Holism: Ultrahand, Fuse, and Tears of the Kingdom

Thanks to AShadowLink for edits.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may have been a tremendous accomplishment, it may have been my favorite video game of all time, but it garnered criticism as any work of art should. While there were plenty of major complaints, the ones with which I took the most umbrage tended to be about its mechanics. The 2017 adventure was a light survival game, and many of its systems had you struggle with the post-apocalyptic kingdom of Hyrule. You could climb almost any surface if you had the stamina, elemental effects like rain and fire could alter the world around you, and weapons had a limited durability before breaking. Some of these were frustrating. You had to scrounge for swords, procedurally generated rain made it nigh impossible to climb for minutes at a time, that stamina gauge always seemed a bit too short, and there weren’t many ways to get around the Kyoto-sized world. Asking Nintendo to simply cut these more tiring features was a common and understandable request.

While I sympathize with the complaints, I don’t think that would be the right idea. What made the world of Breath so exciting was how it was contiguous and consistent. Rain puts out fires; it only stands to reason it should affect climbing. Weapons breaking was central to the economy, since you have to find better gear and be willing to use your best stuff. Excising these points of frustration would make the world feel a bit lesser or screw with the progression. At the same time, having a feature that exists to make things a bit worse isn’t much fun either—especially not for a game like this one. It sold itself on its nonlinearity and ability to accommodate your direction. If there was a peak to reach, you could climb or glide from somewhere else or ride a fire’s updraft. The rain simply negated your ability to engage. The durability might screw you over in a difficulty spike. And it would be good to give Link more ways to move and express himself than simply walking, riding, and climbing, especially once he had conquered most of the map. They deserved to be addressed, just in a way that fit the values powering everything else.

Image: Source Gaming. Tears of the Kingdom occupies an odd space: it reuses the same setting and map, but has so many new ideas—like a grand skyscape—that it goes far beyond any conventional expansion or DLC.

It’s far from just this, but to an extent you can see The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as a correction for these complaints and many others. The effects of the rain can be lessened by easily made potions. The dungeons are far grander in scale and are seamlessly part of the world, as opposed to the somewhat less liked Divine Beasts. There are more interesting and cinematic bosses than the Blights of Ganon, on top of more mini-bosses who compliment the preexisting ones. And the complaints about durability, movement, and player expression were answered as well. But it’s how they got answered that we see what’s exciting about Tears of the Kingdom, and how it functions as a sequel, a reimagining, and an evolution.

The previous game was somewhat famous for giving Link a power set based on environmental manipulation, and doling it out during an incredible and immersive tutorial. Tears does the same thing with a somewhat weaker opening area and new powers. Ascend lets him swim through ceilings to bypass obstacles, Recall sends an object back in time, but the other two are the most interesting. The one you’ll rely on for the grandest feats is Ultrahand, which lets you pick up and move pretty much any object that isn’t leashed to the ground. It’s an expansion of the metal-focused Magnesis power from Breath, but it goes a few steps further by also letting Link stick things together. If you cut down a few trees, just super glue their logs together and you’ve got yourself a raft.

Image: Source Gaming. My second automobile, I believe. It had really fast wheels, a wooden shell to keep the driver safe… and no steering wheel. Honestly, worked about as well as the first car, which I could control. Then again, I may have destroyed the walls accidentally. I did burn the bottom of a car weeks later thanks to its flamethrower igniting the grass I rode over.

The opportunities this gives are insane. One puzzle has you make a roof over flammable, thorny brambles during a torrential rainstorm. Others task you with bizarre physics conundrums. These can be explicit challenges you find in one of the game’s Shrines, one part of several unlisted sidequests, or just a part of navigation like figuring out how to best get across a gap. It’s easy to cheese through many of these challenges by simply turning a bunch of crap into a gigantic, makeshift bridge (something Nintendo is clearly fine with, since plenty of Shrines have enough pieces for that to be feasible), but it’s no less fun to finagle a more interesting solution. However, what you’ll be making most of all are working vehicles, which start off as ways to ease traversal and potentially end as much wilder.

