What Tears of the Kingdom is Like For Someone Who Doesn't Really Play Games

0:00 Over the past few years, I’ve been having my wife,

0:02 more commonly known as the Lady I Live With, try out a bunch of different video

0:06 games in order to examine how someone

0:08 with little to no gaming experience engages with them.

0:11 These informal experiments have given me a better understanding

0:14 of some of the barriers that exist for inexperienced players

0:17 and the opportunity to observe what the process of someone

0:19 becoming proficient in the language of video games is like.

0:22 From these experiences, she’s gone from someone who knew nothing about

0:25 games to someone who knows some things about games,

0:28 causing the name of this series to be

0:30 less and less accurate with each additional entry.

0:32 Oh well.

0:33 Regardless, as the series has become more

0:35 about her transition from non-gamer to gamer,

0:38 I’ve been interested in having her play titles

0:40 that share similarities with the ones she tried

0:43 early on in order to see how having

0:45 more experience has changed her approach to playing them.

0:47 So obviously, as soon as Tears of the Kingdom was announced,

0:50 I knew I would have to run another informal experiment.

0:53 Breath of the Wild was one of the earlier games she played for this series,

0:57 and it was pretty much the first time

0:59 where she actually felt successful while playing it.

1:01 The freedom the game offers allowed her to solve

1:05 problems and overcome obstacles in different ways,

1:07 so even when she didn’t pick up on what the game was nudging her to do,

1:11 she was still able to find her own path forward.

1:13 Where in other games she’d get frustrated when doing

1:15 the thing that made the most sense to her wasn’t possible,

1:18 in Breath of the Wild the vast majority of things she tried actually worked,

1:22 rewarding her creative thinking and never making

1:24 her feel stupid for not getting something.

1:26 Tears of the Kingdom takes the base of Breath of the Wild

1:30 and adds all sorts of new tools designed to increase player expression,

1:33 and while I found this to be a welcome shift,

1:36 I am curious as to how these additions will feel for an inexperienced

1:39 player like my wife as even though having more options increases flexibility,

1:44 it also increases complexity.

1:45 This may prove to be more annoying than helpful.

1:49 So, in order to find out, I had her play through the core of the tutorial,

1:53 stopping once she got off the Great Sky Island

1:55 as I figured that’d be enough to give her a chance

1:57 to engage with the majority of the primary mechanics

1:59 and get a decent feel for how exploration works.

2:02 Like always, I sat back as a mostly passive observer,

2:06 only providing occasional reminders of things

2:08 she’s already learned and advice on what

2:09 to do when she got stuck for a substantial amount of time.

2:13 So, this is how it went.

2:29 Tears of the Kingdom gives control to the player

2:32 quicker than any other 3D Zelda game,

2:33 and this was something my wife appreciated as she likes it when she doesn’t

2:36 have to spend a ton of time waiting before actually being able to start playing.

2:40 This feeling was short lived though because the control

2:43 the player is given at the start is pretty limited.

2:46 Every few steps Zelda would stop her, and it got on her nerves quickly.

2:50 Wife: “Am I gonna get stopped by here every time?” Wife:

2:55 “Oh my god.” Wife: “I don’t really—she’s gonna stop me again?

3:00 OH MY GOD!” These interruptions seem to be a way to characterize Zelda

3:03 as an excitable nerd while also providing

3:05 some information about the lore of the world,

3:07 but my wife found it to be far more annoying than endearing or informative.

3:12 With games in the past,

3:13 she’s always found being stopped in this way to be jarring,

3:16 as when she’s playing a game she really just wants to play

3:19 the game and losing control out of nowhere feels kinda bad,

3:22 so it happening so many times in a row left a sour taste in her mouth.

3:26 After that, things did pick up some

3:30 as she came across a brief yet thrilling fight.

3:34 Wife: *yelling* …wow!

3:35 but then that was followed by a fairly long

3:37 cutscene that was followed by another fairly long cutscene.

