Hello, and welcome to another Zelda podcast. I'm your host, David Geisler, here with my cohost, Katie Roberts. Katie, how are you?
Kady Roberts:I'm doing really good. It's super hot, though. We're recording outside right now.
David Geisler:We are currently partaking in the Zelda Dungeon marathon stream, raising money for No Kid Hungry, and we we are on our second day here at the event. We've already recorded an episode with Andy and Al from the Zelda cast. We've got another one coming up, which actually our audience is hearing that we're doing these a little bit out of order. But this morning, it's well, it's about 10:00 in the morning right now and we thought, oh, let's get an episode just because you and I haven't seen each other in a month or two of us just doing something. And we kinda wanted to do like a Tears of the Kingdom thoughts and impressions episode anyway.
David Geisler:And I tell you, everybody here has been so nice and so kind, but we kind of thought let's mix it up a little bit. Know, Mazes, who hosts the event, he runs Zelda Dungeon, has such a beautiful property that we were like, let's let's do one outside if we're in vacation mode. So we are so you're gonna hear birds in the background most likely, you might even hear a airplane fly over, but we are on one of his patios right now and the magical sword people can see how beautiful this is here. If you're just listening, we're outside in in in the sun. The sun is getting a little warm, but I'm gonna we might be a little sweaty by the end of this episode, but I'm gonna embrace our inner vacation mode.
Kady Roberts:That's We
David Geisler:go with it. We had a pool party last night, a slightly slightly impromptu pool party.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. David lost his glasses in the pool. Was kinda funny, but also not.
David Geisler:I had the very brilliant idea of doing fun dives off the diving board and onto inflatables, which is always a good time. Though a few times I forgot to take my glasses off to do it. And you're absolutely right. The glasses I'm wearing right now, they're clear. They're see through glasses.
David Geisler:I definitely did a super cool jump on
Kady Roberts:very cool.
David Geisler:I mean, I'm kinda making fun of myself, it was kinda fun. I ran and jumped onto a popsicle floaty and surfed across half the pool and splashed down and had the time of my life. And as I was underwater, I realized, wait a second, my glasses aren't on my face anymore. Wait, I was wearing my glasses. And of course, they fell to the bottom of the pool, and a few of us dove down a few times to try to find them.
David Geisler:And then there was another gentleman who, I didn't even know this, but for the, like, the next half hour, kept diving to look for them.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. We we were all, like, I don't know, like, the 10 of us were all just chilling at the hot tub, just talking, whatever. And then he just came up. He's like, here's your glasses.
David Geisler:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was there was a lot of pool action, but at this point, the the main energy had kinda migrated over to the hot tub. And you're right. He just showed up, and I was I was so grateful.
David Geisler:It was amazing. I honestly thought I'd lost him.
Kady Roberts:No. Because I I was like, oh, I'll I'll try and find him. Yeah. This is this will be fun. But something was off at the chlorine bounce pool was amazing.
Kady Roberts:But the chlorine bounce
David Geisler:It was a little murky towards the bottom.
Kady Roberts:So it was a little green towards the bottom, so I couldn't see anything even with goggles.
David Geisler:And with the clear, my clear glasses, it just completely like
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Faded. I don't know how he did it because it was also like 11 feet deep, think Masa said.
David Geisler:Yes. So
Kady Roberts:like as soon as I was going down there, like my head was hurting, my ears were
David Geisler:I was going down and I was starting to get the earache thing. Yeah. Yeah. From the pressure because if you go down real fast because you wanna use as much ox you know, you wanna save as much ox oxygen while you're down there. But, anyways, it's actually been a total blast.
David Geisler:We've been we've participated in the music competition, the music quiz last night. Mhmm. We we we I would like I would like to say we represented AZP, but I definitely lost. I got seven points and the winner had 54 points.
Kady Roberts:Oh, yeah.
David Geisler:No. So I don't know if we represented AZP particularly well, but it's still a ton of fun.
Kady Roberts:It was very fun. Yeah. It was it was fun making a fool of myself with my lack of Zelda knowledge. But
David Geisler:One thing that I'm look I'm so grateful that you're part of the show now, Katie, and we've talked about this in other episodes, and I talk about this with our co producer Celeste a lot. But one of the cool things about AZP at this point is because the team is is so large, we do have so many different stories to tell and so many different points of view. You know, just a couple episodes ago, did that episode with Kevin Goodwin where he and I basically played every Zelda game organically as they came out through the last thirty years. And so that was one type of conversation. And then I have a totally different type of conversation with you when we talk about Zelda games because you're being introduced to the older ones at this point.
David Geisler:And I'm looking forward to the next year or so of you being on this show and games you'll be exposed to and how we'll discuss it. Think it's gonna be great.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I kind of briefly mentioned it to you before we started recording. But because I've been down there watching like the Zelda streams that people have been doing, I'm like starting to curate my own little list on my phone of like, okay. First, I need to play this game, and then I'll play this one, and then this one. I I have Skyward Sword I need to finish first, and then Link's Awakening.
