Tears of The Kingdom Ultimate Discussion of EVERYTHING [#147]

In our longest episode yet, we discuss everything about Tears of the Kingdom. What we thought about it’s new features, storytelling, characters, music and so much more!

More Zelda Discussion with Zelda Creators Modcast: https://youtu.be/wnLQq60eMKM

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Two and a half months after Tears of the Kingdom released, we are finally coming together to

(00:04):
discuss the game.
This episode will contain spoilers for everything in the game, including end game content.
Welcome to the Switch Clicks Podcast episode 147, my name is Dakota and today I'm joined
by Nathan.
Hello!
Before we get into it, we'd like to shout out the mods at Zelda Creators for inviting

(00:24):
us on their Zelda Creators Modcast to discuss Tears of the Kingdom with them.
So if you're looking for even more discussion about the game, check out their episode linked
in the description.
That episode does not contain heavy spoilers.
So of course, it's been a few months since the game came out and it took me a little
bit longer to beat the game considering I have a life now.

(00:47):
There are a couple things that we did miss during the Zelda Modcast episode and the hot
takes that come with it potentially.
Oh dear, we're going to be digging ourselves a bunch of holes in this episode.
So we have a list of things that we'd like to cover here and the first thing would be
the new abilities.
I think they're good.

(01:07):
Yeah, yeah, they're pretty suitable replacements for the runes.
Yeah, I think the game was almost, it was kind of built around the building mechanic,
but it didn't feel as cohesive and a lot of the puzzles were very, very simple.
I think part of the reason was because all of these abilities kind of interacted with

(01:34):
almost everything in the world, whereas the Sheikah runes were kind of more catered towards
specific types of objects around the world.
Yeah, and they could build it a little bit more, the funnel was a lot smaller, you could
say.
Yeah, there was just so much more freedom that you had to just solving puzzles to building

(01:54):
stuff, whereas with the Sheikah Slade you kind of had to figure out which rune you had
to use to get past a certain point.
Yeah, and oftentimes you had to use a combination, like oh, there's a metal chest in a lake,
so you have to use the ice one and then use the metal one to get it out.

(02:17):
So yeah, that's actually a good point I didn't really realize.
I didn't really find myself combining much of the abilities in Tears of the Kingdom as
much as I did in Breath of the Wild.
It was kind of mostly like, Ultrahand solves one single puzzle, maybe you do recall and
rewind, I forget what it was called, to bring you up to the sky or something.

(02:39):
There was really no instance where you really needed to use multiple effects at once.
So it was just kind of a singular puzzle.
Yeah, the only thing that I can think of is if I'm using the Ultrahand to put in a glider
and then the glider falls off and I forgot something, so I need to do the reverse and

(03:02):
go back.
Yeah, I literally, that's the only combo I can think of and I usually only use that to
cheese some puzzles.
It makes puzzles go by fast of course.
It doesn't feel really natural.
It doesn't feel as natural as the Breath of the Wild combos.
Yeah, I think the ascend ability is probably the most useful.

(03:27):
Just because for some reason I did try to play Breath of the Wild again and I'm like,
oh, there's a ledge there, let me just use ascend.
Oh wait.
So I think that was like, almost, it was probably the most useful I think.
I actually think Recall or Rewind is the most useful out of all of them just because of

(03:50):
how much range there is.
You can, you have infinite range with that thing.
You can get like a plane that flew off like a couple hundred miles away and call it back
to your own spot.
I think ascend is very, very dependent on where you're using it, whereas Recall kind
of just, it kind of works in almost any given situation.

(04:13):
That's true, yeah.
I guess how many times, how many instances are you throwing something off and you need
to get it back?
I usually use Recall to like screw over with puzzles and navigate up like higher platforms
or something like that.
I actually use it a lot to get those Korok puzzles.

(04:36):
You know the ones where you have to carry the Koroks up like a huge mountain or something
to get them to their friends?
Yeah, I usually use that a lot more often than I would to use ascend for climbing purposes.
Because ascend is kind of substituted by other stuff in the game, you could either get level

(04:57):
to non-slip climbing gear or you can get a simple campfire with a pine cone and cause
like a massive updraft, that type of stuff.
So I don't find as much use with ascend as I would with something like Recall.
I usually, I just remembered that I usually use the time ability for if I overshoot a

(05:21):
Korok with a rocket.
Oh, that's sad.
Then I just activate the ability and then he kind of like flies over his friend and
I stop the ability once he's over his friend and he just drops.
Yeah, that's where I like it the most.
It's either that or those puzzles that are actually meant for Recall.
You kind of have like that momentum type of thing going on and then it just goes crazy

(05:44):
when you release it at a certain time.
Oh yeah, yeah.
I forgot about that.
Yeah, there's like a couple of shrines that had those where you had to basically time
it so that it bounces off the ground really high up.
Those were really fun puzzles.
But it's too bad that you won't really find a use for that anywhere else.

(06:05):
Yeah, they do not play with that at all in the overworld.
Speaking of the overworld, exploration versus Breath of the Wild.
Now before we were recording Dakota, you mentioned that we kind of have different perspectives
on this and I kind of wanted to hear what you thought about this.

(06:29):
Yeah, the different perspectives saying like, okay, I didn't memorize every single little
rock in each place.
I kind of just knew the main locations, Kakariko Village, each of the four corners of Hyrule,
Hyrule Castle, Hyrule Field, and that's about it.
Now every once in a while I came to an area, I'm like, hey, I remember this area.

(06:52):
I jumped off that cliff or I wanted to get to the top of that pole that didn't have anything.
So I went to the top of that pole in this game and half the time it had something.
So I think the exploration is equally as good.
It was just a little bit monotonous only because there wasn't as many changes.

(07:13):
And I'm at this point after exploring Hyrule twice and both times being in complete disarray,
I'd like to see a complete Hyrule with people walking around and it's thriving.
You know they're probably never gonna do that.
I know and it sucks.
You might have to use some mods to get that, unfortunately, but I've heard some mods kind

(07:37):
of didn't work properly for that either, so it kind of scares me.
For me, because I was one of those people who kind of explored, like who got 100% in
Breath of the Wild with all 900 Koroks, I kind of remember almost every single land

(08:00):
formation I'd say.
It was also interesting, another interesting to note was that I know there were certain
things in Age of Calamity that were actually from Breath of the Wild.
Surprisingly some land formations turned into roads in Age of Calamity, so I kind of recognized
that as well.

(08:21):
A lot of those village ruins and the mountain peaks, certain locations, I think the old
Breath of the Wild locations for the shrines, I remember all of those pretty well.
When I saw the differences, I was like, this world is...
They probably could have done more to it to change it.

(08:44):
It looks like Breath of the Wild, but you can tell that it was designed with Breath
of the Wild in mind.
You can tell if you were to go to a Breath of the Wild shrine location, all you see is
maybe a tiny crater in the ground or maybe a cave in there in place of it.
It didn't feel as natural per se.

(09:07):
I think the caves were probably the best addition.
They went in depth and oftentimes they connected with...
In depth, haha.
In depth, haha.
Oftentimes they connected with each other and having the little check mark that you
got everything in there that's super helpful.
Yeah, I actually found that super duper useful.

