Now before you go any further in referencing that darn ‘90s shooter everyone seems bent to get running on just about everything, there is a limit as to how complex this is thanks to Tears of the Kingdom’s 21-object build limit. In theory, if you took multiples of these Hyrulian adders and had them function in concert, you could get more complex computations, leading all the way up to what we’d expect from a fully functioning calculator. But given the game’s limit, it’s unlikely that we’ll see anything beyond simple base two computations.
Other feats of Hyrulian engineering
But, basic calculators ain’t all. As you may well know, Tears of the Kingdom also features physics by way of electricity. That means that creating circuits isn’t just limited to lights and mirrors. Check out this video showing off how with a bit of electricity and moving objects, you can have some interesting interactions.
Another example is a functioning diode, which allows electricity to flow in a specific direction, built using various Zonai devices.
While these examples are very basic compared to what kinds of devices and computational processes we use every day, it’s kind of stunning that this at all works and, when you get right down to it, how simple many modern day feats of technology are at their core.
While rumors that Nintendo is close to closing a deal with animation studio Illumination for a Legend of Zelda film should come as no surprise in the wake of the record-breaking success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, some fans have made it abundantly clear online that they aren’t all that jazzed about this potential pairing.
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In a recent episode of The Hot Mic podcast, reporter Jeff Sneider said he’d received a tip from “a great source” indicating that Universal Pictures, Illumination’s parent company, is close to penning a deal with Nintendo for a future Zelda film.
“Zelda…is looking like the next big Illumination Nintendo franchise, which again, I think we were all sort of expecting, but I’m told that that is happening and it’s costing Universal a pretty penny because of the success of Super Mario, like Nintendo kind of knows its worth at this point, but yeah, I’m told that that is now going to be a reality,” Sneider said.
Kotaku reached out to Nintendo for comment.
Fans think Nintendo should shop around elsewhere for a Zelda movie studio
Despite Illumination having great success with the Mario film, the Despicable Me studio isn’t looking like a first-choice draft pick to adapt the fantasy video-game franchise to some Zelda fans, who perhaps see the studio’s tendency toward glossy, upbeat films as a mismatch for a series whose tales are often poignant and shot through with magical mystery.
Specifically, some fans have expressed fear at the thought of a Legend of Zelda film from Illumination that comes packed with pop song needle drops, a tendency seen not just in the Mario Bros. movie but the studio’s other films as well. (Eminem, anyone?) Zelda fans are also dreading the idea of enduring rounds of glitzy casting announcements packed with Hollywood stars for a film based on the beloved series. Here’s some of what folks are saying about the Zelda movie deal rumor.
“I enjoyed the Mario movie but I can say with full confidence Illumination is NOT the right studio to handle a Zelda movie,” YouTuber Penny Parker wrote on Twitter. “Not saying ‘it will be bad’, but they couldn’t even show the restraint to not put 80 licensed songs in Mario, a franchise already revered for iconic music.”
“Illumination making the Mario movie filled me with so much glee but the thought of them making a Zelda movie stops me in my tracks LOL,” Twitter user velsmells said. “Also I know [animation studio] Fortiche is definitely busy with Arcane S2, but it’d be so cool to see an entire Zelda movie with their style,” they continued, including images from the hit League of Legends tie-in show to support their argument.
“I agree, I don’t think Illumination is the right fit at all for the Zelda IP. I am just saying if it HAS TO BE them, Toon Link is the most fitting route to go with,” Twitter user UltimaShadowX wrote in a separate thread, referencing Link’s cel-shaded look in The Wind Waker. “Imagining DreamWorks doing a Zelda movie with The Last Wish style would be insanely hype and preferable.”
While an animated adaptation of Zelda seemingly comes with challenges that the Mario Movie didn’t, it makes sense that Nintendo might want to throw its sword-wielding hero onto the big screen, considering the fact that the Mario Movie recently surpassed Disney’s Frozen as the second-biggest animated film of all time, according to Variety.
