The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

 The legend of Hyrule is the legend of Calamity Ganon... again... 

Finally it has come. After years of waiting around for anything to come out, rumours upon guesses, suppositions upon assertations, we finally have that one announcement that we've all been waiting for; the name for the Breath of the Wild sequel game. No longer do we need to call her 'Breath of the Wild 2: This time's it's wilder'. We can genuinely put one our calendar the name of 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom'; finally unveiling the naming convention that this new breed of Zelda games is running with. It's 'of the' season, apparently. And for one I can say that is a name I wasn't exactly expecting from a thematic sense, it sounds more poetically tragic than I was feeling with all the trailer snippets we've had of Link soaring through chunks of skyward bound land, but I suppose the poetry-style metaphor language forms an identifiable basis from which to affirm this subseries' identity. Any other titles with a name like this might invite derision at the apparent pretentious allusions of such a interpretive name, but anyone who experienced Breath of the Wild can readily acknowledge that with this franchise, the games are good for cashing marketing's cheques. 

It's just a shame that this title reveal, and the eye-watering belayed release date that's going to have us waiting more than half a year from this point, is all we have to go on because our Zelda Developers don't want us to see a square inch of this game for too long. In a way it makes me excited; because this team have already shown what they can do before and if they don't want to spoil some grand surprise they've had cooking up for the past few years that is absolutely grounds for hype; but I just wish we had some fundamental realties about the game revealed to us. For example; is this really a direct sequel? After 'Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity' unveiled a new timeline where the Guardian menace was stopped before it could destroy the kingdom, the possibility has opened up of this being an alternate timeline version of 'Breath of the Wild'; and the fact I've been asking that question for the past few years is slowly chipping away at my sanity.

The evidence seems confusing. For one the initial reveal trailer for 'Tears of the Kingdom' clearly showed off the corpse of Ganon which was nowhere to be seen during 'Breath of the Wild', presumably because in that Timeline Ganon had transcended the need for a physical form and instead involved into some miasma portent of evil. Calamity Ganon was roundly destroyed at the end of BOTW, so I can't imagine he left behind a corpse to be resurrect in timely fashion. Additionally, the title trailer which revealed the new name showed off a wall-scrawled relief history lesson just like BOTW had; only there was no image depicting the Guardian war at all. (But then that in itself is confusing, as the Guardians did still go out of control in the new timeline, they were just stopped. I'd still call that a historical event worth depicting.) And then just as another curve ball, the official cover art for Tears of the Kingdom just dropped, and we can see the swirling evil of Calamity Ganon wrapped around what appears to be Hyrule castle in the background. Just like what we can see in the background of the 'Breath of the Wild' box art, implying these games are retellings of one another.

In one sense this makes me a little sad because I really wanted to see the next part of the story after the destruction of Ganon and the resurrection of the Kingdom. Also, I wanted to move on from the concept of Calamity Ganon which we already explored throughout Breath of the Wild rather conclusively. We saw what he was, the extent of his abilities and the heavenly manifestation of the Goddess that ultimately destroyed him. What more is there really to cover? I wanted there to be a new threat of some unknowable evil, like the darkness of the 'Usurper King', or the mystery of 'Majora'. With all the similarities that 'Tears of the Kingdom' is going to have to it's predecessor, in terms of setting, visual style and gameplay mechanics, it really feels a step too comfortable to literally retell the story of 'Breath of the Wild' but in a different timeline. It would also totally invalidate the events of 'Age of Calamity' to just say "Yeah, but he resurrected and took over the Kingdom anyway; thanks for fighting though!"

But from a raw sense I am interested to see the ways in which 'Tears of the Kingdom' is going to remix the Hyrule that we know in ways we never would have imagined before. Bringing the action into the sky is building upon an already stellar grasp of verticality that 'Breath of the Wild' had to perhaps make air-combat into a key component of the gameplay. We've also seen a much sturdier looking glider for Link to travel the skies atop of, reinforcing this idea of being just at home exploring the floating islands as we are on the ground.  Speaking of which; the ground is apparently still very much within the game for 'Tears of the Kingdom'; and I'm quite curious to see how the landscape is affected by having giant chunks of earth ripped out of the ground and thrown into the sky. And more importantly- I wonder at what might be awoken from the underground by that disturbance...