(09:30):
You don't want to be running around the same caves over and over again to get all those
frogs, bubble frogs, whatever they're called.
Glowy frogs, essentially.
Glowy frogs, haha.
That check mark is really useful.
That was nice.
I also enjoyed the caves.

(09:51):
Splunking them was pretty nice, although I think partway through the game I kind of got
a little bit unsettled by certain caves just because of how eerie the music gets.
It's kind of disturbing.
You sometimes hear monsters around the corner or you probably stumble inside a dark cave
and you can't see anything.

(10:11):
It gets a little scary.
Because you never know.
I mean, kind of.
You never know.
Unfortunately the scope of enemies is quite limited.
There's like two ones in the caves, right?
Yeah, two enemies in the caves and then the occasional boss fight, which isn't actually
that crazy.
Because they didn't do anything new with them.

(10:33):
They just had either the big one with one eye or the giant rock and that's kind of it.
Or one of them had phantom Ganon.
Oh yes, the one at the pit, yes.
Yeah that one was a little scary.
I got that one early playthrough and that really creeped me out.
But hey, I think that was the first place I actually killed him too.

(10:57):
I believe, yeah, I did it at the bottom of the pit as well.
That was also the first spot I got the gloom hand, the guys.
At the time I kind of figured out how to defeat them because they're like, they stope in groups
of five.
So I just jump or dodge and use arrows with bombs and just destroy a bunch of them.

(11:20):
With a Lynel, like three times arrow thing.
My first gloom hands was at Hyrule Castle actually.
I heard people talking about, oh my gosh, there's so much good loot there.
So I decided to go there early game.
I go into the ruins, I go to I think the docks it was, and I run up those big stairs and

(11:43):
boom, they suddenly just came screaming and running after me.
I got so scared, I jumped into the water.
Well, I got caught in their hands, I nearly died.
I jumped into the water and I think I was like maybe a quarter stamina wheel left before
I was safe to get out of the water.
It was such a hard pounding experience.

(12:06):
But thinking back to it, they're not that scary.
They're not bad.
They're not like guardian level scary.
The other kind of scary ones I wanted to mention was in the desert, the main point of the plot
in that area was like the...
I don't even remember what they're called.

(12:27):
Gibdo.
Gibdo, yes.
Are they the same things from what, Ocarina of Time?
Yes.
Well, at least the mummified ones from Ocarina of Time.
Because the mummified ones were like infinitely scarier.
Because it forces your character to look at them and then I don't think you can move for

(12:49):
a few seconds and you kinda have to wiggle the joystick for a bit.
Yeah, you have to like snap A and move.
And then once it grabs you, it snaps your neck.
Yeah, they steal a lot of health back in the day.
Nowadays, they're kind of really easy.
I like that they have a different way of defeating them, that you can't just spam your sword

(13:11):
and then they're dead.
You have to either hit them with lightning or some kind of explosion or something big.
Or just fire.
Yeah, exactly.
I didn't know they were like bugs.
I didn't actually know that they had the flying ones either.
Yeah, I think that had to be new to this game, but I didn't know their origin was a bug.

(13:35):
Yeah, I originally thought they were just mummies or zombies or something like that.
Yeah, I think the idea is that it's like a swarm in the desert.
Yeah, they're much less humanoid in this one than they were before.
That fire technique to fight them though, that is definitely a bit of a Nostalgia trip

(13:58):
there.
Because I know certain games, you just need to shoot fire and then it makes them incredibly
weak and you kill them.
And I'm sure everybody went through this where they're like, oh, they drop bones that do
40 damage or add 40 damage.
I'm like, sick!
And then it breaks in one second.
Yeah, it's one of those disposable things.

(14:19):
It's like, oh crap, now I have no excuse but to actually fight the Lynels.
Yeah, I saw somebody on Twitter that was like, Ganon has no chance, and they had like 200
of the bones and 300 arrows.
Yeah.
Another enemy I found pretty interesting, well, another new enemy in the game was the

(14:43):
frogs.
Those like giant frog monsters in the depths.
Oh yeah.
Those guys were scary the very first time I fought them and then every other time afterwards
it was kind of really easy.
Yeah, I think that's one of the harder ones in the game.
It is, yeah.
They jump at you so fast that I couldn't even do anything.

(15:04):
Yeah, you like actually need to start moving a lot in that one compared to the traditional
ones in Breath of the Wild.
Yeah, luckily they were one hit kills so they were much to take care of.
Yeah.
The giant frogs though, giant frogs, those ones are crazy.
Yeah it's basically the giant rocks but on crack.

(15:26):
Yeah Talos is on crack with a Hinox, Enoch, Hinox Eye weak spot, plus ores that you can
destroy.
I think those ones are pretty good for grinding if you really hated the whole process of grinding
Zonite stuff.
I got really scared the first time I fought them because it swallowed me up.

(15:48):
I'm like, what the heck do I do here?
But after that they just became so incredibly easy.
Especially when they launch you up into the air, it doesn't like hurt you or anything,
it just gives you time to pull out your bow and shoot them.
And I guess while we're on the topic of enemies we might as well go to the bosses of the game.

(16:13):
Both the four bosses in each corner, sometimes they have two of them, and also the final
boss if we'd like to.
Actually we'll do the final boss later.
Oh dear, the bosses, which one did you fight first?
What order did I go in?
Oh I went in order water, wind, fire, and lightning.

(16:38):
So I basically just did almost the same order except I did wind first instead of water.
The wind one, I think of the four that you get to fight there, I think the wind one was
by far my favorite.
I second that.
Even with the awesome music and dramatic flight, it is a good concept.

(17:03):
But unfortunately the boss is so incredibly easy.
Yeah, I didn't realize that you could dive into them, so I was constantly diving underneath
them and then just bowing from underneath, which is an option.
Diving into them is what makes it fun.
Yeah exactly.
That's pretty much what I did in my first playthrough, I'm like what the heck is this

(17:25):
actually how you do it?
And I just proceeded to do that the entire time and that was a blast.
Every time I fight this boss again it's always really fun.
It had the best music in the game, but it only lasted like 30 seconds.
Even the rematches were kind of really short too.
Yeah, I haven't even done the rematches yet.

(17:47):
Oh my god I do that.
Oh yeah, they're worth it.
They're worth their time.
It's pretty nice.
I think my least favorite is the water boss.
I agree, I agree.
I don't hate it the first time because at least you get low gravity there.

(18:08):
Low gravity is so broken in the game, you can just whip out your bow and easily cheese
the boss.
But the rematches are completely, they are so annoying.
You can't just take out your bow or else the guy will hit you.
And you got a lot of mud, or I think it's sludge, and you have to frantically shoot

(18:29):
all your water, shoot all the sludge with water, like splash roots or water choo choos
or whatever.
And this guy moves really fast.
He is super duper annoying.
Even when you stun him, he still gets up and flops around and you have to stun him again.
And it's just way too tedious.

(18:49):
Yeah, I think I compare this.
It was built like a Mario boss, but you don't have the movement of Mario.
And I honestly think what would have fixed it is Sidon's ability if it went through
all of the mud in a line instead of just stopping at the first bunch.

(19:09):
Yeah, that would have helped so much more, especially with how much sludge it just brought
out.
It also felt like, what is it, Shivers boss battle in Splatoon?
Yeah, what the heck.
It was almost one to one.
Yeah, very tedious for no reason, but it is what it is.