3:40 This intro is filled with a ton of exposition

3:45 about the Zonai and the history of Hyrule,

3:48 and while I found this to be intriguing because I am invested in Zelda lore,

3:52 for her it was just a massive info dump

3:54 about a world she knew next to nothing about.

3:57 It didn’t mean much, and led to her zoning out a bit.

4:00 I’ve noticed this happen with cutscenes in other games she’s played,

4:03 but certainly not all of them.

4:04 Really, her investment in a scene typically comes

4:07 down to whether or not it is character focused.

4:09 For instance, with The Last of Us,

4:11 she was drawn in right away by Joel and Sarah’s

4:13 banter—the scene is about people connecting with each other,

4:16 making it easy for her to care about what was going on in a way

4:19 that hearing about a war that happened 10,000 years in the past never could.

4:23 While there are certainly a few great moments

4:26 in these early sequences in Tears of the Kingdom,

4:29 they largely fail at being compelling scenes for a more general audience.

4:33 What matters more is that she went from thinking

4:35 she’d get to start playing right away to sitting through

4:38 20 plus minutes of dialogue and cutscenes that she

4:41 struggled to connect with, providing a decent bit of whiplash.

4:44 And unfortunately, it would be a little longer until she got into the game

4:48 proper because upon arriving in the room

4:50 of awakening and grabbing the decayed master sword,

4:53 she spent about 5 minutes searching every corner

4:55 of the room for something to help her get out.

4:58 To her, the Master Sword looked too blunted and brittle to be an effective

5:01 weapon and she assumed it would break

5:03 before anything she might hit with it would.

5:05 And in fairness, she wasn’t that far off about that, but it did

5:08 lead to her drawing the wrong conclusion and wasting a bunch of time.

5:11 She overthought what was being asked of her, causing

5:13 her to ignore the most obvious approach.

5:16 After not finding anything,

5:18 she eventually gave the master sword a shot despite not thinking it’d work.

5:30 Wife: *gasp of realization* *Laughter* Wife:

5:30 “I’m a dummy” Throughout these experiments,

5:31 I’ve noticed that my wife doesn’t test things nearly

5:33 as much as I do when playing a game.

5:35 For her if an action doesn’t make sense, she rarely gives it a second thought.

5:39 So when she got a sword that looked like it was about to fall apart,

5:42 in her mind, it stopped being a viable answer to the obstacle.

5:46 As she’s played more and more games,

5:47 she’s largely gotten better at interpreting the information presented

5:50 to her, but she does still get tripped up sometimes,

5:52 and this was not the only instance of it

5:55 happening during her playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom.

5:57 The first and funniest, at least to me,

5:59 happened at the very start with her not knowing what

6:02 button to press when the first text box showed up.

6:05 Wife: “Can you help me?

6:06 How do I follow the thing it’s telling me?

6:10 It’s got a, like, down arrow!

6:12 Raz: “Press A” Wife:

6:14 “Why would that be the answer?!” And this is pretty much exactly what

6:18 happened to her when playing Breath of the Wild for the first time.

6:24 Wife: “Where’s the—” Raz: “What did you hit to interact with it?” Wife: “A…Well,

6:27 okay, it had a little triangle facing down, so I was looking for that.

6:33 In fairness to her, it has been years since that first

6:35 experience so I’m not surprised it didn’t stick with her.

6:38 Also, the majority of the time,

6:39 both games generally show button prompts for various actions,

6:42 so having the arrow is visually

6:44 inconsistent with how they present most information.

6:46 Another example came up during the Fuse shrine where

6:49 she noticed the green coloring of the locked door,

6:51 the green light on the front of the chest holding the key

6:54 to it and the green light of the construct core in her inventory.

6:58 and thought they all must be connected,

7:01 leading to a good chunk of time being spent

7:04 on her trying to get something to work Wife: “Are you kidding me right now?

7:10 Are you KIDDING me right now?

7:12 That didn’t do anything?” Ultimately,

7:14 there will always be visuals that are misunderstood by players,

7:18 even by ones who play games all the time,

7:20 and, while I do think developers should always consider the many

7:23 ways the information they put out there may be interpreted,

7:26 there is no way to control for how every players brain will process stuff.