During a Mario movie press junket interview with Japanese news publication Nikkei (translated by Video Games Chronicle), Zelda and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto expressed interest in future movie projects so long as they’re centered around “characters that are suitable for film and characters that are well known.” When asked about the possibility of a Zelda movie in a recent interview with Polygon, Tears of the Kingdom producer Eiji Aonuma expressed his enthusiasm for the idea, saying “I am interested for sure. But it’s not just me being interested in something that makes things happen, unfortunately.”
Fox Business, the subsidiary of Fox News Media, has discovered that some gamers are discovering their queerness thanks to Link, calling the Legend of Zelda hero a “nonbinary or trans icon.” Some, to the shock and horror of Fox, are even calling Link an “egg-cracker,” aka someone or something that helps a person realize they are trans. As you can imagine, the Fox journalist doesn’t seem happy about any of this.
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Tears of the Kingdom, the latest game in the iconic Legend of Zelda franchise, launched on May 12 to rave reviews from critics and players alike. Many are already calling it the best game in the series, and some are even suggesting it’s one of the best games ever made. In the weeks since release, players have mastered multiple duplication glitches, learned how to build incredible machines, and all sorts of other fun hijinx. All in all, Tears of the Kingdom has enjoyed a mostly positive reaction from the gaming community. Even so, Fox Business has now decided to step in to point out how bad it is that so many of the game’s trans and nonbinary players identify with and feel inspired by Link.
In an article posted by Fox Business on May 31, writer Jon Brown seems to have discovered that Link is seen by many—including his own creators—as a relatively gender-neutral hero who anyone can relate to. The article links to a few stories about this topic, including this excellent one from Gizmodo, and seems surprised that an article like this exists alongside the site’s other Zelda stories.
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Then we, inevitably, get to the point where the Fox writer calls The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a “children’s game” and suggests that outlets like PBS are trying “to make a children’s video game about gender identity.” Which would be a very bad thing, apparently. Don’t you know, kids might accidentally read an article about the game and…turn gay? Trans? Whichever is the worst thing right now in the right-wing outrage machine.
The article then decides to include a tweet from the awful propagandist Libs of TikTok and yell about The Sims 4 including chest binders and top-surgery scars. Again, Fox Business seems to think that all video games are designed and sold exclusively for children. And kids can’t be exposed to real-world concepts like gender, sex, trans people, scars, or anything like that!
Fox Business’s article ends with an odd paragraph pointing out how much controversy surrounded the release of Hogwarts Legacy, but that it still sold great on… uh…Twitch? You mean the streaming website that briefly sold games but then stopped years ago? Hmmm, you folks over there at Fox might want to take another pass at this article. Or just delete it. I’d go with that option.
Valve removed the Steam listing for Dolphin, a popular emulator for the GameCube and Wii, after it received a cease and desist from Nintendo, developers behind the project claim. The company behind MarioandZelda accuses the emulator of illegally circumventing its protections, and says it’s merely protecting the “hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers.”
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A listing for Dolphin on Valve’s digital storefront first appeared back in March. “We are pleased to announce our great experiment—Dolphin is coming to Steam!” the creators wrote at the time. While the open-source project has been available online for years, interest in retro emulators has increased since the release of the Steam Deck, and an official store page would make the tool even easier to access.
On May 27, however, Dolphin’s developers announced the Steam port would be “indefinitely postponed” after Valve removed the listing following discussions with Nintendo. “It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed,” the emulator team wrote in an update on the project’s blog. “We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled. We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth response in the near future.”
According to a copy of the legal notice reviewed by PC Gamer, Nintendo accuses Dolphin of using “cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime.” While emulation is itself legal, providing users with ways to bypass protections on individual game ROMs could potentially violate Nintendo’s intellectual property rights. It’s an issue that would have to be hashed out in court, though the power imbalance between large corporations and homebrew projects like Dolphin means that rarely actually occurs.
“Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers,” a spokesperson for Nintendo told Kotaku in an email. “This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same.”
While the company has rarely looked the other way when it comes to piracy of its games and the tools that could facilitate it (like mod chips sold online), Nintendo has been particularly aggressive lately in clamping down on leaks and what it believes to be illegal misuses of its games and technology. In February it subpoenaed Discord for the personal information of someone suspected of leaking the official The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom art book. In April it issued multiple copyright strikes against dozens of popular Breath of the Wild gameplay videos on YouTube that relied on modded versions of the game. And in May it seemingly had a Switch emulation tool, Lotpick, removed from Github after illicit copies of Tears of the Kingdom began spreading like wildfire online prior to the game’s official release.
It’s not yet clear how Dolphin’s current developers will respond, or how willing Valve will be to bring the store page back unless the matter is resolved in court, which could take years. Last year, Valve accidentally included the Switch emulator Yuzu in its YouTube trailer for the Steam Deck. The video was later edited and re-uploaded to remove the reference. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As reported at the time, the commercial’s creators were inspired by, of all things, an Amazon review left under the game’s predecessor, Breath of the Wild. Written by a Japanese user, it told the tale of a “working adult” who spends his days “plainly wondering why I’m still alive”.
Rediscover your sense of adventure with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I am a working adult, so-called businessmen.I’m jostled by the commuter rush, bowing down to customers and bosses, being forced to train junior staff and doing many things, and I end up working overtime every day.Even the mountain I see on my way to work, which I don’t even know the name of, irritates me.When I get back home I’m dizzy and have no energy to eat food, so I just drink alcohol and sleep.If I have time to play games I should be going to seminars or looking for a marriage partner, which makes me more impatient than I should be.I spend my days plainly wondering why I’m still alive.
I went to buy alcohol because I ran out and saw the Switch on sale in the shops. Then I remembered the day.When I was a child and really into Mario 64, my friend said, “lame to play Mario nowadays! Now it’s the era of PlayStation!” and I felt embarrassed.At the time, I didn’t want my friend to dislike me, so I also remember that I replied, “Yeah, you’re right. Mario is already old-fashioned!”
The beauty of FF7 at that time and the shock of being able to listen to the CD on TV… the recent kids may not understand these feelings.That’s how attractive and innovative it was for kids back then.
I’m still not sure why I picked up the Switch at the time.I just held a beer in one hand and bought the console and Zelda, thinking I could sell it if it was boring.
Yesterday, my work day, I looked out of the train window at a mountain I didn’t even know the name of and thought, “Looks like I can climb that.” At that moment, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop.The businessmen of the same age who were beside me must have thought, “What the hell is this guy.”
I would recommend it to all my fellow businessmen who are pressed for time and scrambling day after day to maintain the status quo, even if everyone hates you.Don’t say it’s just a game. We were born during the golden age of video games.Have you ever seen your family move their entire body when Mario jumps?Do you remember playing Mario Kart or Smash Bros with your friends bringing their own controllers?Have you ever discussed Chrono Trigger or FF7 strategies with your friends?Now I know. When I was a brat, my parents bought me expensive consoles and software for my birthday, Christmas and something.My parents, who were always nagging me, managed to raise money from their living budget to buy expensive games for me.
I’m touched to belatedly realise many things that I didn’t realise due to the busyness of living my own life.I should have been more filial.
The 5-stars reviews are all good ones, so there’s nothing for me to talk about now.This Zelda gives me the “challenge and reward” I forgot about.I can freely explore the world without maps, it’s an exciting adventure experience.People my age are sick every day to overcome tomorrow. But don’t despair of your life.The adventure I wanted was in such a place.
P. S.I feel like thanking this Zelda and I would like to apologise to the Mario 64 development team and Nintendo.I’d like to apologise for the lies I told that day, saying that Mario 64 was old-fashioned, even though I loved it.I am sincerely looking forward to Mario Odyssey being released this winter.