(19:34):
What do you think of the Fire Temple boss?
I thought it was a really, really cool idea.
And Goma, that's the boss in Ocarina, right?
Yeah, this is basically a rock version of Goma.
Yeah, I like the idea of using Yanobu, what's his name?

(19:54):
Yanobo.
Yanobo to bowling up the ramps on the side.
But unfortunately, because it's so fast, you can just spam it four times in a row and you
don't get hit at all during the entire battle.
Yeah, none of its attacks are actually that dangerous either.
You could just use recall and send it back to him.

(20:18):
And it actually gets hurt a bit.
It was so easy.
It was a good idea.
They just kind of needed it.
Maybe they needed some platforming or something, or maybe if there was a weak spot on the bottom
of him and if you ascended through him while he was on the roof, then you can hit it.

(20:39):
Oh wow.
I think you just made me realize something.
I don't think any of the boss fights in this game actually have platforming involved.
No, they don't.
Yeah because Breath of the Wild had water blight Gannon with the water levels rising.
Oh yeah, and I guess the electricity one or the lightning one had don't fall off the platforms.

(21:05):
Don't fall off the platforms.
Or else you're gonna be stuck on the bottom of the camel for the entire battle.
Yeah exactly.
I don't know about this one.
If you fought the rematch of this Goma, I forget what the name was, but Goma, it doesn't
even have the ceiling anymore.
It's just a plain circular arena that you fight it in and it doesn't go on the ceiling.

(21:28):
You just keep battering with the Anova when it's ten times easier than it originally was.
What the heck, that sucks.
Yeah it was a bit disappointing.
I gotta say, for a boss rematch it's probably one of the worst out of the four.
Worst in terms of difficulty.

(21:48):
I think the battle before you get to the fire temple, like the giant monsters coming out
of the volcano, it was so much more hype.
Yeah that was crazy.
Yeah it was just that one monster battle and then you go in and it's super chill.

(22:09):
The desert temple.
Did we hit all of them?
Oh yeah, the Gibdo.
What do you think of that?
I love the design of it.
It was sick.
And then having to like half defeat it before you get in there was pretty cool.
But then the boss battle itself was just like, okay, run away from all the slow enemies while

(22:31):
you wait until you get that ability, the lightning ability back.
And then you're just lightning them.
It's just a lot of running.
There's not much to it.
I mean once you have your nobo, everything is really easy.
You just get fire weapons and you get fire arrows or maybe just bombs.
Get your nobo, get the reju.

(22:53):
It's almost like a complete hack and slash at that point.
You're just kind of repeatedly attacking those guys.
I don't know what to say though.
It's another one of those easy boss battles that there's only one difficult move that
you can't really dodge easily.
But everything else, it's just more of a grind rather than difficulty.

(23:18):
Yeah, I do think the puzzles in the lightning temple were very good.
I like those ones.
Oh yeah, those were amazing.
Those reminded me of Ocarina of Time.
Yeah, exactly.
I was kind of, even in the fire temple, I was kind of hoping they would have chanting
like they did in the original Ocarina of Time.

(23:42):
But they got close.
They had the ominous, mmmm, aw.
It was close.
It was pretty close.
But of course-
You know, more than Nintendo would never do that.
Nope.
I'm still thankful that you bought me that copy of Ocarina of Time from Japan.
This is version 1.1.
Is that the version with that?
Yeah.

(24:02):
Yeah, it has the chance.
Oh my.
The other boss battle that is technically a boss battle is, I believe, the Master Koga
ones.
Oh dear.
I think I have beaten the initial one and the second one.
I'm sure there's more.
Oh yeah, I've beaten all of them.
If you don't care about spoilers, I can talk about them.

(24:24):
Yeah, I don't care.
I'm assuming that he just has a different vehicle that he made.
Everything but the last one.
But the last one, you'll be surprised how stupidly easy that is.
I'll talk about it later though because it does relate to something that we can touch

(24:44):
on later in the main quest.
So we can look at that soon.
Oh, and in terms of other boss battles, I guess we still haven't talked about the Kleox
on the overworld, the three-headed dragons.
Oh yeah, I actually have not attempted any of them.

(25:07):
Those are insanely hard.
I've beaten the game.
I just don't think I have enough things to defeat it.
Okay.
It does like barely any damage.
I'm gonna have to force you to go against one of those at least.
Not the one on the Bridge of Hylia.
That one is terrible.
Probably the best one to go after is the one on the very west side of...

(25:31):
You know where the Thunfrid Plateau is on that west, like the mushroom area on the west
side of Gleerul?
Yeah.
So close to there, you cross the bridge, you turn left up that mountain, and it should
be where one of those Breath of the Wild memories were.
That's where a Gleok can be found.
I'm pretty sure I've seen all three of them, and each time I'm like, nope, I'm just lying.

(25:55):
I highly recommend you fight it.
Oh wait, there's an easier one.
Just go to the Coliseum.
Oh yeah.
I guess I saw the Coliseum.
I'm like, okay, knowing Nintendo, this has a harder boss battle.
I guess I was right.
So Gleok's originally were very hard.

(26:17):
Early game, they instantly kill you.
They're one of the highest damaging enemies, I think, with their laser attacks.
Later into the game, they surprisingly get really easy.
If you get enough bows and arrows.
Yeah, if you get enough arrows.
If you kill enough Keese or Airacudas or anything with eyeballs, eyeballs are your best friends

(26:41):
against this boss.
You literally just spam eyeball attacks and you pretty much automatically win.
Oh yeah, does it react to elemental?
So if you have the fire one, the ice one does more?
It doesn't do, I don't think it does more damage, but the elemental ones do explode.
So at least you get that area of effect type of damage.

(27:02):
The splash damage.
It helps a lot.
I recommend you use those.
But the bosses get so incredibly easy.
Those bosses get incredibly easy once you know their pattern.
Yeah, I assume all three of them are basically the same with just slightly different abilities.
Elemental.
I hate to tell you that, I hate to break it to you, but there is actually a fourth version

(27:27):
out there.
Oh no.
You'll find this in very difficult to reach locations.
I'll opt to get into that then.
I won't tell you where, but some of them are pretty easy to find.
It's just hard to get to.

(27:49):
I guess we did boss battles.
Now I think I'd like to talk about the music.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Cause we mentioned earlier that, or I mentioned earlier that the Kogera boss battle theme,

(28:10):
best theme in the game.
Best theme in the game.
It was like no competition.
It sounds like the love letter to Wind Waker.
Yeah.
Such a dramatic Dragon Roost theme.
Mixed in with Breath of the Wild, Rideau Village.

(28:34):
The other parts that I loved was when, anytime they mentioned Link or a hero in the future,
usually in those memories, they would play either the main Zelda theme or they'd play
a little bit of the Breath of the Wild theme or try to mix it in.
Yeah.
Those were nice little bits there.