7:30 That’s why one of the best lessons an inexperienced

7:33 player can learn is to just test everything

7:35 even if it doesn’t make as much sense

7:36 to them as the idea they originally started focusing on.

7:39 Frankly this is something even I should do more of.

7:42 Anyway, bringing it back to how things started,

7:44 once she figured out that the Master Sword wasn’t completely useless,

7:47 she made her way through the next bit easily enough,

7:51 and after a brief freak out about how high up she was Wife:

7:58 “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

7:58 That looks like a death trap…:

7:59 she made the leap into the true start of the game.

8:03 All things considered it took her about 30 minutes

8:05 to get to a spot where things actually opened up,

8:08 and around 2/3rds of that time was filled with textboxes and cutscenes.

8:12 By comparison, it took her just 10 minutes to get to Breath

8:15 of the Wild’s title reveal and into the core of the tutorial,

8:18 giving her the chance to immediately get a feel

8:20 for the gameplay and what was expected of her.

8:23 The frequent stops and starts of Tears of the Kingdoms

8:26 opening sequence is a sharp contrast to this near immediate freedom,

8:29 and it definitely left her feeling less engaged and a little frustrated.

8:32 Having a hot start can go a long

8:35 way for both experienced and inexperienced players.

8:37 As games are an interactive medium,

8:39 gameplay is the best way to connect someone to what is going

8:42 on, so the sooner the player can get to that, the better,

8:45 especially when they have no connection to the source material.

8:48 It’s also tough when a game relies so heavily on cinematics despite

8:51 them not being important to what the game is trying to do.

8:54 Tears of the Kingdom’s slower intro set up a rocky start for her, and while

8:58 things did get smoother once she made it into the game proper,

9:01 the design of the Great Sky Island proved to be a challenge

9:05 for her in ways that the Great Plateau of Breath of the Wild did not.

9:12 When it comes to games that center around player freedom,

9:15 there generally are a ton of mechanics and ideas to figure out,

9:18 and finding the best way to introduce those elements without getting

9:21 in the way of the player’s freedom is a tough challenge for developers.

9:25 It’s almost impossible to get perfect, and Tears of the Kingdom is no exception.

9:29 The mechanics are largely presented in one of three ways:

9:32 either pausing the action to show a text box of how something works,

9:36 having a small prompt pop up in the top right corner

9:39 of the screen or being told how to do something by an NPC.

9:42 I’ve talked a bit in the past about some issues with the first two approaches,

9:46 primarily that pausings runs the risk of annoying the player and that small

9:49 text in the corner of the screen can be easy to miss.

9:52 Games that do these things would probably be better off finding some

9:55 sort of middle ground between the two that doesn’t completely stop the action,

9:59 but does put the information front and center.

10:01 While my wife didn’t love either

10:02 of those two approaches in Tears of the Kingdom,

10:05 the third one is what ended up having

10:07 a far more consequential effect on her playthrough.

10:09 The Great Sky Island is filled with constructs,

10:12 and many provide useful information about anything from combat to cooking.

10:16 It’s a cool way to incorporate tutorials somewhat organically,

10:20 but it doesn’t come without issues.

10:21 The first being that the Great Sky Island is massive,

10:24 and it’s unlikely that players will comb every inch of it.

10:27 Given that some of the constructs are pretty tucked away,

10:30 it makes it very likely that the player will miss important information.

10:33 What ended up being the biggest reason my wife didn’t engage with the constructs

10:36 though is that they are the primary enemy type on the island,

10:39 and as she encountered a hostile one instead of a helpful one,

10:42 she became wary of all of them..

10:45 In general, she struggled with combat and couldn’t tell

10:47 which kind of construct was which from a distance,

10:50 it felt safer for her to just avoid them whenever possible.

10:53 Eventually she did get better at figuring out

10:55 which ones were friendly—she noticed that intense music

10:57 would play around the ones that attacked

10:59 her, so as long as the music wasn’t playing, she knew she was safe.

