Daily Debate: How Do You Feel About Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom’s Completion Rates?
Posted on March 16 2024 by Nicole Scott
Barring several exceptions, I am a completionist. Collect-athons have been my jam since my first experience with Spyro the Dragon’s gems, eggs, and orbs. This desire translated into my Zelda experience, spending countless hours tracking down Heart Pieces, masks, and yes, even Korok Seeds and Minish Cap’s figurines. I regret the latter the most, even more than Korok Seeds.
In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the Zelda series introduced its first strictly-defined completion percentage feature, visible on your map once you’ve beaten the game. The percentage rises for different accomplishments in each installment, but the bulk revolves around hunting Koroks, doing shrines, and finding all the map locations, among other things.
Notably, the percentage doesn’t change with the activities you’d expect, like completing side quests/adventures, collecting or upgrading armor, cooking every recipe, or acquiring the Monster Medals. Though a separate number appears in the side quest/adventures list after beating the game, reaching the max there does nothing for the overall percentage. Zelda players have never needed a number before to understand what 100% is in previous titles, so why does this matter? Well, if the game is going to have a built-in feature, it could spark questions in players on what it should cover.
It’s essential to note this number is often referred to as “map completion,” but even in the official Tears of the Kingdom strategy guide, the section is simply called “Completion Rate” as a “measure of how much you have accomplished in the game.” This means the rate would not necessarily need to be exclusive to map-related targets — but it is. The following image is the completion rate chart in the official Tears of the Kingdom strategy guide:
This disconnect forced dedicated completionists to create their own lists of varying complexity and, arguably, insanity. Even the official Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom 100% speedrun categories feature a home-brewed list of requirements that extend past the game’s map completion percentage. The wildest checklist items I’ve seen for these two games include opening every unique treasure chest, fully upgrading each horse, buying all the rooms for Link’s house, reaching the max of every item in the inventory (including Poes), and breaking all rocks that do not respawn. Yes, some people have committed to doing that.
As someone who didn’t feel the games were “complete” until I did every side quest and other activities, the percentage felt a little misleading. Though the number is on the map, it only focusing on map-related tasks made me want more from the feature. Instead, I searched for fan-made lists encompassing more aspects of the game. I wanted to experience every nook and cranny — and the so-called completion percentage didn’t encapsulate this. I think it would have even been cool to have individual percentages throughout the menu screen, such as a number on the armor inventory, if it wasn’t going to contribute to the map’s overall rate total.
That being said, I enjoyed having the tangible number. Seeing it climb to 100% was a joy, even though it didn’t include everything I would have preferred.
Do you think they executed this “map completion” percentage fairly? Do you wish it included more or different aspects of the game? Would making it even more expansive be too overwhelming for non-completionist players? Let us know if you think hard completion percentages should return in subsequent Zelda entries in the comments!
Nicole Scott is writer for Zelda Dungeon from suburban Appalachia. She loves drinking espresso, seeing live music, building LEGO sets, being a completionist, and snuggling her two probably-alien cats, Tizo and Alarielle.