(28:54):
Yeah.
Same with when Zelda does something cool.
They play her theme and then at the very end they play Zelda's lullaby when she's waking
up.
It's like, of course.
Of course.
The fan base would be mad.
Yeah.
The fan base would be mad.
They would instantly say, well, they technically already say that this is not a Zelda game,

(29:17):
but they'd even say, there's more fans out there that would say that it won't be a Zelda
game without the Zelda theme.
Listen, it has Zelda on the cartridge, so I'll just tell you.
I know though that they did kind of reuse a lot of the, recycle a lot of the themes

(29:37):
from Breath of the Wild.
Yeah, most of the overworld stuff, right?
Yeah, pretty much.
They did get new variations for all the four settlements.
You get the eerie versions of Rito Village and Grito Town has some really disturbing

(29:58):
music that, disturbing and suspenseful music.
Goron City sounds really goofy.
Probably because they're technically on drugs.
Yeah, they are on drugs.
That was the Rito one.
Oh no, the Rito one, yeah.
Because it was all covered in snow and it was all depressing.

(30:23):
And then there was also, what other interesting parts?
I guess I could say they kind of improved the overworld themes.
I'm not sure if that's debatable or not.
It's not like you have to wait every five minutes for a theme, it kind of plays every

(30:44):
thirty seconds.
I mean I think it was very similar.
Very similar.
Yeah, they had the same vibe and everything.
I loved when there was a Zonai memory or something and they did the backwards sounding stuff.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

(31:06):
That was sick.
Unfortunately I think they only had like two clips and they kept using it.
Yeah, they used the same song over and over again for every tier.
Which is just Nintendo.
Nintendo.
How many times are they going to use Kakariko Village theme or any of the forests?

(31:26):
Yeah, it's actually a bit surprising though because if you think back to something like
Super Mario Galaxy 2, they did get all the songs back but they recomposed all of them.
They re-orchestrated all of them to kind of fit the more orchestral, less cosmic type
of theme.
I was kind of expecting a little more evolution in this game, per se.

(31:52):
Just a tiny bit more eeriness or something maybe a little bit more whimsical when you're
up in the air or like more drums when you're in the depths or something.
Even alternatives would have been better.
In terms of cutscene music, was there anything really memorable besides the Breath of the

(32:13):
Wild moment or the Zelda moment?
I don't know what the Breath of the Wild moment would be to you but specifically when they
show...
What's his name?
Rauru?
Yes, Rauru.
When Rauru is like he grabs Ganondorf and sacrifices himself and like promises him that

(32:34):
Link will come to defeat him and they perfectly put in the main Zelda theme and it was crazy
good.
That, okay.
I actually forgot about that one but yeah that one was crazy and dramatic and epic.

(32:56):
Now that you mentioned it, I did kind of underestimate what they were going to do with the cutscenes
there, the cutscene music.
Yeah, it was the coolest part mainly because they kind of hyped up that scene over the
four different sages because they told the same story four times in a row and gave us

(33:16):
absolutely nothing.
And they finally showed it and it was worth it.
It was actually worth it, yeah.
All that hype with that single frame of Rauru standing there injured all for this epic fight
scene to end.
And at the same time it explains why his arm is on Ganondorf's chest, why he's underneath

(33:42):
the castle and so on.
It kind of brings everything together as well as having just the main theme there is amazing.
Oh, I guess overall I should say this one thing.
They actually brought all the trailer music into this game for once.
Even that epic third trailer with the saxophone, they brought bits of that into the game.

(34:07):
Wait, really?
I was looking for that the entire game.
Where'd they put that in?
Yeah, so you know the very start of it where there's that saxophone solo?
That actually happens around with something we'll talk about later really soon with the
fifth sage.
There's bits of that you'll hear.
You'll have to listen to it, you have to watch those cutscenes again, but they play bits

(34:29):
of that trailer music when you go meet the fifth sage.
What do you think about the voice acting in these cutscenes?
I know that I think on Twitter you've been talking a decent amount about it.
Yeah so I'm not impressed.
I'm actually, well that's an understatement, I'm actually disappointed.

(34:52):
I was expecting a larger voice cast in this to be honest with you.
Yeah, I can see that.
I mean coming off of Age of Calamity you'd expect that to be their testing game.
You'd expect that to be their game to test out and audition for more newer voice actors
to join the cast.
But none of those new cast members returned except for Christina V. And it was kind of

(35:18):
disappointing.
I was hoping for someone like Pia to be voiced by Andy Gibson because Andy Gibson did Impa,
both versions of Impa, and that was pretty cool.
Master Koga's voice in Age of Calamity was also really funny to hear.
I was kind of wishing that he returned, but unfortunately it was just the standard grunting

(35:43):
voice clips for many of the characters.
You could boil down this entire game to grunting voice clip and it's horrible.
Yeah, you know what especially annoys me the most?
When you have cutscenes where only one of the characters talks and the rest of them
do grunting noises.
Yeah, it annoys me specifically when you walk up to a character that is obviously a character

(36:08):
we've already met.
They load into a cutscene where they turn around or something and it's pre-rendered
and everything, they do one or two sentences and then fade to black, loading screen, now
it's all text and grunting.
What happened?
Yeah, it's crazy.
I don't even think Sean Chiplock got a chance to voice Teyva in this game.

(36:33):
No, I was all grunting.
It was all just grunting.
It wasn't even a single word uttered.
Yeah, I think it was nice that they brought back the champion voice actor for the Sages.
But again, they all say the same thing and they literally said the same script.

(36:54):
Is it that special?
Not really.
Not really, yeah.
From very start to finish of the dungeons, they all say the same thing.
It's kind of just like, oh okay, they're back, but can I get more, please?
It's a little jarring too, especially when you look back at Age of Calamity, literally

(37:15):
like every single NPC in that game had voice dialogue.
Every single NPC, every single action, every single character to character interaction,
literally every single bit of that game had voice acting.
And it kind of disappoints me that they didn't really do much in this one.
And also the fact that the cutscenes aren't like, all the memories aren't as big in scope.

(37:39):
I feel like in Breath of the Wild, each memory, or each, yeah, I think they're memories as
well.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
They had, they took place in different spots.
They weren't really together.
You could watch them however you wanted.
And you didn't really have to chop anything together.
One was in Hyrule Castle where Zelda is talking to her father.

(38:03):
Another is with just Link and Zelda in a field where Link is just swiping a sword around
and Zelda is thinking.
Another is where they're running away from some enemies.
And you can kind of see some heroic abilities from Link.
And I feel like every memory in Tears of the Kingdom was just, okay, Sonya, Rauru, and

(38:26):
Zelda, let's talk about a plot point.
Ooh.
And?
Nothing.
Oh.
Yeah.
Every time I watch the memory in this game, they finish it up and I'm like, okay, what
does that have to do with anything?
Like Ganon goes to visit Rauru.
Rauru says, I will keep watch on him.

(38:48):
Next memory.
Next memory, he's attacking them.
What happened?
Warlock punches Sonya instantly.
Yeah, exactly.
I saw the Warlock punch, that was my second memory, so that was a whiplash.
Oh my gosh.
The game did technically give the order, but I kind of wish they didn't make it as subtle.

(39:10):
Yeah, they did make it very subtle.
I did kind of like that the ground pattern had to do with the one thing in that memory.
That was kind of nice.
Yeah, it's just kind of unfortunate.
Maybe if they did it in a way where if you unlock the sword one and the Zelda one, then

(39:31):
you unlock the Sonya getting punched.
So you get to watch a third bonus one.
Or if you do T-time with Zelda and Sonya and another conversation with Rauru that doesn't
really make any sense, then you unlock, I don't know, the Ganon one where you meet Ganon
and he goes to Rauru in the castle.

