How to Fix Tears of the Kingdom's BIGGEST Problem 

I think what would have been so much better is if they had a second Hyrule map that was in the ancient past. Maybe they could have worked in a gameplay mechanic where you switch between playing as Link and Zelda and maybe had the stories converge.

It would be an awesome idea the totk map is cool but the sky was such a missed opportunity

Damn. Now I’m just imagining a game where Hyrule society is trying to survive on new sky islands while the world below struggles in the darkness. You beat each dungeon in the sky to activate a light root network for a region below and slowly disperse the darkness covering the land.

I've been enjoying TotK a lot more as time has gone on, and I do think it's a lot of fun exploring the same Hyrule again since compared to BotW, there's a lot more stuff to do with caves, new enemy camps, side quests etc. Other than the surface overworld, the Depths and the Sky did not have enough content to keep me engaged in exploration. I'm mostly just exploring the Depths to light up the whole map and to get pristine weapons I want. I'm only exploring the Sky to find shrines and get Sages' Wills. With the surface, I'm actually exploring to have fun. Yeah, the Sky and Depths were pretty disappointing, especially the Sky given how much Nintendo showcased it in marketing. With the Sky I definitely think every area should have had a big unique sky island like how Central Hyrule has the Great Sky Island. I think with the Depths, they could have given the Yiga more to do, created more Depths unique enemies, or at the very least they could have had unique environments and biomes in each area rather than just have the landscape, flora and fauna all be the same across the whole Depths. Like the Hebra Depths could have had an icy landscape, or Faron could have been an underground jungle. They put magma in the Eldin Depths, so why couldn't they have put that same amount of effort into making the other areas have unique Depths settings? Overall, I think Nintendo kinda spread themselves too thin trying to make all the new content, and they should have put more into the Depths and Sky and maybe less into the surface. Maybe the surface areas could have been disconnected and impossible to explore without having to explore the Depths and Sky. What if Rito Village and the whole Tabantha region ended up in the Sky, and you could only reach it via exploring the Sky? Or what if the path to Death Mountain, or even the volcano itself, fell into the Depths, and you are then forced to go through the Depths to reach it? These are just basic scenarios I thought of, but I really think it could have been cool if Nintendo broke up and fractured the surface world and put less in it, forcing players to explore the Depths and Sky which would now have more content in them due to a greater focus on those areas. I made my comment before I got to the part where you talk about how to fix the world, and now I'm realizing we both have very similar ideas. I definitely think I like yours better than mine. The Depths should be the new surface, make it almost like the Dark World from Link to the Past. Lift surface Hyrule into the Sky and fracture the landscape into islands, keeping the familiar areas but changing them enough to keep it fresh. Anyways, great video. I still have tons of fun with this game, but I totally understand and agree with your frustrations. I also think your suggestions for fixing the world are genius. Skyrule is awesome lol

I appreciate your comment on our Channel. You make some pretty interesting observations even if I don't agree with all of them. Changing the sky islands especially could have been a pretty interesting concept like you suggested. I still love this game so darn much even if it has some flaws. ~Cheers

Love these ideas! Something that crossed my mind is how it was a lost opportunity to have caves that lead to the depths. And not like you go into the entrance of a cave and immediately there’s a hole for the depths. Like a long labyrinthian cave system that leads you all the way down to the depths. Something like the royal passage. And different entrances to the depths through caves. Also caves in the depths too. There’s like at least one where all those skeletons but I don’t think they count them like “caves” like they do in the overwhelmed where it says “discovery.” Imagine having a cave system that goes all the way from the top of the mountain to the depths. Imagine having a cave system that goes from a sky island to a mountain somehow… maybe a teleportation or falling through a specific hole onto a mountain cave that can’t be accessed otherwise… and then it goes from the mountain the the depths. They overhyped the caves like it was gonna be a major part of the games and I imagined dungeons being in there. Speaking of caves… a lot of them are lackluster aside from the royal passage one… all looking the same, without much interesting except for the ones with Yiga hideouts and special treasure. But when I saw that castle where the gleeok is next to akkala, I forgot what it’s called. I got SO excited. I thought it was an actual castle… like a dungeon. [I forgot the same pace was in BOTW, although the entrance was blocked]… well lo and behold you go and the entrance of the castle is a cave!!! It doesn’t even make sense. Imagine it being a smaller castle like Hyrule.

Not a huge Zelda fan but I can get behind MitchMyester!!

Bless your heart. The over dramatization got me 😂

As someone who hasn’t played botw this „problem“ simply never occurred to me.

