I've done it, I've finally gotten to the fourth, and last Part of this series on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I'm not sure how many have actually come along with me on this, and read all of them, but writing so much about one game has been a fun experience. Bit challenging to try to keep it “relatively” contained, but mostly good to really stretch my writing skills and go for it, especially since I don't write as often as I used to. For better or worse, I won't be keeping up this weekly pace after I finish this series.

Of course, if anyone found this without reading the other Parts, here's Links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. As for what Part 4 entails, it's a bit of a loosely connected grab bag of what I had left after the first trio. Stuff about the world, my ~Queer Thoughts~ regarding this game and ~Gender~, very Spoilery stuff about the main narrative (including the ending!!), but first, something I typically don't give enough attention to.

That would be the music. Music in games is something I usually don't know where to write about, so it often ends up being a last minute paragraph I stuff in at the very end, where I say something to the effect of, “it's good.” Since Tears' music is at least a little better than just “good,” I thought it deserved to be front, if not center here.

Not surprisingly, as Tears is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, almost all of the music from BotW returns in Tears. If they aren't literally the same files being reused, and are actually new recordings, they're so close that I was fooled. This isn't a bad thing, BotW had some of the best, and most smartly used music in any game I've played. Ever! Plus, using the same music allows for an extra layer of nostalgia to hit when returning to villages, or other notable locations. Rito Village just wouldn't be the same without some version of that music playing.

The Zelda series has long had not only some of the best music in all of video games, but also been the best at somehow managing to juggle that nostalgia for the older games, while still making sure the games have their own musical identities. BotW/Tears sound different from everything that came before, but that Rito Village theme that always hits me so hard has its roots in at least Wind Waker's Dragon Roost Island theme, assuming that wasn't drawing from some other song. I'm about as far from a musician as a person can be, so I'm just beyond impressed that they can routinely do things like this. Having songs from games decades apart that sound so different on the surface, yet so similar at their core. Again, I can't think of any other series I've played that does this as well as Zelda.

On top of that, a lot of the songs in Tears have alternate versions that play depending on the time of day, or other factors. They're more subdued at night, but build up again over the course of the morning, hitting their stride through the afternoon, before settling back down in the evening. It's subtle, the sort of thing that wouldn't be noticed at first, but it just adds so much to the world, and the mood.

All the great things about BotW's music are still here. The quiet little bits of exploration music that waft across the wind here and there, the soft town music that starts as Link approaches, which grows and grows until he enters. How it roars up into a frenzy when fighting, which actually brings me to something I took issue with in BotW. In my 2017 blog on the game, I complained about the combat music not looping well, and frequently sounding like it completely resets mid-fight. This isn't an issue I had with Tears, so either this game does a much better job looping it, or it just didn't bother me this time.

And while a few songs tied to specific things in BotW (like the Guardian theme) are gone, there's plenty of new music too. The brooding notes of The Depths in particular just fit perfectly with that mysterious part of the game, while the new music around the Zonai features some weird, otherworldly yet mechanical...chanting? Again, it works, it fits, and in a game that already has a great breadth of music, manages to sound like nothing else in there.

Particularly I need to praise the main theme. It's just a great piece of music on its own, but also encapsulates the whole of the game in (at least this version) under three minutes. It opens with the chanting, and quickly builds to the full hit of the music, before switching to a lighter exploration theme. Building up again, hitting different themes until the full thing kicks in again, then just goes for it. Soaring high, across the endless horizon... But then right before the end, it's got that dark menace that lies beneath the surface of Hyrule, just before it has a few classic notes that trail off into the ether.

And honestly, having finished this game, parts of this song make me well up with emotion just thinking about what happens late in Tears...but I'm not getting to that yet. Suffice it to say, I think Tears' music is excellent, and though I'm far from an expert on music, I think it's worth highlighting.

(Please forgive me if that specific video gets taken down in the future. I'm not going to be checking to make sure.)

Now that I've covered the music, it's time for the thing I've been teasing since Part 1, and probably shouldn't have teased as much as I did, but it's here: Moosey writing about Queer Stuff in Games! Or, perhaps less “Queer Stuff” and more “Nintendo's aversion to Queer Stuff?”

Let me start with Prince Sidon, the fan favorite shark man (and perhaps overall side character?) from BotW. Between his charming smile, and the fact that he's an extremely tall shark, people were, to be frank, horny for him. That, and his boundless admiration for Link in game made him a very popular ship (as in relationship). While I absolutely expected Nintendo would put zero percent intentional queerness in this game, I wasn't expecting there to be what kind of feels like backlash to the Sidon x Link ship.

Now Sidon is engaged, to a perfectly nice lady named Yona. I feel like I should emphasize up front that she is as good a character as any other NPC in this game, she is not personally the issue. According to the game, they're lifelong friends, and Yona is someone Sidon has admired ever since childhood. Never mind that she was never mentioned at all in BotW, despite the fact that the Zora domain is miniscule in terms of settlements, and no one seems to want to acknowledge the world that exists outside Hyrule. And, to be honest, I can't help but wonder if she exists primarily to push back against the people who want Link to be gay with a shark man.

