Quick thoughts on the story in Tears of the Kingdom

This was originally posted as a response to a question on Tumblr.

fanofsmbx asked:

I saw in your FFXVI review that you'd played Tears of the Kingdom. What were your thoughts on Zelda's role in the game and story?

It was okay.

Generally, I think I liked the execution a little better than how Breath of the Wild told its story. I loved BotW, but it felt like the entire story was already 99% finished by the time Link woke up. I didn’t feel like I was developing a relationship to those characters as the player, I felt like I was being told about things that just kind of happened around Link 100 years before I took control of him - things that he barely reacts to because of how little this version of Link emotes in cutscenes. Zelda was pretty fun at times, but her arc is really just “she’s under immense pressure from her father to live up to her destiny as the reincarnation of Hylia and save everyone… and then she does it, the end.”

So I preferred the execution in Tears of the Kingdom, where it felt more like Link and Zelda had parallel adventures occurring in the present and the ancient past. Zelda sets up a lot of things for you in the past, but you also have all the stories of the sages. They’re not amazing or anything, but like, those are characters that YOU, the player, met and helped as part of YOUR adventures in the previous game, and now you’ll continue to work alongside them and help them save their home regions. Those storylines are built upon YOUR actions as the player, making you an active participant, as opposed to being told about Link’s relationships with the Champions. And because Link is completely absent from Zelda’s storyline, you’re on the same page as him as you piece together what Zelda was up to on her own, so I found that more engaging.

The actual content of Zelda’s storyline in TotK is, like… fine. She admittedly feels like kind of a passive observer for a lot of it, a mere point of view character for us to see what Rauru was doing, until she finally has the idea to become a dragon and repair the Master Sword. But I thought that was a cool narrative move. That sacrifice feels like more of an interesting act of agency on her part than her living up to her father’s expectations in BotW.

Of course, yes, in the end Zelda has to turn back to normal. She can’t stay a dragon. It’s cheap, but I dunno. Did we really expect anything different? To me the only part that REALLY feels like a cop out is the fact that the tens of thousands of years she spent as a dragon are written off as feeling “like a dream” to her, rather than leaning into Zelda waiting so many millennia to reunite with Link. Embrace that drama! But, like. It’s a Zelda game. They were always going to give us that happy ending where Link and Zelda are reunited and everything’s back to normal.

I think the thing to me is that, like. At this point in my life, at the ripe old age of 29, I accept that the stories in most Zelda games are nothing to write home about. Games like Link’s Awakening and Majora’s Mask are the exception, not the rule. Zelda games have fun worlds and characters, they have occasional moments of brilliance, but they’re straightforward hero’s journey stories made to support the gameplay first and foremost. And most of the 3D Zelda games at this point have some sort of ass pull in the final act - shit like Zant being pushed aside for you to fight Ganondorf, or Tetra getting whitewashed and turned into a completely different character the second they reveal she’s a Zelda.

I go to other games when I want a really nuanced, emotional story with a bittersweet ending. I’m not waiting up for Zelda writing to blow me away like that, in the same way that I’m just playing other games with female protagonists instead of waiting up for them to make a game where you play as Zelda.

Surprise, 2023 Bobby! They went and made that game where you play as Zelda a year later! Neat.