Analysis: Tears of the Kingdom Expands on Breath of the Wild’s Devotion to Player Freedom

When The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was first announced, many fans were asking themselves how Nintendo could possibly build upon a game as expansive as Breath of the Wild in a meaningful way with a direct sequel. At the outset, some criticized it as “glorified DLC” or a rehash of Breath of the Wild, especially with the news that Tears of the Kingdom would be reusing its predecessor’s map. Now that Tears of the Kingdom has been out for about three months at the time of this writing, we’ve had time to play this new game, so I hope to explore the core concepts that Breath of the Wild was built upon and show how Nintendo expanded upon those ideas in Tears of the Kingdom.

Breath of the Wild Set the Precedent For Tears of the Kingdom and Future Zelda Games

Released in 2017, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild presented a massive shift in the Zelda formula, abandoning the template for Zelda games that we had grown accustomed to and instead turning Hyrule into a sandbox, with gameplay devoted to experimentation and player freedom. The developers accomplished this largely by building a robust physics engine for the player to work within. As with any game, the physics engine determines how objects act within the game and how they react to certain stimulus. It can control everything from how quickly a character runs to smaller things like how wind moves leaves on a tree.

A unique part of Breath of the Wild’s (and now Tears of the Kingdom’s) physics engine is a system, called the “chemistry engine,” which assigns physical properties to objects that will determine how they interact with one another. In a 2017 interview with Eurogamer, Eiji Aonuma, producer of the Legend of Zelda series, had this to say of Breath of the Wild’s physics/chemistry engine:

“We wanted a consistent physics engine throughout the world that worked in a logical and realistic way… The way the physics engine underpins everything in the world really offers up a lot of new possibilities. For instance, in Breath of the Wild you might have a puzzle where making use of the physics, there’ll be various ways you can solve that puzzle. That really opens up a lot of possibilities so there’s not just one way to progress in the game or just one way to solve a puzzle.”

With the depth of the physics engine, players are free to come up with their own solutions to problems instead of finding the game’s singular solution to a problem. This approach to gameplay encourages players to be creative and experiment because the game will not place arbitrary roadblocks that punish creativity and hinder success. This shifts the player’s way of thinking to where they’re brainstorming how to realistically accomplish a task instead of asking themselves how the game would like them to do it. If you’re able to reach the end goal, then that’s good enough, regardless of how you do it.

In a 2023 interview with RTL Nieuws, Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom’s director Hidemaro Fujibayashi said that when he saw people beating Breath of the Wild quickly or solving puzzles in unique ways, “it felt like confirmation that [the development team] was going down the right path.” He further explained:

“We already got that idea while developing Skyward Sword. In that game too there was always one answer for one problem. If you had two puzzles, then one player would find the first puzzle difficult and the second puzzle easy, while a different player would have the exact opposite.”

“We wanted to solve that problem. There was an idea to make all puzzles easier, however, that is not ideal for a puzzle game and a Zelda title.”

“As such we made all challenges a bit easier but thought of a bunch of different ways to get to the goal. That is why you have several different powers with which you can solve the puzzles. For all the powers we thought of a way in which they could help you get past a problem.”

One of my favorite examples of using the physics engine to solve problems on your own terms came from my first playthrough of Breath of the Wild. I was in Vah Naboris, and to proceed through a certain door, I was directed to find two electric orbs to power the locks. Each orb had a small platform to place them on. For whatever reason, I was only able to find one orb. So, what did I do? I got creative. I unloaded every metal weapon I had and two metal chests I found nearby. I used those items to create a chain between the two metal pads, and it worked! Because of the physical properties assigned to metal, they were able to conduct electricity and power the door from a single orb. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t found the second orb or didn’t solve the problem the game’s intended way. Electricity was being transmitted to both pads and that was good enough.

Other similar examples include things like starting a fire to create an updraft that Link can ride vertically on his Paraglider, throwing a metal weapon into a group of enemies during a storm to attract a lightning strike, and carrying a lit torch to protect Link from frigid weather. No matter how far the player is willing to stretch the gameplay mechanics, they are constantly provided with opportunities to flex their creativity within Breath of the Wild’s physics engine to overcome obstacles on their own terms.