I should be clear, and say that as much as I jokingly refer to Sidon as the “shark BF,” I never really shipped the two of them. Mostly because I'm not a particularly “shipping minded person.” That's not usually a way that I engage with media, unless there's very clearly something going on that is just subtext (I still feel like Noctis has a deeper emotional connection to everyone in his crew than his fiance, particularly Prompto), or it's a game with romance in it, but a certain character isn't romance-able (like Atlus' homophobia in Persona 5 keeping Yusuke and Ryuji (hell even slimeball Akechi) undate-able).

For me, I feel like part of this stems from how heterosexual and cisgender centric most media has been historically, and particularly everything I was exposed to as a kid. I spent, probably still over half my life at this point thinking that romance in media just didn't interest me, because so little of it ever made me feel anything. I think most of it is that a lot of romance in media just isn't done well, as there seems to be an assumption that simply having a dude and a lady get together is enough, and maybe for some people it is. Usually it's felt lazy to me, and sometimes even uncomfortable when it's about a dude basically forcing himself onto the lady, but it gets played as “romantic.”

Conversely, put two queer people together in a piece of media, and it sends my heart aflutter. Why? I can't really explain it, other than that representation matters, I guess. The funny thing is, I'm not gay gay, I'm bi, so even before falling down a gender hole and coming out nonbinary, it's not like I was ever personally opposed to dating someone of the “opposite” gender. (Side note, I intentionally still like to use the term bi while also being nonbinary because it's messy and contradictory, because I think it's important to remember that queerness is messy, and at the end of the day, these are all just words people created, not fundamental truths of the universe.)

So what does all this have to do with Sidon and Link? As much as I personally am not that invested in whether Link gets that shark double D or not, a fair number of people were, and at “best” this feels like Nintendo being chief of the no fun police yet again. At worst though? I can't help but feel like this was done out spite. Or if not spite, a feeling that they needed to assure people, “oh no, Sidon isn't gay, look at his beautiful not at all retconned fiance who is a woman and also always been a part of his life.” Like even the idea of a character being gay is bad enough that they need to prove it isn't so.

It just rubs me the wrong way. I mean, there's literally a statue in the middle of the Zora Domain of Link riding on Sidon's back. I believe it's supposed to be a recreation of the two of them opening the way to the Vah Ruta Divine Beast, but like...look at this statue. I mean...fellas, is it gay to commission a statue of your totally hetero best friend riding you and then publicly display it in the center of town?

Considering how far Nintendo went to make sure Sidon was on the “no homo” list, I was actually a little shocked when I ran into Bolson, quite a bit later in my journeys. For those who might not remember, Bolson was the guy Link could buy the house in Hateno Village from way back in BotW (I have more to say on that house later). He was also, to be blunt, flamingly gay. Or, at least the most stereotypically gay looking character I can recall seeing in a Nintendo game. “Queer coded” would be another, more sterile way to put it.

Not that Bolson really does anything outwardly queer, I was just happy he didn't get the Kass treatment (where's my favorite Bird Bard, Nintendo??), and got to return. Elsewhere, I didn't personally think this myself, but after poking around the internet I did come across an article in which the author says a diary entry from the character Calip is, “gay as hell.” I feel like that's stretching it to say the least, but I'll link to the article, because clearly my novella on the game isn't enough reading as is, haha.

So, Sidon's fiance feels like push back, but Bolson (and perhaps others?) get to at least be queer-adjacent, but that still leaves one topic. Something that I somehow didn't actually write about in 2017, but will now: Link disguising himself as a lady in BotW to get into Gerudo Town. At the time I really disliked that whole sequence. I couldn't help but see the parallels between that, and the transphobic claims that trans women are just men in disguise trying to prey on women in rest rooms and the like.

But, at the time I also didn't acknowledge that even as much as that parallel does exist, there were a decent number of people that really liked that outfit. Particularly because they were able to dress up Link in something so explicitly feminine, both in its visual design, and culturally in the world of Hyrule. Meanwhile the only thing I cared about back then was using what was the “most functional.” So that's why I spent the vast majority of that game wearing the bandana for faster climbing, rather than caring how Link looked. To be fair, I at least dyed the bandana, as I'm not really a fan of the default red.

Anyway, to say I was a little trepidatious about Gerudo Town in Tears is an understatement. But, I am on the one hand happy to say the residents of Gerudo Town this time decided to make an exception. Finally Link can come and go as he pleases, as the one dude allowed free access to Gerudo Town. Just so long as he keeps his shirt on, because they seem to have pretty strict rules against “public indecency” (even if the Gerudo tailored Desert Voe set shows off so much chest and belly that he may as well be topless). So, it's all good, right? No more transphobic parallels to real life, no more needing to switch everything Link is wearing before entering town, no problems, right?

Well, yes, but also, as far as I can tell, that outfit from BotW is the only one that didn't return in Tears. When, to the best of my knowledge, everything else did, including fan-service outfits from older games that don't serve any purpose in this incarnation of Hyrule, the cynic in me can't help but think it was taken out because Nintendo didn't like that people liked it for the reasons they did. “Oh, people like dressing up Link as a girl? Well, we can't have that!”

But the thing that makes it so weird to me is how strangely feminine some of the new outfits are, and it just makes me so curious to know what was going through the heads of the people designing them. And not just secret stuff, I mean stuff that is all but unavoidable. After the prologue, when Link wakes up in his underwear, the first piece of armor found is that skort I mentioned in a previous Part. No shirt, unlike BotW, there's just a single chest, and the only thing in it is that skort and sandals set. Meaning that for the first, at least hour (or longer for those who luxuriate in exploration like me), Link is shirtless, and probably wearing a skirt. Which is a look. Even after finding the next piece of armor, it's what I suppose could be called a toga, but really it feels kind of like a dress with half the top missing.

