013 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - THE Best Game on Nintendo Switch

It's that time again. Join Brando, Zach, and Jman Jackson as they discuss what will probably be 2023's game of the year--The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This post-mortem discussion goes over the gameplay, narrative, and more surrounding the game. We hope you enjoy listening to it as you possibly reminisce about your own time in the game. Thank you for listening.

Show Outline

Structure

1. Intro

   1. All the fellas if possible (ft. Brando, Casey, Jackson, Jordan, Zach)

   2. No awards because current lol (but c’mon it’s gonna be GOTY right? Should speculate though!) award categories

   3. Describe pod structure (this doc basically)

2. Story up through inciting incident and getting off of the main sky island tutorial

   1. she and master sword go bye

3. Gameplay

   1. new abilities OVERVIEW

      1. good enough to not miss BotW’s?

      2. Ultrahand

         1. try to not focus on zonai devices (deserves its own section prolly)

      3. Ascend

      4. Rewind

      5. Fuse

         1. try to not focus on talking about combat

      6. Multi-hand

         1. uhh same as ultrahand, just be basic lol

      7. Maybe go over the basics of the purah pad?

         1. DONT SLEEP ON SENSOR PLUS!!!

         2. Heroes Journey also!

         3. camera

         4. teleporting

         5. idk I think that’s all them lol

   2. Combat

      1. Talk about general combat, also don’t forget to circle back to fuse (and other abilities you used in combat like rewind, but maybe still save ultrahand creations for that section)

      2. Enemy scaling? Generally saw more and more white/silver enemies the longer I played

      3. open world bosses like gleeoks, lyonels, hands, stone talus’, boss bokoblins, one eyed troll dudes, and whatever else the boys think of

   3. Exploration

      1. Should hopefully lead into ZONAI devices

         1. go to creations?

         2. anybody use them for combat?

            1. fuse functionality if not already discussed

         3. coolest thing you made?

         4. crazy crap we have seen online

      2. Exploring in general

         1. bread and butter of game

         2. INTRINSICALLY motivated vs other open world extrinsic motivation?

         3. shrines and towers and shrine puzzles?

         4. density of the world and activities and stuff everywhere

            1. sky islands and their shenanigans

            2. the depths and those shenanigans

4. Back to mainline quest content

   1. the 4 dungeons (yes 4). Mechanics, bosses, aesthetic

      1. Wind

      2. Water

      3. Fire

      4. Light

   2. THE DEPTHS

      1. OKAY Nintendo - focused on sky islands in marketing but theres a whole second hyrule under hyrule whaaaat

      2. gloom, light roots, vibes, enemies

      3. zonite ore collection

      4. arenas, bosses, and legacy armors

   3. Remark on some of our favorite side-quests, side adventures, self imposed objectives a few potential examples:

      1. Yiga clan shenanigans [cold cut questline to potentially talk about]

      2. Made a goal to explore EVERY sky island no exceptions [personal objective that made the game fun for me personally]

      3. Love how there’s enough quests that I could just focus on the ones that were most interesting to me (and really loved investigating rumors and mysteries i.e. zelda and the beast) [a mix of cold cut questline and personal objective]

   4. The tears of the kingdom non-spoilers

      1. little story recap about the geoglyphs (probably don’t have to go too deep into these)

      2. put a pin in it until after the spoiler warning? Can get into the rest of it right after or go into other stuff first, whichever flows better.

5. Spoiler Territory

   1. Mineru questline (incredible stuff)

   2. Sages wills?? (I didn’t know about these until my endgame anyway lol)

   3. Master (gourd)Sword business

   4. Tears but the spoiler kind

   5. Hyrule Castle (if you have notes on it anyway)

   6. Gannon and the Finale

6. Conclusion

   1. Last chance to remark on anything you loved about the game that hasn’t been discussed

   2. Do you recommend this game? To what kind of player and why?

   3. Plug ya socials or whatever ya want

   4. End podcast