Kady Roberts:But then I definitely wanna do Twilight Princess, and then Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask. And then from there, I still need to, like, curate.
David Geisler:If you're optioning Twilight Princess and Ocarina when we were taking the train over here we're out in Elgin right now. Elgin, Illinois. Not Elgin, as you joked, but Elgin. And, know, it's about the distance that O'Hare is from downtown, it's about that twice is where we are. We're so we're we're pretty far west right now, but but it's beautiful out here.
David Geisler:And we were taking the train out here to to get to this marathon, and I lost my point. We were, oh, you were expressing to me that the first if you had the choice of, like, what I guess we could say retro Zelda game at this point, you'd like to try first. You said Twilight Princess, Twilight Princess, Twilight Princess because everybody keeps talking about it.
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:And I agree, but if you are optioning Ocarina of Time, the the spiritual not the literal references, but the spiritual references, like a spiritual successor. Mhmm. Twilight Princess is kind of that to Ocarina. Okay. So if we're going there, it maybe should be Ocarina first.
Kady Roberts:I'd be done with that because I knew nothing about Ocarina going in, but then the stream that's happening right now as we record this
David Geisler:Yeah.
Kady Roberts:They were playing Ocarina. I was watching it. I was like, this game looks really good.
David Geisler:We were we we were we were sitting down there. They're doing the master quest mode right now stream on Wednesday afternoon, and we were both watching. And we we basically had to, like, leave to come up here to record real quick. But for for me, it was cool to see you seeing Ocarina really for the first time.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. No. It's it's an older game, but it's beautiful. I the graphics look really nice for, like, the time it came out, and the story I I'm a huge story person, so the story is really good there.
David Geisler:We were watching them play the three d s remake, which is only, you know, about ten, fifteen years old. Mhmm. So those graphics are a little better than the original original. I think when we have you play, we gotta go old we gotta go original Nintendo 64. Really?
David Geisler:So it's a little blockier, but because I I feel like that it's not it's not like, oh, you should suffer through the bad graphics. It's not that at all. Many other AZP blog writers have said, like, oh, at first, the graphics were a little tough, but after an hour, I fell in love with Ocarina all over again because that's it is about a twenty five year old game at this point. Or may maybe 20. But anyway, let's get into listening feedback Yeah.
David Geisler:And then we'll talk about our first impressions with Tears of the Kingdom.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Absolutely.
David Geisler:Okay. So here we go. The first one, we have we have a couple from YouTube today and then we have one Apple Podcasts. It's a little hard to read in the sun right now, and I'm gonna have to old man it and take the glasses off. Sure.
David Geisler:But here we go. Over on our life after Hyrule episode, which was episode 14 of season five, that was an episode I did with Celeste down in Louisiana at her place. Starsroof underscore sixteen thirty three said, speaking of possessions and creatures being under the control of some entity, it's interesting how since A Link to the Past, we've had Aegonim, Zant, and those kinds of characters that seem to be possessed by Ganon. Even if the Ganondorf being the true big bad plot twist in Twilight is kind of lame, I always love maybe a little spoiler there, I apologize. I always loved how Zant, without Ganon's control, is an awkward nobody.
David Geisler:And then he's under the control of Ganon. He's the most intimidating big bad in my opinion. Well, I can speak to that, Starzroof. I agree. I think Zant, for the first two thirds of Twilight Princess, is absolutely terrifying.
David Geisler:In fact, in the opening cutscene of Twilight Princess, Katie, you're like, you'll have chills go up your spine when Zant appears. And there is I think you know that Ganondorf is in Twilight Princess. We literally saw the Ganondorf statue. And at a certain point in the game, you start to learn that there's a pact between Ganon and Zant, I'll just put it that far. And and and I still think that the way Ganondorf or Ganon but Ganondorf comes into Twilight Princess is interesting and we won't spoil that for you.
David Geisler:Okay. But yeah, absolutely. Zant is there's there's a lot of there's a few times where Agonym in A Link to the Past is controlled by Ganon. Like, in the end, it's often Ganon. Right?
David Geisler:Yeah. In the end, it's Ganon because it has to be. Okay. So moving along here. This we have two comments from an episode that you and I have already recorded.
David Geisler:The regions of Breath of the Wild, which was episode seven of season six of this season, Love Crum left a message on YouTube and said, yes, another episode. Your enthusiasm is absolutely infectious, and I love the dynamic of an older Zelda fan who has played most of the games discussing the series with a younger Zelda fan who has yet to experience everything the series has to offer. Though a part of me did gasp when Dave potentially spoiled Impa's identity in Skyward Sword for Katie. I hope that Katie will share her perspective when she finally plays Ocarina of Time. Well, is timely.
David Geisler:You two have really great podcast chemistry, and I look forward to you delving deeper into the series together. Do you have any thoughts on that message?