This time around I really hope that they'll be more life to the Kingdom of Hyrule, now that (assuming the alternate timeline assumption is correct) the Kingdom hasn't had to endure a century of decay and ruin chipping away at society.  Given the longevity of the species of Hyrule, it's fully plausible that all the Champions would be around in person to assist Link on his journey, even if Zelda isn't because she's locked in yet another metaphysical duel with Ganon for the entirety of the game. (That's another reason I wanted a sequel. Playable Zelda would have been so cool...) The main narrative cutscenes of 'Breath of the Wild' all being memory flashbacks created such a barrier between character motivation and player drive that I often didn't even want to uncover the next memory because the story content within would never adequate contextualise the current events I was embarking on. (There were a few modernly-set cutscenes at each Kingdom, and they were much more engaging. I hope for an entire game full of cutscenes like that this time around.)

There's also a new and so far entirely unexplored angle to 'Tears of the Kingdom' in Link's cursed glowing robotic arm. I suspect that from a very mechanical perspective it's merely supposed to act as a substitute for the Sheikah slate from 'Breath of the Wild'; because that slate was originally Zelda's passed onto Link, and if this is an alternate timeline then she never had the chance to pass it to him before she fell into Ganon's death pit, as we saw in the reveal trailer. But I'm curious about the ways the Shiekah arm will empower Link in ways that the Slate didn't. Much of what that Slate could do was taking advantage of the tools of the Switch, (or the Wii U if you were cursed enough to own that version of the game) and now that we're far enough into the Switch's life cycle for the team to divorce themselves from that gimmicky clutch; there's a real opportunity to get creative this time around. Such that I honestly can't figure out the little snippets of power that we're seeing. I think there's a gravitational shift move in the latest trailer; it's hard to pinpoint.

May 2023 is the definitive release date this time around, and Nintendo have agonised so much over getting this date out that I can only assume they have so much confidence in themselves that no more delays are imminent. Of course, that also leaves little room for an information blow out regarding what 'Tears of the Kingdom' has in store, barring the possibility of a huge Zelda-focused Nintendo direct in the early months of 2023. But who can really say when the next Direct is going to show it's face? Those things are rarer than White Whales and just as tricky to predict. Maybe they'll just cold turkey us all so as to save all secrets until release day; current Zelda is probably big enough that they could safely do that. For my sake all I know is thus; this game is getting in my Switch one way or another, I have my money ready, I just need a Nintendo address to throw it at.

Delays

Rescheduling conflicts 

As we have much to celebrate when it comes to gaming in this fine year, so too do we have cause to mourn; for that which was once on our doorstep has been shoved back into obscurity. Such is the consequence of 'delays'. That which was imminent becomes far, and that which is immediate is then immaterial. And we'd all be liars were we to insist that the wounds don't sting a little each time our upcoming hype trains take an unscheduled hiatus. Yet it's generally accepted etiquette nowadays to be understanding and patient in times such as these, as most tend to evoke that old Miyamoto Quote that I abuse worse than a Jamaican dominoes set. "A delayed game is eventually good but a rushed game is forever bad." What's that? Nintendo Life say the quote was never coined by him and instead belongs to some dude called Jason Schreiber? Look, Nintendo Life- no one's looking to have you ruin their fun, 'kay? I'm going to carry on attributing it to industry legend Shigeru Miyamoto and we'll hear nothing more about it!

Yet recently, with the sheer amount of game delays that just seem to pour out of the industry with every new release, sometimes I can't help but slip out of that meditative stoicism, stamp my feet a little and say: "what is going on?" It seems like the only games which come out when they say they're going to anymore are the uninspired yearly reiteration franchises; and it's so far in their best interest that they don't miss their own deadlines that they're willing to release cobbled together yawn generators rather than push back a release by even a couple of days. But with Breath of the Wild 2 being delayed, Baldur's Gate III being delayed, God of War: Ragnarok delayed twice; one starts asking questions like: is there any big game which hasn't been delayed?

Now of course one must be attentive of the times we live in. And of course with work at home and all the disruptions that has manifested in the industry over the past couple of years, there's going to be some hold-ups in the production line. And of course no one is going to gripe on the STALKER 2 devs for pushing that game into indefinite holding on account of the simply sickening disaster their home country is being forcibly subjected to currently. But this pattern of developers announcing big games and then changing course, sometimes at the last minute, hasn't been unique to these last two years either. It's almost an expectation that the industry has adopted in the last console age that has just carried itself on to this one. And I wish to speculate on why that is and could be.