The point being is that for the opening chunk of the game Link is running around in what I would call a pretty feminine set of clothing, with his new, long hair flowing in the wind. And it's a look I quite like! Aesthetically, I'd say Tears is my new favorite Link. Between the hair, this great new fashion, and the rad arm, Link's never been cooler (even if personality wise he's kind of a goofball (which only makes him more endearing)).

It's a mix of just genuinely finding this new look cool, and different from previous Links (even from BotW), but also just a bizarre cocktail of my own gender envy feelings. Shirtless in a skort with long flowing hair? Cool new arm with angular lines where it connects to the rest of the body, and GLOWS when using abilities? Relatively wide hips and a short stature that almost make me think he's a trans guy? I can't exactly put into words how some things like that give me, an “assigned male at birth” nonbinary person gender envy, but I can't lie about how the game made me feel. And I had a lot of fun playing dress up with Link in Tears, certainly more so than I did in BotW. Almost every time I found a new piece of gear, I then found myself rushing off to Hateno Village to get it dyed to just the right color. It is indeed, a good day to dye.

Then there's some of the outfits later in the game. I mean, look at the Frostbite top. Tell me that isn't just a dress. A fancy one at that. Don't forget the accompanying headdress that dyes Link's hair instead of the headdress itself. This outfit combined with Link's effeminate twink looks just, well it almost feels like it's from an alternate universe from the one where they removed the Gerudo lady set.

The back of the top is open, and in a fancy shape! Masculine fashion just doesn't look like that, which to be honest, is a shame. Don't get the idea that I just like this because of twink Link. If other games are going to keep making the protagonists big buff dudes, they should have the option to wear stuff like this too, just make sure it's well tailored to look good for their body shapes too.

So, I'm not really sure what to think about this stuff on the whole. Most of the armor is typical fair for the series, and not anything that would raise any eyebrows either way. I did like the “Trousers of the Hero,” which are part of the original Zelda armor set, as they're just short-shorts and boots. When I say “short-shorts,” I mean that they are literally shorter than Link's underwear. The intent being to evoke the old art of Link from back in the day where the tunic was long enough that he didn't need pants.

Now, wearing that in this game with most of the tops, it makes Link look like he's wearing shirts only just long enough to get away without pants. Again, to me, this is peak “gender envy fashion,” both because it's an aesthetic I like, but also because it's not really a look I can pull off in real life, for a variety of reasons. Anyway, these short-shorts ended up being the bottoms I fully upgraded to go along with the Champion's Leathers (the blue armor from the box art) for my high defense outfit. All the classic Zelda items have the same defense stats, so I figured, why not?

Along with the headwear that dyes his hair, naturally. I went with pink, because of my favorite thing from a game that I otherwise don't love: Link's pink hair in A Link to the Past. (A Link to the Past is fine, it's more that I just had so much difficulty with the combat that I had to use emulator save states to get through the game, and found it frustrating.) I know it was actually just some color palette oddity, but to me that hair is the most iconic thing in that game.

I don't bring up this stuff about the fashion just because I'm me (a weirdo), but because both BotW and especially Tears feel like they're moving the series further along in the direction of player expression. Definitely in terms of game design, puzzle solving, exploration, etc. But also in terms of the protagonist. Yes, Link is still Link, but in BotW players could dress him up in a whole variety of outfits that they could mix and match, whereas in previous games players were lucky if there were different colors of tunic to swap between. Then Tears added headwear that dyes his hair, but removing that Gerudo outfit makes it seem like Nintendo is too afraid to go all the way with it.

No, I don't really expect the next incarnation of The Legend of Zelda will have a full on character creator, but I would like to see an option to just dye Link's hair, separate from specific headwear. And while I'm at it, more headwear should have the long flowing hair. Almost all of it ties the hair up in the back, like in BotW. I get how that would be more practical in real life, but I like the look of the flowing hair better, and this is a video game. If Link can survive a fall from any height so long as he lands in water more than a couple feet deep, his hair doesn't need to be practical.

I am truly beyond curious what Nintendo's reaction to Tears' fashion will be. If the plethora of fan art is any indication, I'm far from the only person smitten with the Frostbite set, so will they push back against it again? Or maybe, just maybe, might we live in a world lucky enough for them to embrace giving Link some more options for player expression next time around? Fingers crossed for hair styles and coloring. Possibly even makeup? Link wears lipstick with the one big mushroom hat!!! I hope whoever sneaked that in didn't get fired, this is something I'm truly shocked got through.

While I'm writing about gender-adjacent things, I feel like I need to gripe a little about the Gerudo, and how painfully cis-hetero they are. Like, here's this race of people that are only women, yet their entire culture seems to revolve around finding men to reproduce with. To the extent that in game there's a classroom with lessons being taught (one for younger girls and one for older teens/young adults), but they're all about how to deal with men and find a husband. And when a Gerudo woman does give birth to a Gerudo boy, he automatically becomes their ruler. Which they say that happens every X (100?) years, yet Ganondorf is the only one that's ever been mentioned throughout the series. Certainly the only memorable one.

