11 Other Subtle Differences between Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and BOTW 

One thing not mentioned often enough is the drastic increase in sound quality. Hajime Wakai, Sound Director on the Zelda team, confirmed in the developer interview on Nintendo’s website that TOTK uses a brand-new sound engine. The difference is incredible. Sounds that were flat, dry or even mono channel in BOTW are much more dimensional in TOTK, paired with reverb effects that coincide with the space you’re in.

THE most satisfying thing you can do is leap from a sky island and dive right into a pond and hear the big sploosh followed by a small rainshower. It's so beautiful man.

I also love that when you’re in caves there’s a foggy effect on the ground that responds to movement like swinging a weapon

A thing I noticed in TotK is that whenever I jump out of trees or paraglide closely past them you can hear leafs rustling, I dont remember that happening in BotW

The rain on the paraglider is definitely one of my favorite sound effects!! It makes it so realistic and it just sounds so awesome

5:30 this reminds me of one of my favorite little details in both BotW and TotK: If an enemy arrow hits your wooden shield, it sticks in your shield. Holstering your shield when it has arrows embedded adds those arrows to your inventory.

the raindrops on the paraglider sound is so amazing. it sounds so good. amazing. incredible. game of the year

It's not just the Rito luxury that's depreciated. All those that were 80 are now 50, the village ones that were 40 are now 30, and the stable ones went from 40 to 50 with improved services. 20s are still 20 though.

#8-- there's a combat training shrine in TOTK that specifically teaches you this! Not only that elemental projectiles can be parried, but also to use a metal shield for fire & a wooden one for electricity. i remember being absolutely stunned that you can parry electrical balls, i was like, "wait, was this also in botw????" but apparently not!

I kinda freaked out when I first used the scope while in mid air. It feels so weird being suspended to nothing while using the scope, but this was clearly done for QoL because of all the time spend flying in this game. A good change, even if it doesn't really make sense.

All these little details really do add up. It's not a simple reuse assets and be done with it. They actually went back to improve them.

I believe the second one is a result of shields now been able to act as weapons if you fuse certain parts to them. Like the fact a sword blade can now be fused to them and use for offense meant shields needed a "damaging enemy" special effect programed to them, and the bat parry got that by proxy

I used to see the no arrows text so much at the beginning when I first started TotK, which did make me feel a little sad. Now I have more arrows than sense. I love all the incredible little details being found in the game, it’s incredible what they have done with experience on BotW!

During the rain difference you can notice the change in wind animation among the rain. In BOTW, the wind is visible and has a cloudy kinda look. In TOTK, the wind looks gaseous and is barely visible.

Hats off to the developers. The level of detail they've crammed into this game is outstanding.

Fun fact: when link is on his scope while in mid-air, his vertical speed decreases. And if his paraglider in on, he’ll stop completely.

I noticed the rain on the paraglider when I was playing and I was both amazed how good it sounds and disappointed they didn't do it in breath of the Wild

That Bokoblin looked so happy to see Link flying in 😄

Yes my favorite game that I am going to get tomorrow

One new thing I noticed is that dogs at stables in Totk now have a new barking animation when you feed them enough fruits! This wasn't in botw, and it's a good indicator of whether they're ready to show you the special treasure!

It’s insane- people keep discovering things about breath of the wild in this game seems to have that exact same care They changed so much to just make it feel better in so many ways

i didnt realize you entered bullet time mode when using the scope mid air, i thought the gleeok that was flying around that i was looking at was just having a unique looking slow-mo glitch lol

I like to think that they took an extra few years because developers kept coming up and saying "Hold on I need to make this obscure detail way better" over and over again.

One I was suspicious of was changing climbing gear speed. For the _longest_ time, I only had the shirt, but it felt like it made Link climb faster than just one piece did in botw. I finally caved in and looked up where the other two were and I'm 99% certain the "climb speed up" effect was buffed.

The new rain sounds on the glider are so relaxing and satisfying! 😄😄🤤

It is nothing short of amazing how much they've improved.

7:25 Seeing that just makes me wish they'd make it so that dry-firing your bow causes it to break faster, since that's what can happen irl.

You do such a good job of showing them off. Thank you for putting in the effort.

The soundscape of TotK is so much richer than it was in BotW.