To allow this, and to create more opportunities and challenges, Hyrule’s lands, skies, and Depths are cluttered with technologies from the ancient Zonai people. Their marbled green plating is easy to notice. These include handcarts, gliders, steering wheels, flamethrowers, cannons, turbine fans, rockets, and even weirder things to improve your device’s stability. A few can build turrets or drones who operate independently. Some can be bought for a steal at goofy Gachapon-esque gumball machines or through the optional Autobuild power if you’re out of what you need. And if you’re looking for a base on which to stick them, the Hyrulean government is generous enough to have a depot on every road carrying planks, boards, and wheels. Tears will more often than not defer to your craftsmanship and building plan, so not having a perfect system is rarely a problem. And in the case where it is, you’ll often find yourself with a silly anecdote. Like my one-sided paddle boat that barely, almost accidentally got to the end of one shrine’s waterway.

Image: Source Gaming. A typically atypical solution for the “Addison puzzles,” an unlisted series of challenges in which you stop a man’s ill-made signs from falling any way you can.

Much of what made Breath of the Wild great was the way the world itself was a humongous natural puzzle, a sandbox of giant triangles, each of which was a challenge to overcome and filled with rewards. These things you create from Ultrahand take this idea to another level. On one hand, they can make navigation far easier than just relying on Link’s still unparalleled climbing skills. But you still have to build that bridge or hot air balloon to get there, and plenty of challenges demand it. Several of the new “sky islands” are so high up that accessing them is impossible for Link on his own. The game is generous and typically places stuff where you’ll need it, but not always, and it may not be fast or manipulable enough for you. The hardest of these are deliberately out there and hard to access—even by the game’s standards these are extremely optional—but Ultrahand isn’t just a means of making things easier. It creates challenges. Instead of being a specific solution, as powers typically work in the bespoke dungeons of classic Zelda, it puts the onus on you to come up with what you need. This is one big part of why the new areas, the cluttered skies and the terrifying Depths, are needed. They’re built around this power in a way the last game’s terrain wasn’t.

Fuse is, compared to that, far simpler. Link can affix an object to his on-hand weapon, shield, or arrow, and that makes it stronger. That’s it. This power can only combine one tool and one attachment, so you’re tragically unable to stack four boomerangs into an anime ninja pinwheel. There’s a very easy meme quality to this, particularly when you have halberds stuck to clubs, writhing skeletal arms stuck to two-handed swords, and shields stuck to other shields. These are pretty much all beneficial, to be clear; every fusion adds at least one damage point, and you’re not losing anything other than the one fused item. Often they accentuate what you’re carrying, like giving a spear more reach. But it’s extremely goofy. You can see it as an extension of Ultrahand that lets you give more personality to your arms, which it is, but it can’t compare with its counterpart’s ability to create marvels out of junk. However, it’s in the details that Fuse becomes just as imaginative and daring a power.

Image: Source Gaming. Even against dangerously overpowered enemies in a freezing mesa, a simple ruby on a shield does so much. Notice how the Constructs can also carry fused weapons; some can even do fusions. One even stole a Silver Lizalfos Horn I pulled out.

For one thing, this upends the entire economy of weapon strength, degradation, and acquisition. Fusion improves your weapon’s durability a little (not a lot, and certain attachments like monster parts are weak enough to actually break on their own), but more interesting is how far it can augment your tools. If you stick a small stone onto something, it’ll become an axe ready to cut down evil sentient trees. Stick a normal stone, or especially a boulder, and you’ve got a replacement for the sledgehammers you needed last time to break ore deposits. Put a topaz on the business end of a shield, let enemies whale on it, and they’ll get a nasty electric surprise. You can fire arrows carrying homing properties, plants to light up dark paths, and an RPG-esque “confusion” status effect. And since you can detach items—the addition does get destroyed, but the base doesn’t—it’s easy to rebuild tools for your needs. This solves an issue Breath had in that every player generally needed to have at least one axe and one sledgehammer on hand to cut trees and break deposits, even though they weren’t good for anything else. Now, you can make and break them whenever you want, even in the middle of a heated battle.