11:02 By that point though,

11:03 she had already passed important stuff that would have been helpful to know.

11:07 For instance, in order to get the ascend ability,

11:09 the player has to deal with the brutal cold of the snowy region

11:12 and the most efficient way to do

11:14 that is by cooking a meal with spicy ingredients.

11:17 There is a construct near the entryway

11:19 of the area that tells this to the player,

11:21 but doesn’t actually explain how to cook.

11:23 The ones that do were on a different part of the island,

11:26 and she missed both of them, leaving her to figure it out on her own.

11:30 Obviously, it’s not the most complex thing in the world and is

11:32 something a lot of players will remember from Breath of the Wild,

11:35 but as she had only ever done it once before years ago,

11:38 she didn’t know what the game wanted from her.

11:40 She tried sitting by the fire to see if an option to cook would pop,

11:44 which frankly probably should be how it's done,

11:45 but I get why Nintendo likes it to be more of a manual thing.

11:48 I ended up having to nudge her in the right direction,

11:51 and she mostly was confused why the construct

11:53 by the fire didn’t just tell her how it worked.

11:55 In Nintendo’s effort to have these mechanics be taught in an organic way,

11:59 it makes it possible for them to not being taught at all.

12:01 This feels a bit strange given that they

12:02 over explain far more obvious mechanics in unavoidable ways,

12:02 so it isn’t even a consistent creative choice.

12:02 In fairness, Tears of the Kingdom does have a ton

12:05 of mechanics—it’s why there is so much player freedom,

12:07 and it can be hard to communicate

12:10 all that information without overwhelming the player.

12:12 I imagine the reason some aspects aren’t presented as plainly as others

12:15 is so that the player doesn’t get bombarded with too many concepts.

12:18 Having cooking fall into that category doesn’t make much sense to me,

12:22 but the general approach does.

12:23 With that said, even with there being

12:25 fewer mandatory tutorials than there could have been,

12:28 my wife still got overwhelmed quickly from the sheer

12:30 amount of inputs she needed to learn.

12:32 Wife: “There’s too many buttons for this.

12:36 I’m never gonna know this.

12:38 I won’t.

12:39 I won’t!” With all the things Link can do in Tears of the Kingdom,

12:43 the controller is pretty much used up to its limit.

12:46 There aren’t really any wasted buttons and on top of that there

12:49 are also a bunch of conditional inputs based on what ability you’re using,

12:53 where you’re standing, or if you’re in the air.

12:55 Honestly, keeping track of the controls is something I had some troubles with.

12:59 Even after dozens of hours I still would

13:02 press the wrong thing when trying to switch abilities,

13:04 so it’s no surprise that being inundated with all this information

13:07 would be even more stressful for a less experienced player.

13:11 As new mechanics were introduced to her, instead

13:13 of integrating them into her approach, she mostly just relied more on the ones

13:17 she felt comfortable and familiar with, so

13:19 that largely boiled down to doing the stuff

13:21 she remembered from Breath of the Wild, and by that I mean climbing.

13:24 And it did serve her well for a while, but unfortunately,

13:28 climbing couldn’t get her out of every situation Wife:

13:31 “This doesn’t make it—oh god.

13:32 Okay, how do I get up there then?

13:34 How do I do it?

13:36 How do I do it?

13:37 Can you help me?

13:38 I don’t have a lot of time.” Raz:

13:40 “How might you be able to do it?” Wife: “How might I be able to do it?

13:43 That’s a great question.” Of the mechanics new to Tears of the Kingdom,

13:46 the one she was most drawn to was Ultrahand, which imagine is fairly common.

13:50 It is wildly versatile and many obstacles across

13:53 the world are designed with it in mind.

13:55 In fact, when watching her play, it became clear just how much of the tutorial

13:59 is centered around teaching the ins and outs of Ultrahand.

14:02 As it has so many elements to it,

14:05 showing the different use cases to players has a ton of value,

14:08 and will make their transition into the game proper much smoother.

14:11 However, this ends up having a significant impact on the design of the Great

14:15 Sky Island in that in order to properly teach the wider scope of the mechanic,

14:19 the player is heavily guided down a certain path.