More than anything else, I think that's just boring. Like I obviously don't expect Nintendo to make a game with anything to say about gender, or has a feminist undercurrent to it, but they should do something more interesting with it. Like, even the Gorons, who as far as I know only have one gender, though they're all bros. The closest the game comes to discussing how they reproduce is that they apparently just pop out of the ground? Does that make any sense at all? Not really, but at least it has enough of an air of mysterious weirdness to it that I think it's kind of funny. If nothing else, the Gorons exist to do more than find a husband to impregnate them.

Sorry, that last sentence was a little harsh on my part, but I think they could do better. When the bros who literally eat rocks are more interesting than the culture of warrior women who live in the harsh desert, somebody somewhere has messed up.

The world-building in Zelda has always been a bit...odd. Some things just feel so mysterious, and get hinted at in the background in ways that approach From Software levels of environmental storytelling. A lot about the BotW/Tears version of Hyrule is only implied by the environments, and embellished just a little by the names that appear on the map after discovering them, and that's cool. Other things get long spiels of dialog about them, which is neat too, but some things just...feel like they were brushed aside?

That brings me to the gap of time between BotW and Tears. It's never directly stated how much time passed, but the general consensus seems to be around five or six years between the games. How much of that was prior to Tears' prologue, and how much is between the prologue and the proper start of the game is also unclear, though I'm inclined to think the bulk of it was pre-prologue.

For those wondering how that rough estimate was come to, it's mostly from there being children in Tears who seem to be about that age, but weren't in BotW. Particularly Hudson and Rhondson's daughter, because their meeting each other and marriage happened in the course of the Tarrey Town quest in BotW. Tulin has also grown quite a between the games, but if I'm being brutally honest, I forgot Tulin was in BotW until I looked it up after the fact.

Anyway, a lot of dialog across Tears, both relating to the story, and just as NPC chatter has to do with the time between the games, and The Upheaval. A pretty fitting name for the event that opened chasms across Hyrule, and revealed a slew of skylands up above. Makes perfect sense that this world shifting event would be at the forefronts of everyone's minds, and I get that, but like...no one seems to remember The Calamity? The thing that plagued the kingdom for a hundred years? With all the killer robots patrolling the countryside, shooting at anything that moved? There's even a bit with kids in school who think it was made up, and I guess they're young enough that they wouldn't remember it, assuming they were even alive in BotW.

Writing it now, part of me is becoming convinced that this is secretly commentary on how huge world altering things can be so easily forgotten by people once they're over, but that doesn't completely jive with my experience in the game. What I had meant to say is about the Guardians, and the fact that there's zero trace of them. Not a single shred of a Guardian anywhere in the world. Neither are any of those shrines, or the towers, those were all replaced by different towers (this time newly built) and shrines that popped up during The Upheaval.

I don't doubt that once the Guardians deactivated (which I assume happened after Calamity Ganon was defeated), people would be happy to be rid of them. That still doesn't explain where they went. And these aren't things that just biodegrade, in BotW there were fields full of broken Guardian husks. Just sitting there for a century. I'm sure some of these could've been destroyed during The Upheaval, but every single one across the entire game? Maybe some people took it upon themselves to dismantle the Guardian remnants, but I don't think that feels feasible to have done in that time frame. Plus that doesn't explain where all those bits left over went!

To me, what this feels like is despite Tears being a direct sequel, the devs still wanted people to be able to play it with zero knowledge of BotW. Thus, since the Guardians weren't important to the story they wanted to tell, they just wiped them from the face of Hyrule. Every last one. I get it, but also I thought the Guardians were really fun to fight, so I'm still a little bummed they're gone. Hearing the Guardian music and seeing the laser bead in on Link was such a fun moment of panic, that later turned into a thrill after I mastered the timing on the parry.

As much as I am disappointed and perplexed by the lack of Guardians, I do feel like everything else gets some good fleshing out. Particularly what Zelda was up to between the games. It turns out, going basically everywhere and helping everyone. She may have spent a century locked into a battle to keep Calamity Ganon at bay, but it sounds like as soon as she was back on her feet, she was traveling the kingdom doing her best to rebuild, and help those in need.

Except for one case, where she ruthlessly, and thoughtlessly stole something from one of her most loyal compatriots. I'm talking about Link's house! My house! The house I worked so hard, saved up so much, spent so much time gathering wood to buy! She stole it!!

Okay, let me take a deep breath, calm down, and explain. In BotW, Bolson had a house he was going to demolish, but when Link shows an interest in it, he decides to make a deal. For a sum of Rupees, and many bundles of wood, Link can have the house. Later the house can be furnished, and this quest leads to the other quest to build Tarrey Town. Technically this was all optional in BotW, but I did it, and Tarrey Town exists in Tears, so canonically it happened. Link bought that house.

So, in Tears, when I got to Hateno Village, I eventually found my way back to that house, and almost leaped from my seat in joy as I remembered. “That's my house!” I raced over, barged in through the door, and was quite startled to see someone else in there. The mayor's wife, for whatever reason, had been taking it upon herself to keep the house clean and tidy for...Zelda?? What, no, she must be mistaken, this was Link's house. MY house. But as I looked around, it did look much better furnished than it was under Link's care, and even featured a framed picture of a Zelda's horse on a wall.