Essentially, every single weapon in Tears of the Kingdom can be useful in some way, either as a base or an attachment. Maybe not a ton; a loose tree branch is still a crappy, last ditch weapon. Once you more regularly get higher grade tools you can abandon the worse ones, but if you need to break down a vein of ore, there’s almost always something for you to grab and a rock to stick on the end. And since every enemy drops at least one material, all you have to do is kill them, and you have something to attach and probably a weapon to take off their person. There are Lizalfos tails that turn clubs into whips, Keese wings and Chu jellies that add elemental effects, and horns—especially the horns. The already-tough enemies from Breath of the Wild have gotten a boost in power symbolized by a horn on their head, those are drops, and they add quite a bit more power than just sticking a sword on a sword. And all this is done on the fly.

Image: Source Gaming. Link holding out two predictably goofy fusions in the menu.

This also means that Fuse compliments Ultrahand, not just exists alongside it. It doesn’t take long for most players to stick a rocket on the end of a weapon as a joke, but if you fuse it or a bomb to your shield, that gives you a one-time rocket jump perfect for Hyrule’s impressive verticality. Shield surfing is a thing, but adding a minecart gives you a skateboard. In general, this system is great for making your shield a weapon and your dedicated weapons all the tougher, something that helps the pace. Attachments still follow the game’s interlocking physics and “chemistry” engines, so you can stick a bomb at the end of a spear for a one time blast (that automatically explodes if you pull it out in a flammable environment) or combine a broadsword and a Korok frond to blow gusts of wind. Even that alien machinery functions like it should once it gets stuck to your clubs and soup ladles. The only time the game forgoes its rules are for convenience; that topaz shield won’t electrocute you if it’s made of metal, and wooden fire rods don’t instantly burn up in your hand. Perhaps they should, but that’s a fair concession.

Funnily enough, to support this system Nintendo even went one step further by making the weapon degradation even worse! It’s an actual plot point that all of Hyrule’s metal weapons are rotted and close to breaking thanks to Ganondorf’s miasma of “gloom.” Some escaped this (primarily wooden sticks, the ancient arms of the Zonai, and a few weapons you can find in the Depths), but for the most part, you have to switch and use your gear even more aggressively than before. It does work, though. Fusing is easy and makes your stuff far more powerful than they could be last time, it allows you to use weapons that can’t fit in your inventory, parts are literally everywhere, and many have unique effects. This allows a wild amount of experimentation that can be explored entirely at your discretion.

Image: Source Gaming. Fusion also works in conjunction with the game’s level scaling, where it spawns more powerful foes—complete with stronger weapons and better drops—as you defeat more of them. It’s another improvement on Breath of the Wild, since the reward and challenge for fighting are both greater.

One of my most cherished moments of Breath of the Wild came while I was trekking through the cold, dark, snow-covered Hebra Mountains. I had next to no health, no dishes that could stave off the cold, and while I could warp to another area I needed to keep exploring. To find at least one shrine or sidequest or that nearest thing beyond the corner. So I improvised; I had a giant burning sword, and since any flaming tool will warm you up if you have it equipped, it kept me alive until my wanderlust was satisfied. There aren’t any dedicated fire swords in Tears of the Kingdom, at least none I’ve found after over 175 hours. You don’t need to find one. You can make your own just by sticking something that emits flame on the end of a weapon, like a ruby or the stone of a fiery Like Like. There are magical rods (which are just bludgeons without an accoutrement), but any weapon can be a magical rod after fusion. And those extra parts work just as well at staving off the cold as that wonderful Flameblade was. I know, because that’s exactly how I made it through the Wind Temple’s sub-zero temperatures.

These systems—augmenting weapons to suit your needs, turning detritus into vehicles—are part of a running theme in Tears, where it’s responding to fan complaints, exploits, and praise through expansion. It took barely any time after Breath’s release for players to make rudimentary flying machines by stacking things on top of minecarts; that trick’s been removed, but now you can build devices that put those to shame. People were annoyed about the rain, and while storms do seem to run shorter there’s also a dedicated “anti-slipping” effect. There’s even a suit that negates it, and something that big is naturally at the end of the game’s biggest quest line. Degradation is a lot more manageable when just one object can turn a weapon into something new and far better. And it all gels with that beloved Breath of the Wild nonlinearity, which itself has only expanded. Instead of removing things that were unenjoyable, Zelda made them the starting point for new ideas, solutions, and forms of player expression.

Image: Source Gaming. While less embarrassing than the paddleboat (which… maybe I’ll share an image of that someday), this early and overproduced ship was an early attempt to be fancy. Notice how I failed to make it water-resistant. Still worked perfectly.