14:22 After reaching the Temple of Time,

14:25 they are pointed directly at the Ultrahand shrine

14:27 that is conveniently located right next to it.

14:30 Then it encourages the player to mark the other two shrines,

14:33 the ascend shrine which is up in the mountains and super far away

14:36 and the fuse shrine which is somewhat close and the trek looks simple enough,

14:40 making it more likely to go that way.

14:42 Also, there are paths on both sides

14:44 of the Ultrahand shrine that lead toward the Fuse shrine,

14:46 increasing the odds even further that players will head to it.

14:49 This is the path my wife took, it's the path I took,

14:52 and it’s the path most people I know who’ve played the game took.

14:55 Most importantly, it is the path Nintendo clearly wants the player to take,

14:59 and they aren’t subtle about it.

15:01 This is a pretty big departure

15:02 from the structure of Breath of the WIld’s tutorial.

15:05 Once the player starts down this path,

15:07 they kind of get locked into a linear progression around the Great Sky Island.

15:11 There are massive gaps between different sections of it,

15:13 so players can’t really change course unless they completely backtrack.

15:18 Comparatively, while Breath of the Wild also has an intended route,

15:21 it feels far more like a suggestion as given the layout of the Great Plateau,

15:25 players can easily head to any shrine they want to at any point.

15:29 This is something my wife appreciated as it allowed

15:32 for a more fluid approach to the various challenges she encountered.

15:37 When she came across an obstacle that seemed too much for her, she’d

15:41 just go somewhere else and take on a challenge she felt more ready for.

15:44 With Tears of the Kingdom though,

15:46 she ran into various spots that acted almost like choke points where she

15:49 had to engage with an obstacle in a specific way in order to progress.

15:53 These bottlenecks act as a way to almost guarantee that players will learn more

15:57 of the complexities of the major abilities

15:59 before being unleashed into the wider world.

16:01 The goal is to provide more situational practice.

16:04 It makes sense from a game design standpoint,

16:06 but it does go against the open design philosophy of Breath

16:10 of the Wild’s tutorial and honestly of the rest of Tears of the Kingdom.

16:14 This created a bit of friction for her as she

16:16 didn’t feel like she was able to forge her own path,

16:20 and instead had to troubleshoot specific challenges until she got it.

16:24 Wife: “Oh god.

16:27 Oh god.

16:29 Help me!

16:31 Dash.

16:32 X.

16:32 No, no, no, no, no, no.

16:38 Are you kidding me?

16:44 That’s not funny.” On top of that, the Great Sky Island being made up

16:51 of a bunch of smaller islands that aren’t

16:53 always the easiest to traverse didn’t help either.

16:56 Going the wrong way felt way more

16:58 consequential because getting back on track was rarely

17:00 as simple as walking back to where she last was like in Breath of the Wild.

17:04 Instead it became a new obstacle to overcome,

17:07 in her eyes mostly serving as a way to eat up

17:10 a bunch of time just to get back to square one.

17:12 Of course, these diversions did get her to better

17:15 understand stamina management and the range of Ultrahand,

17:17 but she didn’t find it satisfying to put

17:19 in so much effort without any notable sense of progression.

17:22 Most side paths ended up feeling like dead ends

17:24 to her, and frankly a lot of them are.

17:27 They may give an item or bypass a small part of the main path,

17:30 but ultimately they are just short little detours.

17:32 To be clear, Tears of the Kingdom’s tutorial has a kind of navigational freedom.

17:37 It’s unlikely that two players will walk the exact

17:39 path within the intended route and even the bottlenecks

17:42 can be done without engaging with whatever it

17:44 is trying to get the player to engage with.

17:47 It is also possible to complete the shrines in any order although doing

17:51 the Fuse shrine first involves running directly past one of the other two,

17:54 so it’s unlikely someone would do it for any reason other than

17:57 to get footage for a YouTube video where they mention it can be done.

