The Sequel Nobody Understands | A "Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" Video Essay

The year botw came out, I was raped. The game was a huge part why I survived. I needed a world to get lost in. I struggled so hard with the fact, that the friends link had were dead and you couldn't change that in the end, like I couldn't change what happend to me, but it helped me to deal with this feeling. When totk came out, i was no longer the helpless 15 year old girl. I told people about what happend, I feel so much better and don't want to die anymore. In a sense i fought back against the calamity in my head, like the people of hyrule against the calamity ganon. To see that sidon, tulin, riju and yunobo didn't give up and got stronger, was the thing i needed to see. Even if the others are dead, link can still help them, and in the end, they help him too. There is always something to keep going, keep fighting and evolve. The defeated feeling after botw, after i realised i can't change the death is gone and replaced by afeelng of hope, because of how the world in zelda anf link are healing. They can't change what happend, but they can keep going... and so can I. These games mean so much to me in a sense I could never explain and I'm happy to see that there are other people who enjoy the kind of sequel totk is. Thanks for the video

This theme is also reflected in the music, much more orchestra. The main “Field (Day)” theme you hear while walking around now has woodwinds to accompany the lonely piano. Because Link isn’t alone anymore, and Hyrule is healing.

LOOK! a Totk video that´s not over an hour long!

The characters and community in TotK is definitely a big part of the sequel. Having the setting change would remove so many characters from BotW.

“In Castlevania you’ll be fighting Dracula” Shows footage of Metroid

“a proper narrative sequel” sums it up perfectly

You've said everything I feel about this game! And I am so happy to see that people are still feeling this way a year later after seeing so many "I'm disappointed" video essays.

I remember hearing people say that Tears of the Kingdom would have been better to them if they hadn't played Breath of the Wild first, but I've always thought it was better to play BotW first since the whole point of TotK to me is seeing what has changed from before.

Ive sat with Tears of the Kingdom for over a year now, and honestly? Tears of the Kingdom is one of the greatest games ive ever played, it took what i loved about BotW and turned that up a couple notches while fixing almost all of my issues i had with BotW (either in ways i didnt expect like Fuse and weapon degradation or something as small as giving me the option to drop a weapon when i open a chest). TotK is one of those games that i think, over time, people will start to appreciate a lot more. This game had crazy expectations put on it that it could never live up to (kinda like Majora's Mask in that regard). And with Echoes of Wisdom taking pages out of Tears of the Kingdom's book? I think the future of Zelda looks very bright, these creative player driven experiences are awesome and ultimately what Miyamoto had envisioned originally with the very first Zelda...Aonuma and Fujibayashi where able to realize it

I'm so glad this video exists! Like, I totally get the critics and how many people were expecting different things than what we got. To me, it was so healing to revisit a growing Hyrule, where people found and created community and resilience. I love that Link isn't alone on his journey this time, even though Tulin blew so many items into the abyss, Yunobo exploded into my face a million times, I randomly activated Ryju in the dumbest situations, etc. Just like real people, they got on my nerves sometimes, but in the end I was so glad they stood by my side and made the road feel less lonely.

This video perfectly encapsulates everything I’ve felt about Tears of the Kingdom in my time playing. I’ve even used the “returning to your hometown” metaphor myself before! Thank you for making sense of the game’s identity in a condensed way

The first time I watched a video dunking on TotK, I asked myself, "Wait, does this mean I haven't been having fun playing the game?" This man gets it. 👍

I’m so glad to see that someone on the internet sees this game in the same way I do!

I love this essay/video, TotK isn’t about discovering new places, (even though you have the depths and sky for that), it’s about revisiting your favorite locations to see what’s changed.

In a ask the developer interview, Fujibayashi said they were confident Tears of the Kingdom would recapture the feeling of playing Breath of the Wild for the first time. This was specifically in response to fans feeling like they wanted to play Breath of the Wild for the first time again. But I think you're also right in the sense that how they recaptured that feeling is revealing about what they thought were the key elements of playing Breath of the Wild for the first time. Everything you pointed out was the key ingredient for them even in Breath of the Wild, but the novelty of the exploration may not as been as defining for them as it was for us. It's similar to how Skyward Sword cut out a connected world and relegated it to a vehicle section. It revealed a schism between how they thought of Zelda and how fans thought of Zelda. I think there are a lot more fans on their side this time around, but I'm a little disappointed that they didn't emphasize the raw exploration of Breath of the Wild as a key feeling of playing that game for the first time.

I was expecting this comment section to be littered with “nuh uh!” Great essay and it feels nice to be seen for how I also viewed the game. Still have some qualms with the games, but I still love it.

"Majora's Mask was the sequel to Wind Waker, and Ocarina of Time was the prequel to Phantom Hourglass" .....

This was always what I loved about totk! It feels like an old sequel film where they made the first one with a banger cast and no franchise plans but the first one did so well they green lit another one. It has all the same jokes as the first but slightly different (totk will have players complete similar side quests for the same character), and the setting is basically the same but there’s a new one in there too (sky and depths). Those movies always had the same thing as the first but w a twist and that’s what totk did and I love it for that

Incredible work on this video! And HOLY CARP it’s your first one too?? GG honestly

what i thought upon reflecting on TOTK, was that the way they approached the game was to make it a re-do of botw. a remix, if you will. they had zonai stuff planned since the beginning of the darn trailer for "zelda wii u" but well, they didn't go for that stuff. they went hard into sheikah tech but now, the gameplay and story function of everything sheikah is replaced with everything zonai, in a sense it does mean that... the game kind of has to try hard to shoehorn itself into being a game that remembers that the other game happened: as in, where did the guardians go? why is malice now gloom? i dont think thats necessarily a BAD thing but its just. honestly i think i wouldve gladly accepted it being touted as a remix rather than a sequel, since to me it very much feels like "if we had more time, technology, and had different ideas for botw, this is what we would've done" like... demon dragon ganon briefly looks like calamity ganon in that one cutscene, and i think thats a nod to how this is a different take on calamity ganon. i think if you took out the slim few mentions of the prequel, being BOTW, it'd still stand well as a game. but it DOES have a unique spot in standing as a world that you re-experience after you've experienced a hyrule that existed in a drearier state in BOTW. so in that sense, yeah, stuff like hateno does make it a great sequel. the ways that you can see the world has grown... that time has moved on... that is what makes it a unique experience as a sequel. but in terms of the primary story, they definitely didn't focus too hard on making it a sequel, but... im sure plenty of that was out of wanting it to be able to stand on its own, and be a fun and engaging story for people who hadnt played BOTW. a good example of that i think is tulin. tulin is... almost nonexistent in botw, so both people who have played botw and who havent played it, are generally on the same page when experiencing his story. overall i love totk, and i think its an interesting combination of being a "remix game" and a sequel in the sense that its expanded upon the world, and uses the prior experience of botw to enhance its own world like it wouldnt stand as well alone if they entirely touted it as a remix. the tone of the world in general sorta relies on botw having happened: the calamity having been cleared up and saved, and civilization rebuilt ...but again, i also think that sometimes, sequels are developed with the mindset of "lets re-do what we did, with different stuff this time" instead of "how can we follow up on the story elements we created in the first game?" if they had done the latter, we'd have gotten an in game explanation of malice (not gloom) and how dead-ganondorfs malice created calamity ganon. or a different approach to zonai stuff, instead of it being "fundamentally this takes the role of sheikah stuff but its more interestingly designed" ...now time to actually watch the video