The first time I really was shocked by a delay, it was all the back in 2012 with the bait-and-switch of Grand Theft Auto V which was surprise pushed back half a year. That was easily the biggest game of the year, what would go on to become an industry definer, just getting casually punted into next year on the verge of release. And by 'verge' I'm perhaps talking a couple of months out, but that's still  dangerously close to pull something like this. And whatsomore, given how long the delay was for, it almost seems like this was a decision that had been already pre-made. If I want to give the company the benefit of the doubt, I suppose I could try and interpret this as Rockstar's moment of integrity crisis; maybe they were behind on the project right up until the last 10 weeks and had to really sit down and ask themselves whether it was better to release a broken game today or delay out of their financial year. A crisis of faiths that lasted a little too long, perhaps; but one which ultimately scoured us a 10/10 masterpiece. (If only more modern titles would have learned from such a decision.)

On the other end of the spectrum we have the Cyberpunk delay. Not the first half dozen, but the delay which pushed the game from April of the year so that it would drop into the late Autumnal drifts- all on the eve of freakin' March! That's- just insane. They definitely had made that decision weeks beforehand and were too cowardly to let everyone down at once. Whatsmore, given the pathetically broken state the game ended up launching in anyway, one can just imagine the disaster which everyone in the team was staring at in March. Perhaps, and this is very much speculation, they looked at the state of the game back then and realised that they had utterly failed in making the game they wanted to, but figured the next six months could work to polish it into a fine game in it's own right.

What really gets to me is the way that I knew this delay was coming, it was obvious. Why? Because there was no marketing material whatsoever to even advertise this thing in the leading months. They weren't even getting TV spots yet, let alone the extended gameplay previews that I, and others, were expecting. Of course CDPR would end up going overboard, spending months hyping the dream of a game which at that point they had to mostly all know was going to disappoint; but at least at that point the name of the game was getting out there. Who were they fooling that April ever was looking like a release vector? I doubt they even prepared a single marketing graphic for that fake date. And yet, inexplicably, they maintained the false hood until the last possible moment! Bizarre.

Breath of the Wild 2, I don't even know the title yet, was delayed out of 2022, and that's something we're all trying to get to terms with. This game has been an enigma upon enigmas, with but a couple intentionally detail sparse trailers to feed us vague dregs about what this title might contain. Heck, it was only during this delay announcement that we got to even see the Master Sword for the first time in order to spot how mangled and broken it was. We hadn't even seen that series stable in the regular marketing yet! Yet this is a more understandable and forgivable delay. Made nearly an entire half year before the prospective release, not too many more months thrown on top, and clearly just a question of needing more polish time. No one is so wound up that they can't forgive a first delay like that.

When you're on your third delay, however; people can get disgruntled. Baldur's Gate III has been rubbing nerves with it's latest delay out of 2022, and it's pretty easy to see why. This title has been in early access for a year and a half, and though this is obviously the biggest project that Larian has ever worked on, one might start to question whether or not this undertaking might have been bigger than they anticipated. I love getting little teases into the gameplay, UI and classes of the main game; of course I do, but I'd much more love a complete and polished adventure to go through which doesn't leave me blue-balled before the wrap up of act 1. Delays have come timely, and kept a respectful distance, but they've also been grating after all of this time in active development. One has to wonder how drastically Early Access is holding things up and whether the game would have been better off without this period! Not having played the full thing, no one outside of their offices can really say yet.

Personally, I can take the wait. I think there's too many big games flying this way and that any given day and a little bit of spacing things out isn't going to kill us. But by that same merit, making dates is a promise and breaking that promise kind of sucks. It hurts my trust in the product and the company handling it, as I'm forced to ask if literally anyone has a good handling on the project and the work going into it. (I'm still wondering if Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 is happening. That game is literally as old as this blog, please don't let me outlive the first game I spoke about here!) Maybe we'd all be better off if developers waited a bit longer, for the project to be a bit more fully formed, before slapping dates and getting hopes up. Else we all end up like that one guy who booked his holidays off-work time for the Cyberpunk release under the explicit promise by the Cyberpunk marketing team that the game would hit it's current release, only for a delay. (It made for a funny tweet, but please let's not make that a habit.)