Then I found the diary near the bed, and started reading. It turns out, as Zelda needed a place to get away from Hyrule Castle (understandable), she started staying at this house. But the thing that gets on my nerves is, she doesn't say Link let her stay there for a while, she acts like it was just her house! And I can see exactly how this happened. Link probably mentioned the house in passing (because Link can talk, don't forget, there's plenty of dialog options for him when talking with NPCs), then Zelda girl-bossed her way into living there, and gaslit everyone into thinking it was her house. Link, being Link, just let her do it, because he's a much better person and kinder soul than Zelda deserves.

I can't even say that without feeling a little bad, because what was she doing while living in Hateno Village? She commissioned Hudson Construction to build a schoolhouse. Then she started teaching the children herself. How can I stay mad when she was literally taking her time to teach children? I did the quests to help teach those kids, I couldn't put up with those unruly children day in and day out. And these children like her so much, they keep asking when Zelda will return, which is adorable in a really sad way.

Maybe I couldn't stay mad, but I could get even. So, while Link still had free use of Zelda's his house, that isn't the only domicile available to him. While Tears doesn't feature a massive construction quest like building Tarrey Town, there is one building related thing for him there. That is, after finishing a new quest for Hudson and Rhondson, Link has the opportunity to buy a plot of land near the town, and build his very own house.

Of course I jumped on the opportunity, and was initially delighted that the modular house pieces meant I got to design it myself! Unfortunately the options are pretty limited, as the house's color can't even be changed from the default green. There's a limited number of modules, only about sixteen can be used at once, and there's no options to customize their interiors. Plus I wish I could give it a shingled roof, like the other modular houses down in Tarrey Town proper. I'd say maybe the DLC will expand the house options, but I suspect some of these are technical, not design limits.

All that said, it's still neat, and I'm happy enough with the end product. It's a cozy little place, with a good view, but I do wish it was a little closer to Tarrey Town. Also, I get why functionally, but it's a little weird that an NPC just...lives in a stall next to the house. Link has to talk to him to customize anything but like...dude, go home.

Regardless, it's a place of my own, one that Link can go to, get away from everything, and just relax. Hopefully one that won't be taken by any princesses any time soon. But, I was still a little disgruntled about losing the other place, so an idea came to me after encountering another quest, and remembering that framed picture on the wall...

Zelda had a prized horse, with golden hair, unlike any other. A favorite of hers, but it broke loose and ran away at some point after The Upheaval. Link gets asked if he could help find it, so of course he does, because I know I can't say no to a side quest. After getting the horse back to the stable, despite it being Zelda's horse, I was given the option to add it to my stable (before then, zero horses strong because I never use horses in this game). I really didn't have much use for a horse (they're okay for pulling wagons), but a gear in my head turned when I remembered something about the house in Tarrey Town. One of the building pieces is a paddock, where a horse can be kept.

So, I stabled the horse, named it Homer (the name I give to all my video game pets and/or mounts), dyed its mane purple for fun, and kept it at the paddock.

She stole my house, so I stole her horse.

This is not only by far the pettiest thing I've ever done in a Zelda game, it's quite possibly the pettiest thing I've done in any game.

And I'd do it again.

I think at this point, what's left are my thoughts on the story. Obviously that will be Spoiler City, so it's tucked away inside a Spoiler Zone. Don't click on it if you haven't finished the game, unless you know you're not going to play it (though I would recommend it, it's quite good, haha).

As for non-Spoilery thoughts on Tears' story? For those curious, I think there's some things that I wish were better fleshed out, there's something in the prologue that wasn't foreshadowing what I thought it was, and I think it would've been cooler if it had. Some unexpected things do happen, but it's still a Zelda game, and for those who haven't finished it, I would keep my expectations in check for what happens.

Though I will say, part of me does feel like this might be the first time the “Legend of Zelda” name is actually earned, given what Zelda does, even if she isn't the playable character. And the ending is absolutely terrific, just an incredible bit of spectacle. I'm not kidding when I say I felt on the verge of crying at a point. But for details on why, go finish the game and come back to read beyond the...

SPOILER ZONE.

Right at the end of the prologue, when Link and Zelda find the desiccated but not quite dead Ganondorf, the moment when he recognizes the two of them was one of my favorite bits of storytelling in the whole franchise. My mind went wild just thinking about it. Does he remember things from past incarnations of the series? They've done things like that before. Wind Waker's Ganondorf remembered the searing winds of the Gerudo Desert, in another moment that has truly stuck with me over the years. And Twilight Princess' Ganondorf had been similarly imprisoned since an earlier era.

Ganondorf is really the only character that across the series has had actually interesting things done with him. I've long found him much more compelling than his Ganon form, which is rarely more than just an evil pig demon. Calamity Ganon at least had a cool design for his first form in BotW, but in the end he just turns into a giant feral hog. Ganondorf, though? He's a character, with plans, and motivations, and that's way more interesting.

At least, I remember him having motivations in those older games, because here...as far as I could tell he's just evil? He wants to conquer the world, and rule everything, but I don't think the game ever really established why. Modern era Ganondorf clearly wants his revenge and whatnot for being imprisoned for ten thousand years, but I don't think flashback Ganondorf had any reason for it other than he's just evil?