Bullet time scope while paragliding? This is awesome.

Here's an update/bug fix: When recovering hearts, there is a white glow, but in BotW, the glow appears on the wrong UI layer, which looks awful when recovering partial hearts. Pretty sure it's fixed in TotK.

If you look up at the sky in totk, you'll notice several landmasses in the sky just floating there, this is a pretty cool subtle hint that actually tells you you're playing totk and not botw

Again nothing about the Great Fairy moving upgraded armor to the back in BotW, but in TotK it stays in the slot it was in.

Those little sound differences in BOTW and TOTK are small but really make the game feel more immersive for some reason. The games don’t look or feel totally different but noticing those sound changes make TOTK feel more realistic

Not sure if this is correct or not, but was watching a Wind Waker playthrough and think I may have found an Easter egg in TotK. The sound that the zonai soldier constructs make when they set off an alarm is remarkably similar to the sound wizzrobes made in Wind Waker. Maybe someone can double check that?

I don't know if it's the case in Breath of the Wild, but when climbing waterfalls in Tears of the Kingdom, you can move left and right. I don't know if that was also the case in Breath of the Wild.

if you make any more of these videos, can you please point out that Recall has a post-activation UI that pauses time so you don't have to rush to select entities? it's such a huge improvement over Stasis. my fingers are always slipping trying to activate Stasis on fast-moving entities like lynels.

Hey I know you’re probably still in the Zelda hype like all of us but another metroid prime video would be awesome

even the bokoblin was surprised that link is using the purah pad in mid-air

I also noticed the rain on the paraglider! They really stepped up the sound design from BoTW! In a future video, you could also compare the sound when Link performs a swim dash. I noticed it right away and it’s much better in ToTK

Doing the whistle prompts the "【Name of horse】doesn't hear your call" in Botw but not ToK

There is also a huge difference with bullet time. In Botw, when you use bullet time, your stamina drains consistently no matter what you do. but in Totk, stamina doesn’t drain unless you shoot the arrow. It uses about 1/4 of one circle per shot

i did not know the scope used bullet time in totk you taught me something congrats

haven't gotten TOTK yet but i'm prepped and ready for it !!

Link can also use his scope when he's on a zonai machine

Love the Videos man

4:18 nice cinematic shot. All that time using the camera tool you found in Majora's Mask must have payed off, huh?

One thing I have noticed that I haven't seen you cover is the change in bullet time. In BotW, Bullet Time itself consumes a large amount of stamina per second. In TotK, Bullet time itself no longer consumes stamina. Instead, each shot fired during Bullet Time consumes about 1/3 a stamina wheel.

At #7, I always thought it never made sense how the arrows just disappear in BotW when you shoot at the fruit when the arrows are clearly visible, so I’m glad they improved on that in TotK, makes it easier to save the arrows in hand

There is another difference, when you are in areas with extreme heat and you move you will see how link is sweating

i noticed the paraglider one and thought it was super cool!!

You know, I thought I was crazy or something thinking that TOTK both looks and sounds better than BOTW, I thought I was misremembering because the last time I played BOTW was months ago, but no, seeing and hearing clips from both games side by side, TOTK really does look and sound better. I mean, I've noticed it's a bit more pixely in some places (but that just might be me playing on a Lite), but the lighting, colors, and overall art style are definitely improved in TOTK compared to BOTW, and the sound really is better too. People have been saying they made a brand new sound engine for the game too, and it shows. I also love now Nintendo clearly saw player complaints about minor annoyances in BOTW and did their best to fix them- i.e., bullet time, chest loot, the drowning thing, quick menus. It's refreshing to see a company listen to player inputs, and I'm glad Nintendo has been doing that with Zelda. Sure, there's still plenty of minor annoyances in TOTK, but the fact that they went out of their way to change such small things from BOTW at all when they didn't have to was nice to see. Also also, one small change that actually kind of shocked me is that Link can slide down ladders now! I don't remember being able to do that in BOTW, it's a nice touch and makes them faster to use. That friction burn he must get on his bare hand though... ouch.

That bed pun when he was at rito village was alright

Are these clips recorded on Switch? The games look surprisingly sharp!

Cool fact: in the final boss, if you have the revalitized sword of legend(master sword) you can hit Ganondorf's gloom attacks and send them back to him and hit him with it. But, try to shield it or hit it with another weapon, the weapon or shield will suffer the same fate the Master sword did.