The key takeaway here isn’t the depth of Breath of the Wild‘s physics engine itself, rather the fact that the physics engine enabled players to think realistically within game and solve problems in ways that made practical sense. This approach completely altered how players think within Breath of the Wild as opposed to almost any other game on the market. Instead of asking yourself how the game would like you to solve a problem, your mind is now working to consider how to solve it as if it were real, without consideration for the rules or roadblocks that games typically put in your way. The players are therefore afforded a tremendous amount of freedom, limited only by their resources and creativity.

This devotion to player freedom even extends into cooking, where players combine ingredients acquired from all across Hyrule to produce elixirs and food dishes. Players can combine up to five ingredients, and no matter what they’ve picked, a reasonable outcome will be produced, even if it’s a big plate of Dubious Food. Combine spicy foods for cold resistance or hearty vegetables for a health boost. Combine spicy foods with hearty foods for both cold resistance and a health boost; it all makes sense within the context of the world.

Because of the chemistry engine, food items will also be altered based on their proximity to extreme temperatures. Leave them near a fire and they will bake or roast. Ingredients left out in the snow will freeze. You can even drop a bird egg into one of Death Mountain’s Hot Springs to make a hardboiled egg. A lesser game would have the player farming specific ingredients for specific recipes with specific effects, leaving no room for variation. Because of the freedom afforded to even the cooking system, players are encouraged to try new recipes, or make up one of their own. Rarely will a player be punished for trying something new. With a well-stocked inventory, players can rest assured knowing that they will likely be able to make an elixir or food dish to meet their needs, even if they lack specific ingredients.

Tears of the Kingdom Harnesses Breath of the Wild‘s Open-Ended Gameplay and Expands on Its Concepts

Whether the player is solving puzzles, exploring, cooking, or anything else, there rarely comes a point where Breath of the Wild asks them to do a specific task in a specific way. Tears of the Kingdom carries that principle forward, and for good reasons. The benefits of this open-ended approach to gameplay are two-fold. First, it encourages exploration and experimentation in a natural way. In knowing that the game won’t penalize you for “going the wrong way” or doing something unorthodox, an objective become less of a checklist that needs to be completed and more so a waypoint along your own self-guided adventure. While there are map markers, checkpoints, and tasks to complete, they aren’t used as arbitrary goals to motivate a player towards the game’s conclusion. The real motivator is the player’s own curiosity.

The second benefit is replayability. Because of the amount of player freedom, no two playthroughs of these games will be the same. You chart your own course across Hyrule, writing your own story as you go and forming your own memories. Puzzles will be solved in different ways and key locations will be visited in different orders, which in turn will change how the player approaches them and how they experience the story. I mentioned that in my first playthrough of Breath of the Wild, I solved Vah Naboris’s electric switch puzzle with a chain of weapons. In my second, I found both orbs. Both options are equally viable, and each provided me with a meaningful gameplay experience.

This replayablity in particular is why a game like Tears of the Kingdom was possible in the first place. Breath of the Wild had such a replayable formula, and laid such a solid foundation for future titles, that Nintendo was able to reuse the map and many of the same assets for Tears of the Kingdom. And it never came across as feeling stale or rehashed, which was a real concern for many fans of the series. How could a game possibly reuse nearly every gameplay element from its predecessor and not feel like DLC or a half-baked cash grab? Maybe the answer wasn’t so obvious before we got our hands on the game, but now it’s apparent that Tears of the Kingdom’s development team had plenty of room to push Breath of the Wild’s design philosophy even further.

Series producer Aonuma had this to say in Creating a Champion, Breath of the Wild’s companion book:

“The team realized that having too many actions would make the controls too complicated, so we placed a limit on the number of actions we could add to the game. Instead of adding more actions, we increased the number of events the player could interact with in the world. That way, they could have all sorts of unexpected, fun experiences by combining simple actions. Up until now, we had thought of the world and Link’s controls as separate vectors, but this time, we were able to successfully bring them together.”

Clearly, the developers had this principle in mind when designing Tears of the Kingdom. They brought almost everything back from Breath of the Wild and drastically expanded the objects Link could interact with. The key points in this quote that really drive Tears of the Kingdom’s design philosophy are these: “combining simple actions” and the idea of “bringing [the world and Link’s controls] together,” both of which encourage players to experiment with the physics engine and objects in the game. Tears of the Kingdom exemplifies these principles no better than with Zonai devices.