It doesn't ruin the game by any means, and I do like that this Ganondorf is a big schemer. He's the sort that when attacking with brute force didn't work, he concocted a plan that involved using a fake Zelda to trick others so he could get one of the Secret Stones to gain its power. That I like, that's a cool bit of storytelling, and I really like that he does it in the modern era too. His physical form is still too weakened to fight, but he's crafty enough to manipulate Hyrule, trying to plunge it all into chaos while he regains his strength.

It just would have been nice if during these flashbacks to flesh out what Zelda was doing with Rauru and Sonia, they also took some time to flesh out Ganondorf, and why he does the things he does. Maybe this is a silly example, but it makes me think of Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super. He's a villain whose goal is literal genocide across the entire multiverse, but he also ends up as the most compelling and fleshed out villain in the franchise (not counting bad guys who later became good, like Piccolo and Vegeta), simply because they actually took the time to develop why he wants to commit multiversal genocide.

There was one question I had throughout the game, and didn't get an answer to until I happened to have a conversation with Impa after she returned to Kakariko Village: What was up with Calamity Ganon? If Ganondorf had been imprisoned for ten thousand years, then what was up with this? It turns out that while he was hidden away underground, his hatred was so strong that it manifested in the Calamity, and the events of BotW. At least it's an answer.

Then there's the whole time travel angle. The reason Ganondorf recognized Zelda was she traveled back ten thousand years, to when he was the buffest man in Hyrule. Not quite as interesting as Ganondorf remembering her from a previous game, but not bad either. While Ganondorf was being evil and scheming, Zelda was having tea parties with her ancestors, and trying to learn the Recall ability that Link would later master instantly in a shrine (that's being unfair, Zelda doesn't have a goat arm to make it easier).

All this is told via flashbacks found in the titular Tears of the Kingdom across Hyrule, and they do eventually explain why these memories exist in the form of glowing Nazca lines plastered around the world. In one flashback, Zelda is learning about the Secret Stones, and Mineru (later to be the Sage of Spirit MECH) presents a theory of what would happen if someone decided to eat one:

They'd turn into an immortal dragon.

Now, do I think that when BotW was made, the devs knew that the big dragons moseying around the sky were actually ancient people who ate Secret Stones? No, this screams of retcon to me. BUT, this is the sort of wild out of nowhere swing for the lore that I appreciate, and wish the Zelda series would do more often. For such a fantastical world, they don't really do that many totally bananas things like this. A lot of the time things don't get any explanation, which is usually good. I don't need to know where Koroks or the Great Deku Tree came from biologically, for example. It's enough to have a giant talking tree and race of little root buddies that scatter little puzzles around the world.

Anyway, as soon as the turn into a dragon lore dropped, I had an idea where it was going, but not to the full extent. Meanwhile, in the modern era, at the house Zelda cruelly stole from Link, I found an underground hidey-hole. Zelda commissioned a secret cellar, and in there I found her hidden diary, which mentioned a new set of armor for Link. Of course it was tucked away in Hyrule Castle, so it wasn't going to be the easiest to get, but I wanted that armor. Eventually I went up there and got it, and though I usually try not to look things up online, I did go and see what the final upgraded defense for the Champion's Leathers was. At 32 it seemed like the highest out of all the armor in the game, and remember that a lot of this game is pretty difficult without good armor, so I wanted to upgrade it. I took it to a Great Fairy, and was a bit perplexed at the resources I needed.

“Light Dragon materials?” I was puzzled. “What's the Light Dragon?” After a while I again gave in and went to the internet, and somehow managed to find the one article describing how to find the Light Dragon to get these upgrade materials, but without saying a single thing about what the Light Dragon is. So, with this new information...I still wasn't able to find this mysterious dragon.

At some point, just for fun, I decided to return to Great Sky Island, and see if there was anything new. When I saw a pillar of light atop the Temple of Time, I was a little surprised that my visit would actually yield something! It turned out to be a challenge from a Zonai Construct to traverse the tutorial area again, lighting some big fires, and doing it all without touching the ground. Fun challenge, and I got some more lore from that Construct about the Temple, and the surrounding gardens. That was all interesting, but as I was about to leave, I looked around, and waaaay off in the distance, somehow even higher in the sky, I saw...something.

A dragon? This high up? I took out my Purah Pad, and after taking a picture, I confirmed it was indeed the Light Dragon I had been searching for. Seeing my chance, I Auto-Built a Flying Platform stocked with batteries, and took off. Even so I still had to use a Large Zonai Charge to recharge mid-flight, but eventually I made it. A new dragon, but this time the music was different. Softer, sadder? More...nostalgic? As I approached, I suddenly had a flash, as I remembered something I saw briefly, but tried to push out of my head.

I do my best to avoid spoilers for games I want to experience in the game itself, but even I'm not perfect at it. Sometimes, when I spend too much time on social media, I'll accidentally catch a glimpse of some fan art I didn't want to see. Including one I saw of Link beside a dragon, with...

When I saw that art, I closed the page, went on with my day, and tried to forget about it. I didn't know the context, and there were several different ideas I had about what it could be. Still, I tried not to think about it...until I was up here, so I just had to check. I hopped off my platform (remember, still no altitude control) and ran along the back of this dragon. My anticipation building as I drew nearer to the head, first seeing a mane of golden hair, and the antlers, then as I crested the mane, I saw it...