(39:52):
Just mix it up a bit.
You have to make more and you have to spend more money, but I'd rather have more character
interactions.
Yeah, it's kind of disappointing too with the way that the cutscenes were laid out.
Like you said, Breath of the Wild was more fragmented, but I think that actually worked
in its favor with how random everything is, how randomly you would get the cutscenes.

(40:19):
That was really not worth the whiplash when you think about it.
Yeah, because you got to kind of learn what the character of Zelda is like, what the quote
unquote character of Link is, the fragments that we got.
And then also characters that were technically already dead.
And of course, the champions, the best part of that game.

(40:43):
It's crazy to think, one of the very first memories that everyone gets in Breath of the
Wild is probably the one where Calamity Ganon just arrives at Hyrule.
And that's one of the last ones out there.
But it's crazy to think that it fits so well into the storytelling.
You could be walking blindly into this game and it just adds more questions rather than

(41:04):
answers.
Whereas, if you were to do that out of order in Tears of the Kingdom, it's kind of like,
okay, I know what this leads it to.
Now I don't really need to know anything else.
You just got me thinking that, okay, they completely dropped the ball with the sages
with those cutscenes.
Yeah, that's true.
Because I just remembered that with the champions, they all have an individual cutscene with Link.

(41:27):
And to show the relationship with Link, they had Rivali had his where he's just super cocky
and then it makes it, it's a good character, but nobody likes him.
The worthy rival to Link.
Exactly.
And then the Gerudo one, forget his name, unfortunately.
Gerudo or Goron?

(41:48):
Goron.
Goron.
Goron?
He becomes like a best friend with Link.
He's just one of the boys.
Mipha's cutscene is a little bit flirty.
Link's girlfriend.
Yeah exactly.
You still get kind of a character connection.
And then with the Gerudo, that one was where Zelda falls asleep in Urbosa's lap and she

(42:15):
wakes her up with the lightning.
And Link comes around the corner and was like, oh, do I have to protect her?
But no, she's fine.
And it turns out Urbosa's that motherly figure or the aunt.
Exactly.
Zelda's aunt.
Whereas Tears of the Kingdom didn't have.
Yeah, Tears of the Kingdom had like almost none of that except for Sonya and Zelda.

(42:39):
That was it.
Unless they're purposely saving a lot of that character interaction for DLC, which would
be unfortunate.
I hope they actually knock it out of the park with the DLC if they were to do that.
Yeah, exactly.
We will talk about DLC today.
We did mention it a few times on the mod cast, but that will be a future topic.

(43:03):
Speaking of the Sages, there is one stage that we forgot to cover, or at least we were
purposely trying to hide.
Even I forgot.
So you know, if you're one of those who plays in chronological order, you wouldn't find
this anytime soon.
It happens after you find all the four other Sages.
Boom, you go through this massive climactic battle on Hyrule Castle.

(43:28):
You fight Phantom Ganon.
You find out that Zelda was a fake Zelda and you fight Phantom Ganon.
That was pretty cool, by the way.
And then suddenly you think that you're at the end game.
But then the game kind of surprises you with a fifth Sage.
A fifth Sage, a fifth Dungeon, and a fifth boss battle fight.

(43:50):
What did you think of that, Dakota?
Again, I think we mentioned this during the mod cast.
Meh.
I think I kind of saw it from a mile away, honestly.
It wasn't too spoiled online and I knew there had to be something more.
They weren't just going to play the, okay, go to each corner of Hyrule, and then boss
battle.

(44:10):
I knew they had to do something new.
See, I also thought that they were going to break something new, but I think I also said
this in the mod cast, but I had an unfortunate accidental discovery of this fifth Sage and
it became my second Dungeon.
So I finished the wind and then I decided to go shrine hunting.

(44:35):
And then I accidentally run across this storm in the sky, so I decided, oh, maybe there's
like a shrine or two in there.
I go in, I eventually hit this massive building.
I'm like, what the heck is this place?
I do all that stuff and I unlock a mysterious main quest I've never heard of before.
I'm like, is this another Dungeon?
Did I accidentally run into another Dungeon?

(44:58):
And at that point I was just like, I actually, I completely skipped like a whole part of
the quest that I didn't really need to, that I never knew about until after beating the
game.
It was such a weird surprise.
And unlocking this Sage wasn't even that worth it either, because it just gave you a mech.

(45:19):
It was just Titanfall.
It was just Titanfall, yeah.
It gave you a mech that wasn't incredibly that useful.
It was just kind of there.
Yeah.
It could be like an upgradable thing for DLC where it has like legs, or maybe you can attach
a bicycle to it or something.

(45:41):
But it's slow on its own and it's still pretty slow with the fan.
And it's limited time, so it's worthless at that point.
Exactly.
Yeah, after that temple I've never used it.
I only kept it out as a CPU to help me fight.

(46:01):
Other than that I also never used it.
I mean I sometimes use it for mining, but that's pretty much it.
I will say the boss battle, like the boxing ring thing, that was actually kind of hard.
That was hard, yes.
I think I died the most in that boss.
I'm not sure why.
I died the most in that boss for sure.
Yeah, I don't think I died in any of the bosses other than that one.

(46:21):
I think I died like four times.
Ironically enough, that also felt like very much of a Mario boss fight when you think
about it.
Yeah, kind of evening the playing field almost.
Yep, knocking them into the electric fence is kind of a Mario thing to do.
Yeah, that's literally Mario Odyssey with Bowser.
Bowser, Mario Odyssey, Super Mario 64 with the spike balls, Super Mario Galaxy with that

(46:45):
spinning disc thing that you have to ground pound.
Yeah, it's basically made by the same creator.
I mean Miyamoto did work on the game, so there's that.
Oh, and I was about to talk about the special Koga thing.
Wild spoilers, but Koga's final boss machine is actually just a spoof of this boss fight,

(47:09):
but a lot weaker.
Much weaker.
I feel like that can be cool.
I literally beat Koga maybe within less than five minutes because of just how much weaker
it was compared to this boss fight, but it's literally the same thing.

(47:31):
Dang.
I think also Minoru being the fifth sage, why?
I also have to ask why.
She was in one cutscene.
You can count the extra four in the sage's cutscenes if you want.
Yeah, that's true.

(47:52):
But she also had, I guess she was technically the Pyra.
Wait, what's her name?
Pora.
Pora.
I have a Pyra and Mythra in my head.
Pyra.
Pyra, Mythra.
Yeah, she's kind of like the Pora of that era.
I would prefer if maybe Pora was the fifth one.
Yeah, Pora as a fifth sage would have been cool.

(48:16):
Maybe even Hestu.
Let's be honest.
That would have been the best twist ever.
And come on, we've seen Hestu fight before.
It's not impossible.
Yeah.
I feel like there would be a secret stone in the Great Deku Tree or something.
Maybe he can be the secret six.

(48:37):
Yeah exactly.
You have to go kill the Deku Tree first like you did in Ocarina of Time.
Is that the section?
Yeah, that would be it.
Yeah, I mean besides saying the temple is really tedious, I don't think there's much
else to say.
It's not much of a temple.