Postscript, 7 May: after 180 hours of play, I got all “recovered memory” and saw the ending.More than anything, I’d like to thank all the people who read my awful, long, cluttered and embarrassing review written emotionally. I’d also like to thank all the people who gave it a “helpful” rating, not only for reading it. I’ve never been appreciated by so many people even in my job.I really enjoyed my 180 hours spent running around Hyrule. I’d like to thank not only Nintendo but also all the Zelda fans who have continued to support Zelda. Thank you for a great adventure.
For all the similarities between this man’s tale and the commercial, the part where he apologises for abandoning Mario in the face of a PlayStation advertising campaign—I did something similar with Sonic 3 when my friends were playing WipeOut—hit hard.
It is May 12, 2023, and on this fine day the much-hyped Nintendo sequel The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is finding its way into the eager hands of players around the world. But you: Maybe you stand apart. Maybe you didn’t end up playing the previous game, 2017’s smash hit Breath of the Wild. Or maybe you dabbled in it and fell off for whatever reason. I won’t judge, I’m right there with you.
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Monday 3:53PM
Now here you are, seeing all these cool trailers and…interesting…things popping off in the new Zelda game and you’re wondering, “Do I need to play Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom? Should I?” Well, that’s what I’m here to help you figure out.
A series purist will always say to go back and play the games in proper order (which when you consider how long Zelda’s been around, you might want to be careful with that line of thinking). But here I’ll lay out some pros and cons for each course of action. There are valid reasons for either approach, so let’s get into them.
By the way, this article is a spoiler-free zone. So feel safe to read on even if you haven’t touched 2017’s Breath of the Wild.
Is Breath of the Wild’s storyline worth experiencing before Tears of the Kingdom?
Breath of the Wild tells a very average fantasy story. Hold your farmer’s pitchforks; I don’t say that to put it down. In general the story’s overall beats are very familiar to almost anyone who’s experienced a Lord of the Rings or Star Wars joint. You’ve got your dark lord, your threat to peace, your amnesiac protagoboy, your magical items of power, rinse and repeat. Watching a quick recap video would be plenty to give you a general sense of BotW’s plot, and you won’t be robbing yourself of a grand-epic-of-all-time if you do.
How Breath of the Wild tells its story, however, is something you may wish to consider experiencing in full form, not just via synopsis. Link’s journey to regain his memories has him meet countless charming and memorable characters along the way, which will get you a lot more emotionally interested in the greater story of Hyrule (simple though it is) and the people who live there than if you just breezed through a summary.
Breath of the Wild’s characters make an otherwise typical fantasy tale worth the trip.Image: Nintendo
If you’re just interested in a quick SparkNotes rundown of Hyrulian history, a wiki or video will do it. But if you value the experience of meeting interesting characters and gaining greater emotional investment in a fictional world, jumping into Breath of the Wild first will be time well spent.
Does Tears of the Kingdom make Breath of the Wild’s gameplay obsolete?
We’ve all been there: You play a sequel first, and then the original just feels ancient by comparison. Some sequels so dramatically improve on their predecessor that it’s tough to go back. Mass Effect 2 is one such example. Skyrim may be another.
First of all, no: Tears of the Kingdom certainly has its share of improved quality-of-life features—such as in fast travel and cooking— but nothing so earth-shattering that Breath of the Wild suddenly feels neolithic in comparison.
Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t obsolete Breath of the Wild’s gameplay. Image: Nintendo
As for whether or not they feel too similar, fear not. While very similar in key ways, Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild are distinct enough that going back to the older game after Tears of the Kingdom would still give you plenty of new experiences to enjoy.
As my colleague Kenneth Shepard told me after his first handful of hours in Tears of the Kingdom, the gameplay in the sequel is “less an evolution and more a sidestep.” Link’s new abilities, specifically the crafting and new Ultrahand ability, make it a distinct enough experience that if you play these in reverse order, you won’t feel like your abilities have been drastically dialed back in scope.