The Master Sword, stuck into this dragon's head. Instantly the anticipation exploded into excitement, all I could think was, “this is the greatest game ever made.” Of course I grabbed it, and my stamina being fully upgraded, I passed the test, and finally reclaimed the Sword that Seals the Darkness. Now, how this sword ended up in this dragon, I didn't yet know. But knowing the connection between the sword and Zelda, and given this dragon's mane, it was clear who she was.

Zelda had turned into an immortal dragon.

I feel like traveling back ten thousand years to fight a demon king, then eating a Secret Stone to turn into a dragon is a pretty legendary thing to do. In most of these games, Zelda really just turns into a different flavor of damsel in distress. BotW tried to flesh her out a bit more, and technically she was holding back the Calamity for a century, which doesn't quite make her a damsel. Even if that situation sounds pretty distressing. Short of doing the thing only the CD-I Zelda devs and the Crypt of the Necrodancer team were brave enough to do (making Zelda playable through the whole game), I feel like this is the best Nintendo has ever, and may ever do for making Zelda herself feel worthy of Legend.

So I stumbled backwards into this, but still didn't know why Zelda turned into a dragon, or how the Master Sword wound up lodged in her head. At least until I got the last of the Tears (which also revealed dragon Zelda herself was crying them into existence), and pieced it together. The Master Sword broke in the prologue, and went back in time at the end of the tutorial skyland. With it in Zelda's possession, and her having the knowledge that the sword will repair itself over time when exposed to holy magic, she took it upon herself to create an everlasting means to fix the sword, despite knowing the cost. In becoming a dragon, she would lose all sense of herself. Her identity, her memories, everything, just...gone. Willing to sacrifice it all in one last, desperate attempt to make sure Link had a way to defeat Ganondorf, far ahead in the future.

There's also a bit during this where Zelda refers to the Master Sword as “she,” and combined with some noise the sword made, that also got me thinking...has Fi been in the Master Sword the entire time?

Skyward Sword is at the very start of the Zelda timeline. And for as much as the timeline is kind of nonsense, especially after it splits into three, the idea that Fi has been living in there for all this time... It's just another moment that got me thinking about the nature of time, and the unfathomable scale of it in this universe. Like, there's ten thousand years between the flashbacks, and the playable part of Tears. Yet that's still the same incarnation of Hyrule. Every part of the timeline, every game has its own version of the world and characters, meaning that for these sorts of changes to happen, wouldn't the whole world have to be destroyed and rebuilt? Like a new universe starting, basically? Aside from Wind Waker, that has an ocean to bury Hyrule beneath it, that's the one I could see not needing a new universe to cover up the past.

Or maybe I'm over thinking it.

Anyway, I think it's rather funny that I not only found Zelda and the Master Sword before either of the ways the game actually points Link to them, not only did that before the game brings her lower in the sky to make her easier to reach...I went up to farm materials to fully upgrade the Champion's Leathers. Keep in mind, each upgrade requires two of the requisite resource, and only one can be gathered at a time. So I went up, got the one scale or whatever, then left, came back later, etc.

Then a friend told me you can just stay up there and wait like ten minutes and get another thing without leaving and I just... Laughed. How else could I react, haha?

Plenty happens in the present of Hyrule, though it's mostly about the regional stories tied to the Temples. Each it turned out had been manipulated in some way by a fake Zelda controlled by Ganondorf. Eventually it turns out there's a fifth Temple, and Link gets a MECH. Literally, Mineru's spirit possesses a robot, and Link can pilot her like it's Titanfall 2! This isn't really story related but I couldn't fit this in anywhere else, and I still can't believe they put a mech in a Zelda game! Yes, I wish her damage was better, but still. It's cool.

Eventually, well over 200 hours into this game, I had done basically everything. All the Temples, all the shrines, all the major side quests, and all that left was...plunging beneath Hyrule Castle to finally take on Ganondorf himself. Just getting to him was a gauntlet in itself, fighting past a Lynel, running from Gloom Hands, and dealing with so many enemies along the way. Eventually going so deep Link's Sage rings could no longer summon his Stands, and it just went deeper, and deeper...

Just when Link seems overwhelmed with a huge swarm of enemies, all his Sage buddies show up in the flesh, and it's a really cool moment! Of course after waves of enemies they have to stay back and fend off new versions of all the Temple bosses (which I've been told is a boss rush for people who didn't complete the Temples, all five in a row with no checkpoints!!), so Link goes deeper still to reach his nemesis deep down.

Newly revitalized, Ganondorf is ready to duel, and I think this is my new favorite boss fight in the whole series. Definitely my favorite final boss. It's not anything too fancy, or flashy, just a good old fashioned sword fight, with a few twists. I love when games mess around with core mechanics, so the first time Ganondorf slow motion dodged one of my attacks, I lost it. Here he was, for the first time, doing the very thing Link, and only Link could do in these two games. One of the cores of the combat is using that slow motion dodge to leave enemies open for a flurry attack, and he could do it to ME. Luckily I managed to always dodge, or block his follow up, so I don't know if he does a full flurry back on Link, but I wouldn't doubt it.

Then, after draining his health bar, I knew it couldn't be over yet, and sure enough, it wasn't. But not only did it refill, the bar kept growing, until it reached the edge of the screen, at least twice as long as it was originally. Again, I cannot get enough of when games do things like this. What better way to illustrate that he not only isn't defeated, he's powered up to be even stronger? So the fight continues, eventually Ganondorf summons copies of himself, but the Sages finally catch up, making it an even fight. My first thought was to take out the copies first, but then I realized the Sages had them handled, so I just focused on the real deal, while they all fought in the background. Just another rad moment in a great boss fight.