(48:58):
It's a bunch of flag poles.
Yeah, it's a bunch of flag poles.
It's a stupid build quest that takes hours to finish.
I don't ever want to go through that again.
Now okay, later in this game, the whole reason why this game was really dragon themed to

(49:21):
begin with was the Ouroboros on the title.
I think that was what it was.
I don't know.
Yeah, so we found out that there's this new dragon called the Light Dragon and oh my gosh,
guess who it is?
It's Zelda.
I accidentally discovered this earlier on before I completed all my memories.

(49:45):
Yeah I got kind of spoiled on Twitter when people were like, oh, first of all, fan art.
Shout out to all artists everywhere.
You did amazing work.
But when Link is physically hugging and sometimes kissing a giant dragon, I'm like, okay, hmm.

(50:05):
I wonder why.
I found out through some stupid YouTube comment.
You can kind of put the puzzle pieces together.
Yeah, exactly.
But also it was kind of predictable when you think about when you, if you see, if you hear
like they foreshadowed this so much.
Oh yeah, it was so obvious.
Minoru is like, oh, if you eat the secret secret stone, you'll turn into a dragon.

(50:28):
Don't do it.
Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink.
And then you see a blonde haired dragon flying around and like, yeah, I wonder who that is.
The fact that the Master Sword was there too kind of gave it away for me.
Yeah, I wish there was more subtlety, but I'm not really sure how there would be.
Yeah, I don't know.

(50:51):
Subtle Becoming Dragon is cool, but you know, they could have probably done more with it,
but also not foreshadow it like crazy.
But what did you think of like the Master Sword scene though?
That's the final one where she transforms or no?
Well just getting the Master Sword and then getting the memory.

(51:13):
Oh, well I got the, I got the Master Sword like very early, probably like 10 hours in.
Yeah, and that's where I kind of put together, okay, so this is Zelda, this is how the Master
Sword got back.
I thought it was really cool, the idea that oh, if you send it back, it has 10,000 odd
years to charge.
That's pretty cool.
And it could be, I guess it's technically more powerful.

(51:35):
They didn't say that at all, but it doesn't break with Ganon, so I'm assuming it's more
powerful.
Well, I mean, they did the exact same thing with Calamity Ganon.
So it only had 100 years to charge.
Yeah, that's true.
So I guess it's like 10,000.
More than 10,000.
Yeah, it's something insane.

(51:57):
Something insane.
But it was alright.
I had enough hearts, so it's not like anything suspenseful like in Breath of the Wild.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, I used stamina as well, I think.
Oh yeah?
I used stamina to have hearts too, that was a bit of a surprise.
Yeah it was alright.
If it was like, maybe a little bit better, it could have given us some flashbacks or

(52:22):
just something more.
Maybe if it was in the middle of a boss fight, I would have loved that.
Yeah, if it was like in a panic maybe.
You jump in and you get a boss down to half health and then nothing does anything to them
after that.
And you had to go grab it and uh oh, you don't have enough hearts.

(52:43):
Good luck, now you're dead.
Like, oh I wonder what game already did this type of thing.
Yeah you have flashbacks from this, from this very special theme.
Yeah, that was kind of the thing I was disappointed about.
They didn't really have anything high stakes during the Master Sword, it was just kind
of more of a dramatic type of, well, dramatic question mark.

(53:05):
It was kind of there, you know, I didn't really have much of a connection to the Light Dragon,
I was like, is this Zelda, is this Zelda, is this Zelda?
And then they just kind of reveal it like, oh, okay, that's her.
Yeah, and I'm sure a lot of people got to the point where they defeated Phantom Ganon
in the castle and then they're like, oh, go find the Master Sword.

(53:26):
And then the quest animation showed up, find the Master Sword.
It shows up again, completed.
I actually got the Master Sword quest from Minoru, because she talked about the Master
Sword and she's like, where the heck is it?

(53:47):
You should have it!
Oh, she scolded me for that.
But you know, that was when I got the Master Sword, also a pretty early game, and at that
point I was like, oh, okay, maybe I should just push through all the memories and just
get it over with because I already know what the ending's gonna be like.
And funny enough, one of the cutscenes that were spoiled to me was the funny Ganondorf

(54:11):
laugh gif that everyone knows about now.
Yeah, that went on Twitter day one.
That was spoiled to me.
I'm like, okay, okay, sure.
I'm sorry, but what?
It doesn't look bad, it's just weird.
It doesn't look motion captured, I can say that for sure.

(54:32):
His face shouldn't move like that.
Although it's like one emotion throughout the entire game.
Yeah, his resting face is kind of just the same all throughout.
The moment I saw it, I was like, oh, there it is, there's a smile, but it's nothing
too special, nothing too spoilery, it just happens.

(54:56):
And to record, Matthew Mercer as Ganondorf.
I know this is off topic, but solid, but I can't get Matthew Mercer out of my head.
You can't see him as Ganon, I don't see Ganon as Ganon.
You don't see Ganon as Ganon, just see Matthew Mercer as Ganon.

(55:16):
He's just too iconic of a voice.
Flashback.
He's in JoJo, he's in Attack on Titan, he's in Critical Role, like, come on.
He's even in Fire Emblem.
Oh yeah.
I know Nintendo has him on their payroll, but I'd like a more unique voice, maybe somebody

(55:39):
with a naturally deep voice, not just somebody who-
Not someone who fanboyed over Ganon previously.
Flashbacks to there will be brawl.
Unless we're getting a little bit deeper in depth into the Ganon's backstory, then I think

(56:03):
it could have done more.
Yeah, it could have done more with his voice.
Literally everything we heard in trailers is pretty much everything we hear in the game.
Yeah, other than, oh, what are you doing?
Or all the raspy mummified voices too.
Yeah.
He definitely edited his voice for the actual game.

(56:24):
In the trailers, I'm pretty sure it's nearly raw.
Yeah, it's all raw voice clips.
In the game, it's all echoed and it's slightly distorted to give off the powerful feeling.
Yeah, which is fine.
That's what you have to do.
Yeah.
Oh, I guess we should probably talk about the final segment of the game.

(56:50):
So here's my problem with this.
Just approaching the final area is really tedious as heck.
I absolutely hated going through that underground segment just to get to the boss.
Oh yeah, we have to swerve between the caves when there's a different enemy at each corner.

(57:11):
Yeah, that was weird.
That felt so unnecessary.
I can understand something like Hyrule Castle because that had multiple paths.
That was actually fun.
But this?
It's just so repetitive and depressing and just all arbitrarily difficult.
They put that silver line right at the start and I'm pretty sure that's just to deter new

(57:36):
players so they don't go down there.
That was actually the first line.
Kind of nothing.
That was actually the first line I ran into in the game.
You got revenge later on.
Yeah, I got down there out of curiosity and found this line and was like, nope, nope,
nope, nope, I'm leaving.
Well, it works then.
It definitely works even though I tried fighting it like three times or something.

(58:00):
I think I killed it.
I think I killed it.
I was like, am I too close to the boss fight now?
Yeah, so.
It was kind of cool getting through the enemies and then getting to the point where you start
at the very first second of the game where you're going down that castle and like, oh,
this is the hallway.
I was like, the Leonardo DiCaprio meme.

