The Legend of Zelda franchise has done a lot for the open-world genre. Though it took quite some time before the franchise fully embraced a truly open-world design, much of open-world adventure genre can trace its origins back to The Legend of Zelda, whether it's Ocarina of Time's varied environments and lively NPCs or the series' phenomenal dungeons. But with Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it's time for the franchise to more directly impact the open-world genre.
Boasting one of the most freeing sandboxes in all of gaming, with a handful of abilities that have never really been seen before, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom takes the great groundwork laid by its predecessor and continues to build on it, producing yet another excellent open-world adventure game. But that doesn't mean Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's open-world is perfect, however, and there's one sizable issue that it shares with FromSoftware's Elden Ring.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Open-World Design Shares an Issue With Elden Ring
A game that wears its Zelda: Breath of the Wild influences on its sleeve, Elden Ring took the challenging yet satisfying gameplay FromSoftware titles are known for and built a gigantic open-world around it. In a similar vein to Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring gave players one simple objective and let them find their own way there, giving them free rein over the map from the get-go. While this approach helps to make players feel like they're setting off on their own adventure with each discovery being their own, it also leads to one of the game's biggest issues.
Elden Ring had a bit of a pacing issue. With almost the entire map being open from the start, players were encouraged to explore as much of the Lands Between as they wanted. For many players, this meant scouring every inch of the map to make sure that they completed every dungeon and defeated every boss in that area before moving on to the next, but for some, this meant riding straight past most of the game's optional content. This lead to a pretty significant issue whereby players would return to an area after 40+ hours of gameplay, only to realize that they'd left a dungeon unexplored. Upon entering the dungeon, the player would realize that the enemies inside were intended for a player who had just started the game, and as such, they'd now be able to breeze through the area with no challenge at all.
Unfortunately, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a similar issue. After completing Tears of the Kingdom's tutorial level, players are given free rein over Hyrule once again, only being pointed in the direction of four different objectives. If players decide to immediately head off in search of one of these objectives, they're very likely to miss the Shrines surrounding the starting area around Hyrule Castle. In Breath of the Wild, Shrines could mostly be discovered at any point in the game, with the level of difficulty being fairly consistent throughout them. However, Tears of the Kingdom has a selection of tutorial Shrines, mostly located around the starting area. These tutorial Shrines teach the player combat basics like parrying and weapon throwing, along with some barebones mechanics they'll need to understand in order to be able to solve puzzles.
Returning to these Shrines after tens of hours of gameplay can be pretty jarring, and a little tedious. The last thing a veteran Tears of the Kingdom player wants to do in a Shrine is to slowly follow basic instructions that they should have learned hours ago. Rather than reward the player for venturing out of the starting area early, these tutorial Shrines often only make the player feel as though they missed something and are now being punished for leaving Hyrule Castle so early, which is the opposite message The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom should be giving.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on Switch.