Zonai Devices Exemplify the Principles of Experimentation and Creative Expression

Zonai devices are machines that have specific, well-defined functions. With Link’s Ultrahand ability, players can use any combination of Zonai devices to build vehicles, offensive weaponry, and practically anything the player’s creativity can muster. The beauty of it all is that Zonai devices are not complicated. Each device performs a single function. For example, the player knows that, no matter what, a big wheel will spin at a moderate pace around its axel. We know that a balloon will rise when filled with hot air or that a spring will apply a tremendous force from its launchpad when activated.

Since these devices are uncomplicated by their nature, the possibilities are opened for how to use them in conjunction with one another. Tears of the Kingdom removed nearly every safeguard and has given the players complete creative control, so how the player chooses to combine these devices is entirely up to them. As such, Zonai devices embody the merging of the world and Link’s actions because, while Link’s direct actions are relatively simple and few, each Zonai device represents a new ability, or a new strategy to employ. Once you become proficient at using Ultrahand to construct machines with multiple Zonai devices, or “combine simple actions,” the floodgates open on what Link is capable of. Players have used Zonai devices to build anything from simple wagons to bomber drones, catapults to auto-rotating flamethrowers.

I had a very simple but interesting gameplay experience that exemplifies the versatility of Zonai devices and how they interact with Tears of the Kingdom‘s physics and chemistry engines. In one room of the Lightning Temple, you need to reach a high ledge. The game gives you a few Zonai devices to work with, one being a balloon. So, I constructed myself a small hot air balloon. All I needed was a heat source to lift the balloon. I could have used a Flame Emitter for a speedy ascent but, out of curiosity, I constructed a campfire with a Fire Fruit and lit my torch. When I stood under the balloon with my flaming torch, the balloon rose. When I moved out from under it, the balloon descended. Just the fact alone that there was a flame under the balloon was enough to cause it to react. The source of the flame made no difference. This example is evidence that the consistency and simplicity of the Zonai devices promotes experimentation because the players know how the devices should operate and they know the game will respect their ideas enough to let them work so long as they make sense within the game’s physics engine.

In another move towards player freedom and experimentation, and in a sense reducing the number of abilities Link has while “increasing the number of events the player could interact with,” Tears of the Kingdom has reduced the count of actual weapons in the game while simultaneously expanding the number of unique weapons drastically by introducing a new ability called Fuse. In Breath of the Wild, players were presented with a fixed number of weapons, each with their own stats and abilities. While this was serviceable, it did present the player with some limitations. Fuse allows players to combine objects in their inventory and in the environment with their weapons and shields to create new abilities or boost equipment stats. Like cooking, any combination of items will produce a reasonable result, and you will rarely, if ever, find yourself farming specific items because there are always alternatives.

In Breath of the Wild, if you wanted, for example, a fire arrow, your only options were just an actual Fire Arrow or to light a regular arrow with an open flame. Now in Tears of the Kingdom, to make a fire arrow, you can fuse a regular arrow with a Fire Fruit, a Red Chuchu Jelly, or any other item that is assigned flame properties by the game’s chemistry engine. Many of these items also carry unique secondary abilities, allowing the player even more freedom to build an item or weapon that is tailormade for the specific scenario they’re in. Do you need to shoot an electric arrow? Fuse a Shock Fruit. Do you need to shoot that arrow further than usual? Fuse an Electric Keese Wing to increase the arrow’s flight distance. Maybe you want that arrow to discharge an electric explosion. Fuse it with a Thunder Gleeok Horn. These kinds of options extend to every single item, weapon, and shield in the game, so the player has near-limitless options on how to approach any given challenge.

The aforementioned goal of merging Link’s actions with the in-game world is also deepened by abilities like Fuse, or just with the simple ability to throw items. For example, Breath of the Wild presented players with a few Sheikah Slate abilities, one being Cryonis. Cryonis allows Link to create ice blocks out of water and not much else. While this provided an entertaining way for Link to interact with the world, Tears of the Kingdom broke this ability out from such a rigid structure. By fusing an item with ice abilities to an Eightfold Longblade and performing a charge attack, Link can form a bridge of ice blocks in rivers and lakes. What if you don’t have an Eightfold Longblade though? That’s fine. Just throw an item with ice properties at the water and ice blocks will form too. So, in this instance, Breath of the Wild was more focused on using Link’s abilities to interact with the world, whereas Tears of the Kingdom simplified Link’s abilities and made them exploration tools for the properties of objects in the world.  The way Tears of the Kingdom handles its items improves the player’s relationship with the world and provides a more meaningful experience overall because every item has a purpose beyond cooking or selling. Every item you find is a chance to experiment. With each new item, an ability is unlocked and your gameplay options expand.