Even a fairly simple power like Ascend fits in with this. The climbing in the open world Zeldas is wonderful, tactile, and immensely satisfying. But there’s a lot of it, and some players did complain about how extensive it got. Ultrahand’s vehicles help, of course, but Ascend (which literally started as a developer tool that the programmers liked enough to keep in) also makes it easier to climb buildings and mushroom-like stalks. But the animation for it takes just long enough for impatient players like me to prefer climbing a lot of the time, and the level design is built around it. You can’t jump into a ceiling that’s too high up, it has to be at least somewhat level with the ground, and there are plenty of vertical spaces and puzzles built around manipulating it specifically. A cheat code to make things easier leads to new gameplay.

This fits the general change in perspective. Breath of the Wild was about exploration. You had a few wild powers and were dumped into the center of the overwhelming Hyrule. There were things to uncover—cool areas or surprises or story beats—but it was primarily about studying this world, finding the hundreds of breadcrumbs Nintendo laid out, and becoming empowered through your knowledge. It turned every hour, every shrine, every quest into just one more sliver of metal on the sword you pointed at Hyrule Castle. This meant the main plot beats had to be done in any order, or potentially not at all, and that you were given basic tools over devices with one interesting use. The world was unknown, and you were a surveyor.

Image: Source Gaming. While less interesting, Recall also falls in with this aspect of upgrading aspects of the game. In Breath of the Wild, you could parry some attacks and build up kinetic motion in objects. Now you can reflect any solid projectile, exploit gravity, and even create machines with the intent to send them back in time.

Tears of the Kingdom has that, too, but it’s more about experimentation; the powers are far wider reaching and the problems even crazier. The plot works with this by segueing into something of a mystery. Zelda is missing, following leads on her brings you to the kingdom’s greatest problems and questions, and the answers you find open up the story. Making Link a detective (and a Clark Kent-esque heroic journalist for that gigantic quest line) is fun; it fits in with other Zelda sequels like Majora’s Mask and Link’s Awakening. But it’s also a natural continuation of Breath of the Wild, which had mysteries and built them into the land. Tears uses the map of its predecessor for logistical reasons—building and refining Ultrahand and the other mechanics were far too time-consuming to allow a fully new setting—but even that fits. Link knows this kingdom, and you probably do, too. But it’s been changed by time and Upheaval, and the way you used to do things may not be enough. So you improvise.

Nintendo’s newest masterpiece has many virtues. The audiovisual splendor of its predecessor has been refined. It’s filled with charming characters and a setting—a kingdom rebuilding from an apocalypse, whose accomplishments are under threat—that’s rare for the genre. Thanks to an extra year of refinement, the mechanics are shockingly tight for something with this much freedom. Hyrule’s three planes are absolutely riddled with wonderful secrets. Its best, though, may be its ability to answer some of players’ complaints. Because, like a rabbi, it made those answers in the form of questions. It sucks having to replace a good weapon with a bad one, so how can we make the bad one more powerful, unique, or fun? Players want to manipulate the world, not just live in it, and how do we accomplish that in this light survival sim? People are clearly gravitating towards seeing how far they can take what we’ve built, and we should support and challenge that, but how? And what role will the player take in making these changes?

Image: Source Gaming. Even close to two hundred hours in, the basic airplane—two or three fans, a control stick, a “Wing” base, and maybe a small cart or battery to get it moving—is invaluable.

It can be easy to remove a flaw or point of frustration, at least a basic and disconnected one. Sometimes, at least. That’s standard practice for sequels, just iron out what didn’t work. Sometimes that’ll futz with the original’s ideas and milieu, and sometimes that won’t. Those specific gameplay issues people had with Breath of the Wild weren’t load bearing mechanics. You could just remove them. But it was far more interesting to study, interrogate, and drag something out of them. This is even true of the game’s virtues, like the climbing and cooking and verticality; all of those are played with just as much. That’s what happened with Ultrahand; Nintendo had been exploring it from the start of production, but its sheer depth was largely borne out of the excitement at seeing how far and how quickly players took the last game beyond their expectations. This is what sequels need to be: in constant conversation with their predecessors, their audience, and their goals. Tears of the Kingdom is just especially good at it.