(58:22):
And the music played too, the beginning music.
Yeah, and then you eventually get to the writings on the walls and the drawings and you finally
have the ability to destroy the rocks and it kind of tells you what happened already.
Oh, spoiler alert, Zelda's going to become a dragon.
Oh, which in that case, it's not a prophecy.

(58:46):
It's just drawing what happened.
Exactly.
Which is kind of interesting.
Oh, I wonder what would have happened if they had the Sheikah slight down there with the
bomb rune.
Yeah.
Would have been, would have saved them like thousands of years.
Literally 10,000 years.
Yeah.
It's like, oh no, Ganondorf's down there.

(59:07):
Don't go down there.
Zelda's going to become a dragon.
Now that's, that was kind of really weird, but.
Unfortunately, I had to go through that area, I think like two or three times because there
were so many corners and things blocked with rocks.
So I needed to either go get rocks or bombs or something multiple times.

(59:28):
I was so thankful I stocked up on bombs and it got really annoying when they took away
the sages halfway through.
Oh yeah.
You fall on down that pit and they're like, haha, no sages.
Like oh, like your first, you're getting nerfed again after spending hundreds of hours in
the game.
We're going to nerf you again because why not?
It's not really an explanation.

(59:51):
It can't be, I guess it's like too deep for them to get to.
Yeah, they did kind of have an explanation.
Like it says like their spirits or their magic can't reach you from here.
I guess that works.
I mean it really wasn't that difficult.
You still had overpowered weapons at that point.
Apparently the physical versions of them could get there instantly, but yep.

(01:00:16):
Yep.
From halfway across Hyrule.
Yeah, exactly.
I guess for the final battle, they had kind of the army area.
I think that was a cool idea and it kind of where the sages following you around and you
have to go push A on them kind of came together and that's why they did it, but they only

(01:00:41):
did it once so it's not that...
Come on.
Yeah, it's not really that anything's too special if you had the sages out already,
like you fought those monster hordes, like those monster forces with their teammates.
It didn't feel like anything special.
I mean it was also something they did in Skyward Sword except you didn't have teammates in
that.
Yeah, it felt like Age of Calamity.

(01:01:04):
I wanted it to be Age of Calamity at the point.
I was like, why am I fighting all these with Breath of the Wild mechanics when I could
just be playing a hack and slash with much better tuned controls for this?
It did feel more powerful when the more powerful enemies came around and I had to kind of focus
on one while taking care of another.

(01:01:26):
And that's something you can only get from this type of game and not Age of Calamity.
Age of Calamity is just like, okay, one foul swoop, now you got seven of them in the air,
and now you're gonna just spam them for like 40 other moves.
Yeah.
Here it's like, okay, maybe I should just fight one at a time and get my ass kicked.
But yeah.

(01:01:46):
Very rarely did I use the abilities in that battle as well.
I kind of forced myself to use them just for the sake of it.
Yeah, and I have to assume that if you made your way all the way down there alone and
you didn't do any of the challenges or any of the temples, you could do that battle.

(01:02:06):
It's just a lot harder considering you don't have four other teammates, right?
I would assume the same.
I think I'll have to replay the game to do that, but I'll definitely think about it.
Because the symptoms for this game are like an hour long, so there's no way they've gone
to each temple for an hour.
Yeah, yeah, there's no way because there's just too much to do to get to the dungeons.

(01:02:30):
I think fighting them though without teammates would be a pretty interesting challenge.
Yeah, I think that honestly it would be a little bit like the Master Sword challenges.
Yeah.
Similar to that.
Yeah.
Well, also you can't save down there.
I don't think you could save too at that point.
You cannot save.
You cannot save.

(01:02:51):
I got to the door right before Ganon and realized that I don't have any healing items and my
gloom was all the way down to like three hearts.
So then it said I couldn't save and I also couldn't fast travel from there.
So I had to go back on one save and do that whole thing again.
And not screw up.

(01:03:12):
Yeah.
Yeah, that was an interesting part of the game.
I'm actually thankful that they had it just because there's no other situation that has
that big of a battle in the game.
Yeah.
It's meant to be epic.
It's meant to be epic.
Definitely a bit of hack and slash desire to be desired, but it was worth it.

(01:03:35):
Yeah.
But then you walk into Ganondorf.
Yeah, considering the final fight.
Oh dear, the final fight has so many great moments.
I think that's where my favorite part of the soundtrack is as well.
It was probably one of the best themes in the game.
So basically you start off, you meet Ganon again.

(01:03:58):
You're kind of tensed up because all your stages are preoccupied by the bosses from
earlier.
And you're like, is he going to nerf me again?
Or are we going to go into like 1v1 or something?
And then sooner or later you see Ganondorf rehydrate himself, as per the memes.

(01:04:21):
Rehydrates himself and then boom, you get the long awaited 1v1 sword battle.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg.
I think halfway through the battle you get the sages coming in and Ganondorf on the other
hand decides to clone himself into five and it makes for a super duper difficult play.

(01:04:44):
Especially because Ganondorf can permanently take away hearts.
That was one of the big surprises there for me.
I think probably the coolest part was where they kind of break the fourth wall almost.
And you know, there's got to be multiple phases to a boss battle in Nintendo games.

(01:05:06):
And the first one was like, okay, that was really easy.
And you get to the second one and he goes into his demon king form and the whole thing
goes back and it just keeps going.
That was super, super cool.
I wish more games kind of did it like that.

(01:05:26):
What kind of destroyed it was that the master sword does such a big chunk of damage.
So you're not really in that battle for long.
But the fact that the health bar has been this large for two games now and now it's
pretty much doubling when it went off the screen.

(01:05:46):
That was a really insane part.
The fact that it stays there to the battle too.
It doesn't just consolidate back to the normal one.
No, this is a real health bar.
This is a real extended health bar.
As well as when you're fighting him, he can also flurry rush technically.
Oh man.

(01:06:07):
That was terrifying.
That scared me.
That scared me.
Even more so than the good old battle tested Guardian from Age of Calamity.
Yeah, exactly.
Like I thought parrying a laser back and forth was scary, but this, yeah, this really got

(01:06:28):
me.
This really got me going.
I do wish he kind of used a little bit more magic abilities rather than just duplicating
himself and that one is obviously Ganondorf.
So you could just go and defeat him.
It wasn't that special at all.
Maybe they could have added some of the abilities into the battle.

(01:06:50):
Maybe use Ascend somewhere.
You could probably use Reverse Time somewhere.
Sort of like sense a huge projectile, you reverse it or maybe sense everyone flying
to the air or he goes up to the air and there's like floating platforms.
Yeah exactly.
I also kind of wish he had his giant organ.

(01:07:14):
Yeah, that would have been nice.
What an amazing comeback that would be.
It'd be like you go into the thing, he's not, he'd probably be regular Ganon at that point,
or Ganondorf, not dehydrated Ganondorf, playing the organ.
Probably some cool theme that we already recognize, Gerudo Valley theme.

(01:07:35):
He's just practicing.
Turns around, goes and fights you.
That'd be sick.
That's another thing that wanted me to, I really want a remake of Ocarina of Time in
the same style.
This soundtrack was something still crazy.