18:01 Despite all that, the navigational freedom given

18:03 to players in the tutorial is still limited,

18:06 which made it harder for her to play how she wanted to.

18:09 Where in Breath of the Wild’s tutorial freedom is used to give players choices,

18:12 in Tears of the Kingdom’s freedom seems

18:14 to be there so players feel like they have

18:16 choices even though the game is doing everything

18:18 it can to funnel them down one path.

18:20 While this certainly wasn’t the biggest issue for her, she did get hung

18:23 on obstacles in a way she didn’t really in Breath of the Wild.

18:26 Interestingly enough, had she gone the other way around the island,

18:29 it would have been a far easier time

18:31 as it mostly involves climbing up and then down—it doesn’t

18:34 require solving any Ultrahand puzzles and is pretty much

18:37 just a straight shot from one shrine to the next.

18:39 And even a lot of that can be skipped by going to the slope

18:42 near the ascend shrine and using a plane to glide over to the Fuse shrine,

18:45 although I don’t think my wife would have thought to do that, and she

18:49 didn’t have the best track record

18:50 with controlling the planes Wife “What’s happening?

18:55 What’s happening?

18:58 Ohhhhhhhh.

18:59 Dive, R?

19:02 Woooooooooooosh.

19:03 I don’t know that there’s water beneath me.

19:10 AH!

19:11 What happened?” All in all, even though that path would have been simpler,

19:16 I think it’s for the best that she didn’t take it,

19:18 as gaining a better understanding of the mechanics is

19:21 more important than getting through things with no resistance.

19:23 Going the unintended way,

19:25 means missing out on learning the intricacies of a bunch of mechanics,

19:28 and it’s almost a bit surprising to me that it is an option

19:30 at all because of how ineffective of a tutorial it ends up being.

19:33 With that said, it could be argued that this path

19:36 teaches the most valuable lesson of Tears of the Kingdom,

19:38 which is that there are many ways to “break” the intended experience,

19:42 and the player should never be afraid to do it.

19:45 While my wife didn’t learn that lesson in this way,

19:49 it is one she came around to in her own

19:54 time Even though the main abilities in Tears

19:56 of the Kingdom are more mechanically complex than the ones

19:58 in Breath of the Wild and therefore harder to learn,

20:01 my wife ended up liking them all way more,

20:03 especially like I mentioned before, Ultrahand.

20:05 This is not surprising as the games she’s enjoyed

20:08 the most throughout these experiments

20:10 typically include building in some capacity.

20:12 In general, she finds it fun to create stuff,

20:14 and it also gives her a sense of control

20:16 that makes it easier for her to feel invested.

20:18 When she can manipulate items or even the environment itself,

20:21 it gives her more opportunities to do things in a way that makes sense

20:25 to her instead of having to fully conform to what a game wants her to do.

20:29 This type of sandbox approach leads to her real

20:32 world logic being more effective within the game space.

20:35 Of course, the actual process of using Ultrahand

20:37 did take her a while to get used to.

20:40 Getting objects rotated in the direction she

20:42 wanted involved a lot of trial and error,

20:44 and due to all the conditional controls,

20:46 she’d sometimes mistake what mode she was

20:48 in and move things in ways she didn’t mean to.

20:50 In turn this sometimes led to her attaching things in suboptimal ways,

20:54 and she found herself wishing that the game just knew what she wanted to do.

20:58 Wife: “Are you kidding me?

21:00 I have to do it perfectly?” Raz:

21:02 “Well…it doesn’t know how you want it.” Wife: “Well,

21:04 it should!” Raz: “Why?” Wife: “It’s so obvious.” *pause* Wife:

21:11 “Don’t you write about me like that.

21:14 Don’t you dare!” While this would make the building

21:17 in Tears of the Kingdom less versatile and interesting,

21:19 given that most of the things she constructed were relatively straight forward,

21:23 I do understand the desire for it to auto

21:25 correct to a position that actually makes sense.

21:27 It being so particular with how attaching objects together works led

21:31 to her spending a lot of time trying to get things right,

21:34 and as in her everyday life she is a bit of a perfectionist,

21:37 she always wanted things to be perfectly aligned, which added even more time.