I don't think the map's the biggest problem. The biggest problems in this game are the menuing and just how much time the building takes. It's cool that you can build almost anything, but building stuff just takes long. And the menuing is really awful. It was fine in BotW with how the game worked and how many items you could use that way, but in TotK it's not fine because there's way more items. Even just a few more item sorting options would've made it a lot more bearable, but the item menuing system simply isn't good enough and really needed a proper reworking. And I suppose 2 more big issues I have are the story design along with the dungeons. The memories stuff worked fine in BotW, but basically repeating it for TotK just isn't very fun. And the dungeons were one of the worst aspects of BotW... and their solution for it in TotK? MAKE THEM EVEN WORSE! Honestly, I only somewhat enjoyed 1 of the dungeons. They were just awful overal. TotK is a great game, but... it definitely has no shortage of flaws. Flaws that really have no place to be there. And it's why I consider it to be more of an expansion of BotW than an actual full-fledged sequel.

Dude, you honestly hit the nail on the head. I havent played the game since release and i thought it was so fun. But the *story* just frustrated me *so bad.* I thought for *sure* they were bringing back skyward sword lore with the reveal of the sky islands. Shoe-horning in a new race to explain everything was genuinely just *awful,* and that doesnt even scratch the surface of how irrelevant the depths feel to *everything.* A few things I've thought about that i would alter/add on to your (frankly amazing) suggestions: - in my opinion, having the Zonai be a new race at all was just so poorly done and so against the heart of Skyward Sword's lore, I would just do away with that entirely. Have the illusion be there, but reveal through world-based storytelling/Zelda flashbacks that they were, in fact, ancient Hylians. Tie it all back to Skyward Sword! Bring back *that* ancient hero, and *that* Demon King! Either have the callback/Zelda's time in the past be before SS Link's time, or a while after. "Oh, yeah, we had a Link and a Zelda once! That's kinda weird you have the same name! Anyway check out all these advancements we've made since we had contact with the surface." - Taking that route, if we're going to have all the BOTW races living up in the sky with little way to get around/use Zonai devices, re-introduce Loftwings. If the whole game is going to take place in the sky, horses are going to become even more obsolete than they already are-- so if we're going to have an animal mode of transportation at all, it may as well be able to fly. That would help the Hylians feel a *little* less helpless if they were in the process of taming Loftwings by the time Link wakes up. - If the Hylians are able to fly around, that means *they* can find and restore Link, instead of getting *another* ghost-guided tutorial. - Another concept we could bring back with the inclusion of Skyward Sword is the Ancient Seal as a plot device. This isnt something that i think TOTK *needed,* but it would have been cool to acquire pieces of the ancient seal from the dungeons in the world and maybe drive that stake into the Demon King's head at the end of the game. - Ganondorf as a whole was just *so* underutilized. Your suggestion of putting things farther in the future is one solution to allow him to have more impact, but i suggest thus: have Link wake up five *years* in the future instead of six months go ahead and leave Ganondorf on the surface, and have him waging a war against the people in the sky, where he has a better understanding of Zonai devices because he's from that time. He can send some of his monsters up to terrorize things, but he himself is unable to do a full frontal assault. Why? Well, because of that dastardly light dragon, of course! It's protecting the sky islands so fiercely, he can't get close without the thing going rabid against him. So his goal is to find a way to take out the light dragon, and take over all of Hyrule once and for all, in both land and sky. I've typed this all from mobile so it may have many glaring errors, but some of these are concepts i thought about all the way since release, and a few that just came to mind as i was watching/typing this up. TOTK could have had so much potential, really tied the timeline together so nicely. Instead, we got three eyed goats.

Botw just gave a better sense of discovery. Reusing the same world just didn’t feel as fresh and even tho I liked the game it just felt like a giant DLC

The question you have to ask is what were the developer's intentions with the sky islands being few and what is their intentions with the depths. Well, I enjoyed the challenge of building things and having to think hard in order to get to one sky island to the other. I liked not just that they were a distance away horizontally, but also different heights from one another. And the depths showed that you had to have really good skills for flying straight than on the surface and in the sky because you often had to fly in an upward spiral to get out of deep valleys and you had to dodge tall trees and stone walls that extend to the top of the depths. And the depths had a cool side quest with the Yiga giving you new ideas and inspiration for new builds. And the light roots help you find the shrines, which some are in caves. The depths helped you obviously with finding zonai to make more batteries, but the depths had more stations with zonai devices than the surface to speed up the inspiration process on what to build. And the developer's intentions with the same old map was to get players to focus more on builds than exploration. You still wanted to explore Hyrule and truly coming at places from a different angle or with new or missing structures, the reused map didn't feel exactly the same. But, still you had a remembrance of where major things are at in order to build things to get there more creatively. You have good criticisms and I can't say I haven't thought the same. I do wish though they extended the map over the sea and put sky islands further out over the sea. Maybr even have a fallen island in the ocean. Maybe one east of Zora's Domain and one south of the Faron region.