Can Players Have Too Much Freedom?

Hopefully by now, I’ve made it abundantly clear that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were built upon the core principle of player freedom and the incentive to experiment. However, we have to consider if this is a good thing and if player freedom can be taken too far. This open format that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom adopted, though ripe with benefits, does present some limitations.

First, freedom presents the trade-off of a curated experience in exchange for more gameplay options and exploration. When playing a linear game, you can be sure that you are experiencing the narrative and gameplay specifically how the developers had intended it. Everything that’s presented to the player is intentional in its design, including orchestrated set pieces, difficulty, and the order in which you experience events. This allows for, among other things, stronger narratives and a deliberate progression in gameplay. The open approach to gameplay in the most recent Zelda games severely limits narrative options. Is it any wonder that both games’ stories are told through a series of flashbacks? It’s impressive that Nintendo was able to write the story in such a way that it could be experienced out of sequence, but they did it that way because the gameplay necessitated it.

Likewise, many of the most memorable moments in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are those times when the games restricted the player and put more emphasis on narrative or atmosphere. Areas like Eventide Island, the Yiga Clan Hideout, and Hyrule Castle stripped down Link’s options and forced him through bottlenecks. By limiting the player’s options, developers didn’t have to account for as many choices that a player could make. Because of that, they were able to pour more creativity into making those experiences unique. The fact that these moments are highlights may indicate that players in general gravitate towards a tailormade gaming experience rather than a sandbox, though you could also make an argument that these moments are so special because they break from the pace of their games. In a more linear game, these moments might not carry as much weight.

Another point to consider is difficulty. How difficult can a game be when the player is given so many options? If the game pushes too hard, then players will begin looking for alternative solutions that are easier than the ones the developers accounted for. Players may be given a Shrine with some obstacles that will all go to waste with a single rocket shield. It’s great that players can find ways to solve puzzles on their own terms but what if the player’s solution isn’t as fun or interesting as the ones the developers intended? For example, in Tears of the Kingdom’s Fire Temple, the player is presented with a series of traversal puzzles involving switching mine cart tracks to form new connections between platforms. These puzzles are fine, but the player still has the option to climb walls in the temple. They also have the Glider, Ascend, and possibly the Vow of Tulin to propel the glider. With these abilities combined, most of these puzzles can be skipped.

This then begs the question, why design intricate puzzles when the easier solution is to skip them altogether? Of course, most players will have a more enjoyable experience solving the puzzles, but as the difficulty climbs, so does the temptation to skip them. I have no doubt that this is why Tears of the Kingdom director Fujibayashi decided to make the puzzles easier. A player with poor self-discipline may rob themselves of an enjoyable experience because the easiest solution is the least interesting. I did a bit of this myself in Tears of the Kingdom’s Water Temple, where I barely utilized the water bubbles because I found that climbing and gliding was easier, and I left many of the temple’s assets untouched. I came out of that temple feeling like the bubbles had some features that I failed to discover. As such, I felt a bit cheated, and I wish I had solved the puzzles the way the temple was designed for, but I don’t necessarily fault the game either for allowing me to play this way.

Tears of the Kingdom’s Expansion on Player Freedom is Nothing Short of a Marvel

Breath of the Wild revolutionized the open-world action-adventure genre with its devotion to player freedom, and Tears of the Kingdom has done nothing but build on those same core concepts. Both games encourage players to experiment with the game mechanics and will accept any passable solution without placing arbitrary roadblocks in your way. This devotion to freedom seeps into every minute detail of these games, from traversal and puzzle-solving, even down to something as simple as cooking. Whether you view this as a good thing, I believe, comes down to your own preferences in games. Even then, despite its drawbacks and the concessions that had to be made to accommodate it, there is no denying that the free gameplay of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is nothing short of a marvel. Breath of the Wild was an incredible template for Tears of the Kingdom to build upon, and both are a worthy foundation for the future of the Zelda franchise.

So, tell us what you think. Do you like the open approach of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom? How have you seen concepts formed in Breath of the Wild expand in Tears of the Kingdom? Do you feel that player freedom comes with drawbacks? Let us know in the comments!