By the final phase, Ganondorf (having gone Super Saiyan 3) is not holding back, and uses the same Super Gloom from the prologue that broke the Master sword, and drained Link's max health/stamina. With ten thousand years to heal, the Master Sword is fine, even able to repel the attacks back to the source and hurt Ganondorf. But when Link gets hit, these attacks don't just break hearts like regular Gloom, they erase them. Completely gone! Every hit, my max health decreasing, with no way to restore them. I cannot emphasize enough how great this boss fight is, with things like this in it.

Difficulty wise, it felt balanced just right. I had to play well, dodge and parry when I could, but I got through it all in one attempt. Not too easy, not too hard. So, with Ganondorf on the ropes, absolutely furious that this little punk was able to best him, he pulled out the last trick in his sleeve:

The Secret Stone. The source of his power, that allowed him to survive ten thousand years, and return to full strength. He ate it, and became a dragon himself, taking Link with him soaring up into the sky, high above the castle.

But then, in flies Zelda to rescue Link. Despite having lost herself, stuck as a dragon for ten thousand years, here she still came, to Link's aid right when he needed her. This last part of the boss isn't difficult, it's almost all spectacle. Yet it was all just so much, combined with the beautiful music, and I really felt it all welling up in me as I leaped from Zelda to Ganondorf below, taking out his weak spots one by one as the sun set on the horizon, soon replaced with the Blood Moon, larger than ever, until the prompt for the final hit came, and...

The next bit's kind silly, where Link's shirt and head wear disappear for the cutscene (leaving my Link just wearing short-shorts and boots) to make sure players can see his face and arm clearly, but the spirits of Rauru and Sonia appear, and combined with Link, they turn Zelda back to normal, return Link's original arm (sadly), and leave...

Leave Link and Zelda plummeting back to the ground! One last bit of game play, with Link zooming down, flying through clouds as the ground grew nearer, and eventually reaching out to grab Zelda, stretching as far as his arm will go...until he grabs her! And holds her close as they plunge into water, returning safely.

The two reunite, after so, so long, and again, I got emotional. I'm getting emotional just writing about it now. I can criticize these games for often having paper thin stories all day long, but I've been playing them for so many years. Even if Link and Zelda change for every new setting, I've still gotten attached to them. Especially these two specifically, and it got to me. Their long, arduous journey was finally over, and the two could rest, knowing peace had returned to Hyrule as a new day dawned.

Still wish he kept the arm, though. That means Purah and Robbie are going to have to concoct some new device for Link to build things in the next game, right? We'll see, I guess.

END OF SPOILER ZONE.

Part of me can't believe I've managed to write as much about Tears of the Kingdom as I have, and for the most part I feel good about what I've written. Maybe I went a little long on just describing how the abilities work in Part 2, and I'm sure there's plenty of other bits that could have been edited to be more concise, but pretty good overall, I'd say. Over 27,000 words, across 66 double spaced pages. On one game. Never seriously thought I'd actually write a full novella on one game, but here I am! Spent almost two months playing the game, and now another month on top of that writing about it.

Really though, I still can't believe how good this game is. Like, in 2017, I wrote something to the effect of BotW being a really great game, but one with a lot of flaws that held it back from being a true masterpiece. Tears though... I went in telling myself not to expect it to surpass, or even meet the way that BotW made me feel, and yet... I think it surpassed it all. In every way I think this is a better game, and a much better one at that. Even if I went on to later think BotW was my favorite game, at the time it felt pretty flawed, but Tears...

Like, can I really say it's already my new favorite game? Does it help that I genuinely thought to myself, many times while playing that it's the greatest game ever made? I could probably write a whole other piece trying to work through what it means to, early on in a game, have a feeling where I realized I might be playing my new favorite game, and what a surreal experience that was.

Really, none of that matters that much. What matters is I think Tears is phenomenal. Beyond my wildest expectations, and I love it. It's an experience that I hope I never forget, and all I can really do now is just wait and see what the DLC ends up being, assuming they do it. Probably will. Also, wonder when, or if a game will ever make me feel like this again. Surely they couldn't pull a three-peat with the next Zelda...right...?

That, and try to figure out how on Earth I'll have more to say about this game when it wins GOTY at the Moosies this year... Not to spoil the results, but come on. I'm not even going to entertain the idea that Spider-Man 2 or whatever will top this. Not for me. I'm sure plenty of people will put games like Baldur's Gate III, or even Starfield as their GOTY, and I'm sure for some they'll have their “favorite game” experiences, and for whatever else in the future too.

But this one is mine. An experience like little other, and I'm so glad for it. Same for writing this, and I hope to any who read it, or any piece of it, that you got something out of it. Even if it was just a nice thing to go with your day.

Take care of yourselves, and see you all next time!

Thank you for the great series of writeups.

After ~200 hours, I'm starting to burn out and lose interest; but also so close to the end that I'll keep going and won't click those spoiler links, yet.

That Frostbite gear, though. I might have to divert a bit to get the rest of it. I only have the headpiece.

This was an interesting and enjoyable series to read. Thanks again!