Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom owes its design to one of the most overlooked developers
We take it for granted when modern video games allow us to solve a puzzle, or survive a combat encounter, or get from Point A to B in more ways than one. “Player freedom” is baked into many tentpole releases — especially open-world games, which rely on your sustained curiosity even after you’ve repeated the same general objective ad nauseum. Sure, you’re about to clear your second enemy outpost in 10 minutes — but this time, you could be stealthy.
In 2017, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was remarkable (it still is) for how much real freedom it granted the player. Its physics system, weather patterns, survival elements, Rune abilities, and robust inventory all coalesced into a dizzying number of possible solutions to any given problem. There’s a reason speedrunners flock to it. Yes, you can roam from Bokoblin camp to Bokoblin camp, slaying each foe with a club, spear, or bow and arrow. But you can also build up an electrical charge in your sword during a thunderstorm, then toss it into an enemy mob a split second before lightning strikes.
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That open-ended nature is a huge part of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s longevity, and based on everything we’ve seen from Tears of the Kingdom’s trailers and gameplay presentations, Nintendo is doubling down on player freedom in the sequel. With his newfound Zonai abilities, which let him warp through ceilings, fuse outrageous weapons, rewind moving objects along their recent trajectory, and build entire vehicles, Link is basically a magical engineer now. I played over an hour of Tears of the Kingdom last week, and I’m still thinking about all of the tricks I didn’t try.
There’s a term for this kind of game: immersive sim. Like most subgenre monikers, its
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