21:42 All of this did give her a ton of practice though,

21:45 and she started to get a pretty good grasp over how it worked,

21:48 and due to it being a mechanic she enjoyed,

21:50 she didn’t mind the time it took to figure it out.

21:53 The other ability she got a decent bit of use from was ascend

21:55 largely because she liked being able to get to the top of things quickly,

22:00 especially as she was prone to falling off stuff.

22:03 Wife: *screams* As for the other two,

22:04 she barely engaged with either—pretty much only

22:06 ever using them when it was mandatory.

22:08 In fact, she actually skipped past a few puzzles that I thought required them.

22:13 This first happened in the Fuse shrine with the puzzle

22:15 I mentioned before where she hyper focused on the green

22:17 of the chest matching the green of the construct core instead

22:20 of looking at the wood plank and leaves surrounding the chest.

22:23 By the time she started to look for a different solution,

22:25 the fire fruits she had picked up earlier were a distant memory,

22:29 and she instead found a torch, placed an arrow in it, and shot it up there.

22:37 Wife: “I did it!

22:40 Not what I thought was going to happen though.”

22:47 Even though the plan was off by a bit,

22:49 it still worked which is all that matters.

22:51 The next instance was just before the 4th shrine.

22:53 To get to it, the player has to fast travel

22:56 to the starting room and then use recall to traverse these gears,

22:59 but when she got to the room,

23:00 she ran right past them, towards the way point on her mini-map.

23:03 At first she looked around to see if there was a way to climb up,

23:07 but then remembered that she could use ascend,

23:11 which got her right into the room.

23:14 Wife: *gasp* Wife: “I don’t know that I wanted to do that all the way…” Wife:

23:21 “Oooooooooo” Raz: “That’s interesting.” The last major

23:23 instance happened in the 4th shrine itself.

23:25 It ends with a puzzle where the player has to use recall

23:28 to align the hands on the clock in order to open the door,

23:31 but instead my wife used Ultrahand to get

23:36 them aligned and then attached them together.

23:40 Wife: *gasp* Wife “Wooooooow,

23:42 I’m so good!” All of these were really awesome to see because

23:45 it wasn’t how I did them or would have thought to do them.

23:49 With all three instances,

23:50 it seems pretty clear that Nintendo designed them with these approaches in mind.

23:54 While they definitely heavily guide the player throughout the tutorial,

23:57 their goal still is to get them to be

23:59 as creative as possible with the tools they have,

24:01 so creating obstacles that can be solved

24:02 through the use of different abilities is

24:04 one way to get players to do that, and it certainly worked for my wife.

24:07 It just took having to be pushed by the game

24:09 to learn the ins and outs of its major mechanics.

24:11 Even though it took longer to get there,

24:13 she was eventually able to have a similar sense of freedom

24:16 with Tears of the Kingdom that she had with Breath of the Wild.

24:19 I’d even argue that in some ways it was

24:21 a more meaningful form of freedom as most of the freedom

24:23 she felt in Breath of the Wild came from being

24:25 able to find her own path to a destination,

24:27 which had more to do with the world layout and the option

24:30 to climb nearly everything than any sort of mastery over mechanics.

24:34 Here though the freedom came through clever uses of the core abilities—she

24:38 was able to apply what she had learned earlier in order to progress,

24:41 even when it was not the intended or optimal approach,

24:44 and this made her feel good at the game

24:49 in a way that not even Breath of the Wild did.

24:55 All things said and done, Tears of the Kingdom proved to be a much

24:58 more challenging game for her than its predecessor.

25:01 For most of it, she felt limited with how she could

25:04 approach each obstacle and confused by the complexity of various abilities,

25:08 but it did successfully get her to a place where she understood the mechanics

25:12 well enough to use them in a way that made the most sense for her.

25:15 And that’s the beauty of Tears

25:17 of the Kingdom’s approach to game design—it gives players

25:20 the tools to do things in a way that makes the most sense to them.

