Last night I sat on my sofa playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and a little alert popped up in the corner, telling me one of my friends had logged on. They too were playing Tears of the Kingdom. In fact, when I checked my profile, 13 friends were online. All playing Tears of the Kingdom together. All of us doing the same thing at the same time, and yet I felt so alone with it. I just don’t get Tears of the Kingdom.
This is not intended as a hit piece. Maybe if I play more of the game, which I still might, I will be in a position to fully critique from a perspective different to those wrapped up in its wonder. But this is not to tear down the game, only to lament my inability to connect with it. I don’t hate Tears of the Kingdom, nor feel frustrated by it. I feel nothing. When everyone else is moved by it, that might be worse.
I’m no stranger to this feeling. I remember last February when, despite the avalanche of games that were released in a two week period, all the world could talk about was Elden Ring. Again, I felt some invisible force field pushing me away, some cosmic magnetism that repelled something in me when it attracted everything else. But that was much easier to understand - I just wasn’t good enough.
I didn’t ‘feel nothing’ for Elden Ring. It frustrated me, and I lacked the patience to explore its depths fully. There though, there is an out. I’m not a prideful or insecure fool who derives self-worth from my abilities at a video game, so I can accept not being good at Elden Ring. It doesn’t even mean I’m bad at video games, I’m just bad at this type of video game.
But that’s not how it works with Zelda. There’s no real skill ceiling. Children play this game. To be bad at a game, to not be skilled enough to complete it, is one thing. I didn’t dedicate the time to it, but I know if I sat with Elden Ring for long enough, followed tips, and learned my build, I’d get better at it. You can always improve how good you are at something. But how much you ‘get’ something, how much it reaches out and touches you, feels innate. You get it, or you don’t. And I don’t.
A few years ago, before we even knew Tears of the Kingdom’s name, I wrote that I hoped I hated it. Now, it’s here, and I’m writing of my regret that I do. This might seem hypocritical, but they are two sides of the same coin. I hoped I hated it because I did not connect with Breath of the Wild at all. I put in 15-20 hours, but it just didn’t impact me. However, I knew BOTW was a bold attempt to be fresh, putting a huge amount of trust in players, and offering something crackling with originality in a genre saturated with old ideas shoved into bland and bloated worlds.
I wanted Tears of the Kingdom to be just like Tears of the Kingdom is. My wish in that original article has been granted. I’m not angry about it, or even critical that the series has continued down this path. It’s exactly what it should have done, and precisely what gaming needs. I’m only sad I can’t come along for the ride.
I understand Zelda’s importance, first and foremost as a game - it has fresh ideas (or fresh interpretations of established ideas) that other games will soon copy. But also as a piece of art that makes us feel something, and as food for the soul. We probably shouldn’t have related quite as hard to that sad man coming home late from work, enjoying a glass of tap water, and finding joy in his life through Zelda, but we did. I know this game matters, and I don’t want it to change. I just wish I understood it, even a little bit.
I’ll stick with Zelda for a little while longer. Unlike Elden Ring, I’m unlikely to hit an insurmountable spike. Instead, my interest will gradually fade away. Maybe as I come to understand the game’s systems and world more, I’ll be able to critique why it doesn’t land for me more substantially. Maybe I’ll be able to look at it colder, once more without feeling, and clinically describe why a game that takes so many along for the ride leaves some of us behind. Maybe in a week, a month, a year, something will click, and the cogs will whir, and I’ll be writing I Finally Get Tears Of The Kingdom. But somehow, I doubt it.