Tears of the Kingdom is a looker—and it won’t melt your Switch to plasticky goop.Image: Nintendo
Tears of the Kingdom looks graphically daunting for the old Switch, so should you wait for future hardware?
It’s no secret that the aging Wii U wasn’t too kind to Breath of the Wild. And basically everyone who saw early footage of Tears of the Kingdom got a little nervous thinking about whether the humble Nintendo Switch, released over six years ago, might be able to keep up.
Well, I have good news. Or, rather, Digital Foundry has good news: Tears of the Kingdom will run pretty damn well on that old Switch of yours. You can expect a very close-to-solid 30 frames per second with some drops here and there, particularly when using Link’s new Ultrahand ability. Fast-travel loading times are also rather quick, around 30 percent quicker than in BotW.
Nintendo / Digital Foundry
I hear you thinking, “surely there’s another console from Nintendo on the way, right?” The Switch has been out for a while, true, but as we reported on Tuesday, May 9, Nintendo has no plans for a hardware refresh or followup to the Switch in 2023.
Say you don’t mind holding off on the game everyone’s chatting about right now and are cool jumping into Breath of the Wild first. Can you expect to knock it out in a weekend? Well, no.
Breath of the Wild is a long game, and every moment is worth it.Image: Nintendo
According to Howlongtobeat.com, the main story of Breath of the Wild is around 50 hours. And if you want to do all the side-quests? You’re looking at just under 100 hours. If you’re a completionist fiend, HLtB estimates 189 hours. Our own experiences bear those numbers out.
Breath of the Wild is a game of sweeping proportions. The world is enormous and there’s so much to do. If you haven’t played it yet and Tears of the Kingdom’s release really has you interested in seeing what all this Link business is about, expect to need to set aside some time for BotW should you jump into that first.
Even if you’re not a completionist, taking in the world of Hyrule in the Switch’s first Zelda title is an experience best enjoyed at a gentle pace, and you won’t feel worse for having taken the time to let it all soak in.
So, yes, BotW is long. Which is good, since it’s a great game.
While some franchises are okay to enter at just about any point, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild offers some compelling reasons to give it a shot first. The plot consists of standard fantasy concepts, but is told very memorably and in a vista-rich open world that’s a joy to explore.
But, if you do decide to jump straight into Tears of the Kingdom, a quick synopsis or two of BotW’s story beats will get you up to speed quickly. And with the gameplay differences, playing the two games in reverse order shouldn’t feel too strange.
Order aside, another question is whether you ought to play the older game at all. You may feel differently, but my personal take is that Breath of the Wild is such a genuinely wonderful experience, from the well-told story, to the satisfying gameplay, and a world that is genuinely full of life and beautiful to explore, that you owe it to yourself to play this modern classic if you haven’t, even if you’ve already logged solid hours in Tears of the Kingdom.
KANSAS CITY, MO—Allowing for a brief, relaxing respite from an otherwise grueling schedule, Friday’s release of The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom reportedly offered local man Nick Powell a much-needed escape from the monotonous grind of playing other video games. “When you spend eight or nine hours a day with a controller in your hand, slogging away at all these video games, it’s nice to relax and unwind with a different video game,” said Nick Powell, adding that he was looking forward to enjoying the new Zelda after a long, arduous week filled with nothing but Overwatch 2, Elden Ring, and Red Dead Redemption. “Day in, day out, I’m occupied with completing all my deliveries in Death Stranding and running an entire town in Animal Crossing. It gets pretty exhausting, so it’s important that I set aside time to reconnect, recharge, and just be myself—or Link, at least—while saving the land of Hyrule from the forces that seek to destroy it.” Twenty minutes into the game, Powell acknowledged that while he was grateful for the opportunity to escape into a virtual world that was separate from the other virtual worlds he spends time in, he was starting to get bored.
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