Tears of the Kingdom, Part Two
May. 22nd, 2023 06:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThe storytelling in Tears of the Kingdom is so embarrassingly hamfisted.
In Breath of the Wild, Link was mainly exploring abandoned ruins and other uninhabited areas, so the Law of Conservation of Detail was at play. Namely, given that Link uncovered so little information about the past, every single detail needed to be significant.
Meanwhile, Tears of the Kingdom has no conservation of anything. There is text for days in this game, and a great deal of it is redundant. Spoilers under the cut.
To give an example, one of the early Dragon's Tear memories (ie, flashback cutscenes) shows Zelda being like, "Oh, so the only way to get back to my original time is to become a dragon, how about that," and all the Sheikah researchers standing next to the memory access point are like, "Oh, is it possible that these are the princess's memories, I sure hope she didn't become a dragon," while various other NPCs in the game are like, "Oh, dragon dragon dragon dragon dragon." Damn, what a mystery. I wonder what could have happened to Princess Zelda.
Also, after her supposed disappearance, human!Zelda has been showing up in various places in Hyrule and delivering cryptic messages. These messages actually make a certain amount of sense, like, "You probably shouldn't go in the mysterious floating ruins that mysteriously appeared above your town." To hear all the NPCs describe it, Zelda was behaving like a huge bitch. Seriously, everyone complains about Zelda every chance they get. Like, "A floating girl showed up out of nowhere, told us to stay away from the glowing radioactive waste, and then vanished without asking how my grandmother's doing, how rude, what is wrong with her."
It turns out that this "Zelda" is actually Ganondorf, and he's creating artificial obstacles that prevent the player from having the full run of the map at the start of the game. So that the player knows Ganondorf is bad, the game needs to have all the NPCs tell us he's bad. Over and over and over again. And then some more on top of that.
Come on, Nintendo. We get it. The green-skinned, hook-nosed man from the desert is evil. He lies and steals. He only understands force and violence, and he needs to be put down like the subhuman animal he is. Message received.
In Breath of the Wild, Link was mainly exploring abandoned ruins and other uninhabited areas, so the Law of Conservation of Detail was at play. Namely, given that Link uncovered so little information about the past, every single detail needed to be significant.
Meanwhile, Tears of the Kingdom has no conservation of anything. There is text for days in this game, and a great deal of it is redundant. Spoilers under the cut.
To give an example, one of the early Dragon's Tear memories (ie, flashback cutscenes) shows Zelda being like, "Oh, so the only way to get back to my original time is to become a dragon, how about that," and all the Sheikah researchers standing next to the memory access point are like, "Oh, is it possible that these are the princess's memories, I sure hope she didn't become a dragon," while various other NPCs in the game are like, "Oh, dragon dragon dragon dragon dragon." Damn, what a mystery. I wonder what could have happened to Princess Zelda.
Also, after her supposed disappearance, human!Zelda has been showing up in various places in Hyrule and delivering cryptic messages. These messages actually make a certain amount of sense, like, "You probably shouldn't go in the mysterious floating ruins that mysteriously appeared above your town." To hear all the NPCs describe it, Zelda was behaving like a huge bitch. Seriously, everyone complains about Zelda every chance they get. Like, "A floating girl showed up out of nowhere, told us to stay away from the glowing radioactive waste, and then vanished without asking how my grandmother's doing, how rude, what is wrong with her."
It turns out that this "Zelda" is actually Ganondorf, and he's creating artificial obstacles that prevent the player from having the full run of the map at the start of the game. So that the player knows Ganondorf is bad, the game needs to have all the NPCs tell us he's bad. Over and over and over again. And then some more on top of that.
Come on, Nintendo. We get it. The green-skinned, hook-nosed man from the desert is evil. He lies and steals. He only understands force and violence, and he needs to be put down like the subhuman animal he is. Message received.
