Nintendo recently revealed that Link’s journey in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Legend of Zel🐈da: Tears♎ of the Kingdom will begin “on one of the ꧋many mysterious floating islands that have suddenly appeared in the skies high above Hyrule”. A description says, "It’s there our hero will have to gain new abilities before returning to the surface world to begin his epic adventure.&rd🥀quo;
That description's wording makes it seem fairly clear that Tears of the Kingdom will have a Great Plateau equivalent, and that that area will be a floating island in the sky. That means Link will begin his journey, once again, with an extended tutorial. Which, I grant, might not sound exciting. But 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild's Great Plateau was an excellent introduction to the game that did a fantastic job of teaching players everything they needed to know about their toolkit in as short a timeframe as possible before setting them loose in the wildly non-linear open-world. If Tears of the Kingdom has the same basic set-up, it's yet another indication that Nintendo understands what worked so well in the original game and isn't trying to fix what isn't broken.
When I first started playing Breath of the Wild back in 2017, I was prepared to be overwhelmed by the degree of freedom it offered. Before playing, I had heard Nintendo's pitch for the game: that you could go anywhere from early on; that you could even run straight to Ganon and beat the tar out of him with a mop if you were skilled enough. Until I started to hear the rave reviews from critics who had played it, I was a little wary of how open it seemed. I was just getting back into games after largely setting the hobby aside for college and open-world games weren't something I had a ton of experience with. Zelda was. I worried the game wouldn't have enough structure to keep me motivated, or enough Zelda in its DNA to feel like the series I loved.
But the Great Plateau set me straight. Nervous as I was about the ‘do anything’ freedom of Breath of the Wild’s open-world, the game beginning with the Great Plateau’s strict confines felt like a nod from Nintendo. The developers understood that previous Zeldas had been strictly linear and structured and that some players, like me, would need some time with the tr🦄aining wheels on. The Great Plateau was a bite-sized version of Breath of the Wild’s much larger world. After emerging from Link’s secret hibernation chamber, you were free to go 🧸anywhere you wanted… within a very small area. You could get acquainted with the game’s new mechanics like cooking, frying up peppers to venture up a cold mountain, and learn the ways it rewarded real-world thinking by chopping down a tree to form a bridge over a ravine.
More importantly, the Great Plateau is where you gain the four skills Link will need throughout his adventure: Magnesis, Stasis, Cryonis, and Remote Bomb. The King of Hyrule, in disguise, points Link in the direction of the shrines he needs to visit to gain this full suite of powers, and which he asks you to complete in exchange for his glider which you need to exit the Plateau. Tracking down these abilities introduces Link to the concept of shrines, which are integral in leveling up your health and stamina. In fact, by the time you finish the Great Plateau, you'll have enough orbs for an HP or energy upgrade. This is all extremely elegant, tutorializing each of the powers individually, but placing them in shrines so that, once you've learned all four, you can gain an external reward that introduces you to the game's larger upgrade loop. All of that is happening, but all you really notice is that you're getting the glider which lets you head off on your journey.
This is really smart, multilayered stuff, and I'm stoked that Nintendo seems to be keeping the same approach for Tears of the Kingdom. It was deeply gratifying to finish the Great Plateau, walk to the cliff at its edge, and leap off, gliding into the sunlight. Maybe next month we'll be doing the same thing once again, but from much, much higher up.