25:24 There are almost always multiple solutions to a problem,

25:26 and I’m sure Nintendo planned for many of them,

25:29 but the mechanics are so versatile that players have found

25:31 ways to do things that Nintendo never could have fully anticipated.

25:34 Now, I don’t think every game should do this.

25:37 I love when a title pushes me to think in the way it wants me

25:41 to, but it is incredibly liberating to play

25:43 a game that gives players this much agency.

25:46 And I think titles that do

25:48 this are really valuable for less experienced players.

25:51 Not having to conform to a single approach lowers the barrier of entry.

25:55 The hard part is getting those players to a point where

25:58 they have a grasp over the many things there are to learn,

26:01 and I don’t think Tears of the Kingdom

26:03 fully nails it with how it onboards newcomers.

26:05 In some instances it leaves far too much up to chance and in others

26:08 it directs the player in a way that feels at odds with the game’s ethos..

26:12 With that said, it did do just enough to have my wife engage with it

26:16 in the way it was meant to be engaged with: by learning to break the rules.

26:21 Tears of the Kingdom is far too massive and combat focused

26:25 for my wife to be interested in playing a whole lot more of it,

26:28 but the mechanical freedom it offered did help build her confidence as well

26:32 as gain an understanding of the game that felt unique to her.

26:36 Like, Breath of the Wild,

26:37 it met her in the middle in a way alot of other games haven’t,

26:40 and I think titles that do this are

26:43 some of the best for turning non-gamers into gamers.

26:46 Wife: “Are you proud of me?” Raz: “Yeah.

26:48 It’s very good.” Wife: “I was really good.” Raz:

26:51 “You were very good!” Wife: “I was extra good.

26:55 Wanna do another one?” As my wife has played through

26:58 the first hour or so a bunch of games now, I figured it was about time to check

27:03 in with her to see which ones she’s enjoyed playing the most,

27:06 so I had her make a list of her favorites for us to go over,

27:09 and you can watch us talking about them right now over on Nebula.

27:12 For those of you who don’t know, Nebula is a creator owned streaming service,

27:16 that I have been a part of for 3 years now,

27:18 and over there you can watch everything I post on YouTube ad-free

27:21 as well as a ton of videos that are exclusive to Nebula.

27:24 This past year alone I made a video

27:26 essay diving into the ending of BioShock Infinite,

27:28 did a ranking of modern Soulsborne games,

27:31 turned a script I wrote 10 years ago into an actual video, and a bunch more.

27:36 It gives me a place to experiment with content like

27:39 interviewing my wife about what games she likes to play,

27:42 and it’s also one of the best ways to support

27:44 me as a creator because when you sign up

27:46 for Nebula using my link the description I get

27:49 a chunk of that money for as long as you're subscribed.

27:51 By signing up, you can get access to everything

27:54 on Nebula which ranges from original series, podcasts, classes,

27:58 and anything else that some of the best creators on youtube

28:01 want to make like Patrick H Willems Stars Wars Holiday special.

28:05 Also, Nebula is currently offering lifetime plans,

28:07 which is a one time payment that gives you access to the service

28:11 for as long as you and Nebula are both on this earth.

28:13 But of course, if you’re not looking to make a big purchase,

28:16 you can still get nebula for $2.50

28:18 a month for a year over at nebula.tv/razbuten.

28:23 Regardless of the plan you choose,

28:26 Nebula is one of the best places on the internet for high quality entertainment,

28:27 and it is well worth the money.

28:29 So yeah, give it a look, help support me,

28:31 and watch my wife talk about how she likes Fortnite.

28:33 Anyway, thanks to Nebula for sponsoring this video.

28:35 For all of you still watching, hey.

28:37 I'd like to thank my patrons for making this channel possible and give

28:40 a special shout out to Victor DUva for being an honorary bagbuten.

28:44 I hope you all have a great day and/or night,

28:51 and I will see you in the next one.

28:57 Wife: “Ahhhhhh I wanna be done.

29:03 Take it.” Raz” You kept playing!” Wife: “I’m done!” Raz: “Good job.”