Wow it would have been so awesome if Nintendo listened to some of these ideas.

I always had the feeling BOTW and TOTK were meant to be one single game. BOTW wouldn't have felt like it lacked a deeper, more complex narrative and TOTK wouldn't have been such a dread to navigate through.

Wtf its a masterpiece

Youre taking the words out of my mouth man! I recently started playing again and I have to admit the Depths really just feel like a chore with lighting them up. They also lack uniqueness. The sky islands were also just false advertisement in my oppinion. The story islands felt so well paced and like a more linear but still unique experience. The dungeons which shouldnt count as sky islands in my oppinion were pretty bland after doing 1 or 2 of them. So yeah its a lot of missed potential saddly. I would really love to see you make a video about your ideas to improve the game maybe? Cheers and have a great day.

Agreed. Totk was a let down

Greetings from the BIG SKY.

this guy is absolutely right, i loved botw but i stopped playing tears of the kingdom because i was just so bored

I’m not really trying to hate or anything, but I will say you’re slightly being harsh on them because if there is around like hundreds of Skyland whole new map, then the game would it even be out yet you’ll take way longer probably like five years if not more

I don't disagree with anything you're saying here, but I think that the development time would've been far greater. My guess is that they had to spend so much time on the new technology for this game that they weren't left with as much time for designing large new maps. I really hope that the next Zelda game is a whole new world.

Can you please explain why people had their expectations so high? I knew that botw would be peak from the start.

Imagine if it was HYRULE BEING LIFTED INTO THE SKY. Not just some sky islands from who-knows-where but the entire map of botw, in the sky. The story would begin with ganandorf cutscene, but the upheavel was meant to destory ALL of hyrule. Then, some ancient Zonai(who aren't all dead) protected the land by lifitng it into the sky. With hyrule lifted up, the depths below were revealed. Ik it's not the best idea, and there are many problems with it, but it could be cool. I also made an entirely different story for this game, but I dont feel like writing it all out if nobody's gonna read it😅

It’s 70 dollar dlc just like Spider-man 2.

No chance

Good point about

Asking for a better map on a switch game is kinda crazy lol. Most cell phones are more powerful at this point. Imagine if Nintendo would just bite the bullet and stop making consoles. They could make games for PC and real consoles that were at least up to modern par graphically. The switch is a missed opportunity with a lot of great games.

Agree

I can promise you that you don’t want more sky islands. Too many of them would be too much clutter and it would remove the challenge of getting to the harder to reach ones. Also, plenty of sequels use the same maps as their predecessors and they often change the map less than Tears of the Kingdom did. Seeing how low Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Odyssey are on your list, I can’t really take this seriously.

Or just put more content in the depths lol

Fuck yeah

Spot on

I disagree on this. The game's main problem is the frustration level. It's more difficult than its predecessor. I emerged from the chamber less than five minutes into the game only to be immediately one-shot by the first thing I see. Armor is hard to come by early on. It's not just the combat, either. I've had to look up a LOT of guides because I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do, either because it was incredibly cryptic or required a level of intelligence that I simply do not possess. Then there's navigating the area leading up to the Sky Temple... My exact thoughts while trying to navigate it were: "If I could ask the developers one question, it would be 'Who hurt you?'" Even the slightest mistake, and you have to start all over from the beginning.

You're definitely right, not giving players a new Hyrule to explore is seriously holding the game back. I don't want to rehash what you said but my biggest problem with totk was that every shrine and temple were mid to bad. None of them were good. Wind temple had a good ascetic but not good puzzles, lightening temple was the same but had better puzzles, and the fire temple, water temple, and spirit temples were all downright bad, no good puzzles and boring to explore. Unlike botw where the divine beasts were awesome to explore with interesting puzzles. Even if you didn't like the divine beasts, they had way better puzzles and much more intricate layouts that actually required exploration and wit to solve. And not a single shrine in the whole game posed any sort of challenge, none of them had real puzzles or difficult combat because they were either obvious solutions, or Link was so unstoppablely strong that the shrine posed no challenge. Unlike botw which had some very difficult puzzles and combat shrines that were a joy to get through. Obviously not every shrine in botw has a glowing review but it's not a lot that don't, unlike totk where every shrine is piss easy. You might be thinking that "you played botw so of course it's easy" 1. That only goes for combat shrines because new puzzles can't just be outright solved and 2. I still struggle on some of the more difficult combat shrines in botw, I'm not amazing at the game or anything; totk is just way too easy.