(01:07:56):
Speaking of which, the final boss theme was really crazy.
I'm not sure if you listened to it recently, but it basically encompasses all of Ganondorf,
from the Path Games to Breath of the Wild.
It was such a fun theme to listen to.

(01:08:17):
I think the beginning references back to Link to the Past, or Ocarina of Time, kind of
like that weird time signature type of thing.
I think way later into the fight, in the final phase, it gives you the Calamity Ganon's theme,
actually, in a much more dramatic and fast paced version of it.

(01:08:41):
It was such a nice homage to the entire franchise as a whole.
And plus, they're playing with different instruments too.
It's not like you're playing with your traditional orchestral stuff.
They added in the, what's it called, I don't know what they're called, but they're Japanese
instruments basically.
Is it like the Japanese guitar with that giant fan thing?

(01:09:03):
Yeah, that's-
I don't know what it's called, but I'm just listening to it now and I can find that.
And a lot of drums.
Yeah, lots of drums.
That's what made this really tense.
I'm re-listening to it now and they have the Breath of the Wild theme right at the end.
Yeah!

(01:09:24):
So Pete's got the theme for me, so each time they played it, even if it was just two notes,
it was so hype.
Yep.
Definitely one of my favorite boss fight themes, ever.
And the boss doesn't end there.
Nope.
Eventually you do somewhat defeat the Demon King, and he's just like, no.

(01:09:46):
Screw it, I give up.
Essentially he pulls a Zelda.
Yeah.
Pulls a Zelda, eats the tear, or stone, or whatever it's called, becomes a dragon.
Loses all sanity.
I was not spoiled by this at all.
So once the tear started to crumble on his forehead, I'm like, wait a minute.

(01:10:11):
And then he takes it out of his head, I'm like, no way.
You're not gonna do it.
You're not gonna do it.
And he eats it.
And of course, for some reason, we're two of two of games where the final boss is a
giant thing in the overworld.

(01:10:32):
This time you are in the sky, which is a nice difference to have.
Well is it a nice difference?
Well it does contribute to the very very ending of the game.
I think it's an interesting difference, I don't think it's very nice.
I feel like it might be a hot take.

(01:10:54):
I think it was a little bit tedious, and the scale was a little bit hard to grasp.
Especially because when you're flying and you're gliding towards dragon Ganondorf, you're trying
to get there to his weak points.
I feel like it took ages to get over there, and I felt like you moved away from me the
entire time.

(01:11:14):
Maybe you should have equipped the gliding gear.
I think I did have the gliding gear, but again, it doesn't have as much horizontal movement
as a glider, right?
Well, not yet.
You move down a lot faster.
You get to move a lot more horizontally than normally, and you don't take full damage if

(01:11:38):
you upgrade it enough.
But it is still pretty difficult to land on those spots too.
I thought that final boss battle was going to pull like a Star Fox, we're going to ride
on the back of dragon Zelda and she was going to shoot laser beams or something.
You know what, they're not going to do a Splatoon 3 in this one, unfortunately.

(01:11:59):
Yeah, exactly!
Oh my goodness.
When Splatoon 3 has a better boss fight.
Yeah, wait a minute.
That would be a Splatoon 3 if you ride on the dragon and then you get close, and you're
defending yourself and you hit the weak points.
Man, when Splatoon gets it better, that's when you know it's disappointing.

(01:12:23):
Yeah, I will say the music made me more hype in Splatoon 3.
That is true.
That is for hot take.
No, no, you know what, I gotta be honest with you, the music in that final boss didn't really
get good until you beat the boss.
But Splatoon 3's music was peak.

(01:12:45):
I think the only interesting part of that boss fight was literally just the very ending
of the boss fight.
Yeah, defeating him.
It wasn't just straight up defeating him, you still had gameplay left.
You had to go in this dramatic skydiving scene to save Zelda, and it perfectly mirrors the
very beginning of the game where you failed to save Zelda from diving after her.

(01:13:06):
That was a pretty neat thing to do.
Yeah, that was really, really cool.
And I believe they were playing the main theme?
They were playing a theme, and I just don't remember which one it was.
They were playing a variation of the main theme.
And that was so cool.
Very dramatic.
It was so dramatic.
It was so crazy.
I'm still not sure how they survived that fall even though they landed in water, but...

(01:13:31):
I mean, Link can survive any fall, so.
Yeah, at this point.
Yeah.
He's also shirtless too, in this scene.
Oh yeah.
His legs have built in the boots from Portal.
Final scenes, solid.

(01:13:55):
It was kind of playing the same kind of emotional notes as Breath of the Wild, where they're
just in a field, Zelda's talking, you get a first person view with Link, and she says
something cool that may or may not allude to a next game.
That's it.
And then you get the post-credits scene.
Yeah.
Wait, there was a post-credits scene?

(01:14:16):
Yes, there was a post-credits scene.
What'd you think of it?
I don't remember it.
I know there was one, but I don't remember it.
Minoru passes away.
Oh yeah.
Because I don't care about Minoru, I didn't care.
She was in one scene.
How do I have any emotional attachment to this character?
Yeah.

(01:14:37):
I mean, Zelda does do a standing ovation in that scene as well, so...
It was kind of mimicking one scene where all the champions are being crowned, is that what
you call it?
No.
Sure, sure.
You know what I mean.
Yeah.
And then they do that final camera pan, just like Breath of the Wild did, zoom out and

(01:15:02):
see all the friends walking together, converging.
And they play the epic Zelda theme, or Zelda's main theme.
And then the end.
But I mean, this time they didn't really allude to another game though, did they?
I mean, they brought Zelda back and now she's human, so now the story could go anywhere.

(01:15:28):
It could go anywhere.
It's like, okay, so technically Calamity Ganon is dead, which they killed in Breath of the
Wild, which was the embodiment of evil.
And then, in Tears of the Kingdom, they kill...
Yeah, they kill a Ganon, who just seems to be just an evil dude with the powers of that.
So, yeah.

(01:15:49):
So I guess he would also be the male Gerudo that every 100 years is born.
Now, for some reason, the last 10,000 years there was not a male Gerudo that went evil,
but we won't think about that.
So technically there should be a male Gerudo showing up soon, but he would take a few years

(01:16:10):
to grow up.
So I don't think Ganon would be the next villain if they were trying to set something up.
Who do you think would be the next villain?
You don't know.
I thought, frankly, I thought they were going to bring back the sorcerer from Age of Calamity
somewhere.
Asher?
Yeah.
But then I'm like, eh, maybe not.

(01:16:32):
He's too disposable for one, let's be honest.
Yeah, I thought, initially I thought he was just another Vaati.
Initially he was just a puppet at this point.
I don't think, I think they left themselves open to another game in the same world, but
I don't think it'll happen very soon.
If anything, they're just setting up to have an extra portion of information for DLC.

(01:16:57):
There's nothing, there's nothing for Yon at this point right now and nothing to expect
anytime soon.
You've made it to the end of the episode.
If you'd like to listen to more discussion about Tears of the Kingdom, again, you can
check out us discussing Tears of the Kingdom with the Zelda Creators Modcast.
That is in the link in the description.
Thank you for joining us in discussing Tears of the Kingdom.

(01:17:18):
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