Daily Debate: Would The Depths Have Been More Effective as a Smaller, More Focused Part of Tears of the Kingdom?
Posted on June 05 2024 by Sean Gadus
Whether you love it, are ambivalent towards it, or dislike it, there is no denying that Tears of the Kingdom is by far the largest Zelda game ever made. The game includes the game world of Breath of the Wild (completed with new cave systems), and two additional areas to explore (one above and one below the ground). While the island in The Sky are relatively small collections of land, The Depth is the same size as the surface world. The additions of The Sky and The Depths gives Tears of the Kingdom a truly massive world to explore; it is a game that players can spend hundreds of hours sifting through. While The Depth adds a large amount of explorable space to the game, there have been major debates about how interesting The Depths are to explore, and how effective the area is in the game.
With this debate in mind, would The Depths have been more effective as a smaller, more focused part of Tears of the Kingdom or do you think the size of The Depths was necessary to justify the purchase of a new game?
While The Depths is built on a clever set of patterns that mirror the surface world (abandoned mines are located at the same coordinates as towns on the surface, trenches correspond to mountains), it can be argued that The Depths would have been more interesting and effective if it did not stretch across the entire game world. One of the biggest highlights of The Depths is the atmosphere. The area has very little light, it is filled with Malice that can strip away the player’s health, and the Malice-infested enemies are more dangerous than their surface counterparts. However, the more time you spend in The Depths, the more comfortable you become there. If The Depths functioned more like cave systems where they are limited areas (without Lightroots) rather than running continuously across the world, then exploring The Depths would have been even more thrilling and memorable. That being said, one could argue that adding a large new area like The Depths (or even the The Sky) was necessary to convincing gamers that there were reasons to purchase a whole new game. If the developers did not add a large area like The Depths for the sequel, then players would be left with very few truly new areas to explore.
What do you think? Would The Depths have been more effective as a smaller, more focused part of Tears of the Kingdom? What was your experience exploring The Depths? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Sean Gadus is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon. His first Zelda game was Ocarina of Time, and he loves all of the 3D Zelda games from 1998-2011. He is currently playing Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for the first time (what an amazing game!). He wants to help build a kinder, more compassionate world. You can check out his other written work at The-Artifice.com.