I dunno if you already pointed this out, but I noticed you can no longer take pictures of enemies for the compendium as they’re dying. I wanted the lynel’s dying pose for my compendium pic like I do in botw and it just doesn’t work smh.

YOU CAN USE THE SCOPE MIDAIR???

Its something how u can see some graphical enhancements in totk 🔥 im so glad zelda is still around mane kids nowadays are lucky to experience great graphics in games nowadays lol cause back then when we were kids our games were straight block animated 🤣

BotW still sells thousands of copies (even post TotK launch), so they should patch some of these improvements to it.

one thing i don't understand is that they removed the stealth sound effects. In BOTW when you had the stealth effect link would get noticeably quieter. It was such a good detail, why did they remove it?

6:57 yes! I noticed it and I really liked it !

The attention to detail is insane

I feel like, at least while shooting, I fall faster in BT than in BOTW I think the red visual effect is whenever damage is dealt by the parry, and was added since you can slap stuff in it with fuse like spikes I think scope in air was added for y’know, the sky they added. It can also be activated while riding a vehicle, but even in the air it sadly won’t activate BT. 5:22 this includes apple fused arrows! 6:10 the gem fused weapons was probably to teach you about the gem fuses if you didn’t already know or to give a reason to fuse gems over just using a rod 7:33 is the 0 not text?

I cannot imagine the hours spent on each game to compare every single aspect.

The first one is actually a pretty cool detail!

4:59 THANKS GOD SOMEONE FINALLY NOTICED

2:41 boko is happy to see u xD

When you're using the scope when falling, it also seems you're moving at roughly bullet time... height lost much less fast and I've noticed monster animations (such as the dragons) are slowed to a point they look frozen/are frozen... (lulz, you literally say this a few seconds more into the video)

Did anyone else notice that the all of the masks to blend in with mobs were never changed from botw to match totk?

You can also see link quiver and how many arrows he got left

the more i watch this kind of videos the more i feel like botw was an early acces or an beta of totk but thats just shows how insane the improvent is from the devs

6:58 ASMR Paraglider's Raindrops

My like is for the "bed" pun x)

I knew it, it was weird to me you can use the slate while you're paragliding.

I need to remember to try parrying things more often.

3:33 New version of "Why do you slap yourself?"

C'est quand que tu fais The Wind Waker ? 😢

You could get the arrows back in BotW, you just had to grab them first.

The sound quality is so much better in TOTK. The wooden bridges in this game, I.E. Tingel Island and Co make creaky noises when you stand on or near them unlike in botw where they made no noise.

800 hours in botw and I didn't know you could kill keese with a parry

other decades or other countries would be awesome follow ups

not a BED video 😉

How about the movement of the moon in TotK is in the opposite direction to BotW.

11 is new to me too but i will never get that message because i never run out of arrows XD

Being able to activate scope while gliding in TOTK is nice for gameplay, but it's just SO BIZARRE. What is he using? His feet?

Is also worthy to know that thunder wizrobes can summon thunderstorms with their rods

When gets wind waker continued ?

though definitely a less subtle change, even pristine items have less damage than their botw counterpart, and even weapons that look statistically identical to botw versions have less damage due to the subtle damage scaling on spears and 2-handed weapons

Why is it that for people who've played TOTK for too long (like me) the BOTW horns start looking weird

nice video.

The Bow message is such an ORLY owl. Yes I'm aware I ran out of arrows. Don't need to tell me every time. I am not a DSP.

Otimo vídeo.❤❤❤

I wonder what's the point of making wizzrobes projectiles parryable if it deals zero damage to them anyway...

when stalnox arm weapon??

all the new subtleties added in totk tell me the dev team finished this game a while ago and were looking for things to do and improve upon from BOTW lmao

1:48

bro 😭 When you shoot an arrow at a apple in BoTW you can get the arrow back you just have to grab it before you grab the apple.

"TOTK is a $70 dlc" 🤮🤬😡😤 "BOTW is a $60 demo" 🥰😘🤩👌

Subtle difference in botw you use the light bow and arrow to take down dark beast Ganon in totk link uses the master sword to take down the demon dragons tears

2:47 Meme image.