Kady Roberts:I am also very excited to delve deeper into this series and, obviously, Akarita, which we were just talking about, so that is very timely. I gotta be honest. I can't even remember what you said about Empire and Skyward Sword, so it works out well.
David Geisler:It was in my opinion, I kinda remember what I said. And in my opinion, it was, like, aloof and vague. So if you know the spoiler spoiler, you're like, that's it. But if you don't know, it's like, what
Kady Roberts:happens? Yeah.
David Geisler:Hopefully, I said it in that way. But anyway, have we another regions of Breath of the Wild comment here, Katie, actually. Well, first of all, also, you so much, Love Crum, for your support and leaving the message and all of that stuff. I I think I think this kind of intro I'm having a lot of fun just as a fan potentially introducing you to more Zelda. It's very cool.
David Geisler:Alright. The regions in Breath of the Wild okay. Of course. Same same episode. Here we go.
David Geisler:Then a little bit later, Cameron West 6447 says, love this show. I started it a month ago, oh, and have caught up. What? Six seasons? Woah.
David Geisler:Cameron West, thank you. Y'all inspired me to play through Ocarina of Time, and I'm happy to report that I have finished the game and had you guys in my ear while I was defeating Ganon. Top 10 video game moment of my life for sure. Thank you all for everything you do. Well, Cameron West, perhaps you've already heard our previous episode where that exact moment you're speaking of might have popped up in our top 12 most epic moments.
David Geisler:So then Katie's looking at me right now. I have no idea what's going on. Because we have yet to record that episode, so we're doing a little bit of timey whiny stuff right now. Are. And it's all it's all showbiz, baby.
Kady Roberts:All behind the camera.
David Geisler:The episodes get recorded out of order, and we have to pretend certain things. There was actually, one of my most fun moments with that was the most recent episode with Dan, 10 more questions from a new Zelda fan here in season six. That was actually the first episode he and I recorded for all of season six, and ironically, episode one, the season premiere, was, like, the fourth episode I recorded with him. We just had to do a lot of, like, faking it. And I knew something that would probably happen in episode one.
David Geisler:So in episode six, as we were recording, he brought up a moment. And I was like, yeah. Like episode one or like our first episode this season? And he looked at me like, what are you talking about
Kady Roberts:right now? See, that's why I gave you the look. Because I knew you were talking about that, but then when you said, like, that'll probably have happened in whatever. I was like, is that one of your favorite moments?
David Geisler:I think it's gonna come up. I think I think it came up. Alright. So last but not least, Cyren Cosplay. Oh, Cyren.
David Geisler:Hey. Cyren Cosplay from our Patreon account. Yeah. Actually, you've we've both met Cyren now. Three three green hearts emojis as the iTunes review or the Apple Podcast review rather.
David Geisler:Five stars. Absolutely love this podcast. It is one of my favorites. I discovered AZP while a while ago through the Zelda cast, and I have been slowly who are who are the people we're hanging out with today. Yeah.
David Geisler:And I and have been slowly listening through your back catalog of episodes. Shout out from another Chicago Milwaukee area local. We know that now. Usually, I freak out and I get shocked when I hear this stuff, but we actually know Sirin now through our Patreon meetups that we do with our magical sword people. I love when occasionally David or Kate mentioned something theater related since I work in theater as a costume technician and listen to your podcast while making things in the shop.
David Geisler:Awesome. Zelda, in a roundabout way, got me into my theater career as well. But that's a story for another time. Keep up the awesome work. Well, Cyren, I'm gonna have to ask about that in
Kady Roberts:our I next would love to hear
David Geisler:that story. Patreon hangout. Oh, my voice is a little hoarse. I just did you hear crack just now? Yeah.
David Geisler:It's probably from all the partying last night, all that all that shouting in the pool. But it's also been fun to be part of the streams. Katie, you know, Cyran there was speaking about one of my original cohosts, Kate, who Yeah. She and I, the conceived AZP while playing husband and wife, basically, in a And but frankly, you have a ton of theater experience as well.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I've I've started theater back when I was, like, 10. I'm 19 now. So Yeah. I do at least, like, one show every year.
Kady Roberts:I try to do more, but with college now, it's getting kind of harder.
David Geisler:Well, and as you said, you're only 19. I I also would do the, like, one show a year or at least one show every two or three years all through my twenties and into my thirties. But now at 42, I haven't done a show in, like, seven years. No. It's just because you get busy.
David Geisler:Yeah. You know what I mean? I and I'm I mean, I'm if I may speak personally, I'm having so much fulfillment just making all these podcasts that I think that's itchy, you know, scratching my creative itch or whatever. But one little fun fact is you have bleach blonde hair right now because you just wrapped literally, like, two days ago wrapped. I think they call it wrapped in theater.
Kady Roberts:I think so. They call
David Geisler:it wrapped in film. You just wrapped playing SpongeBob.
Kady Roberts:I did. SpongeBob musical, and it was, like, the best show I've ever done. It was so fun. The cast was amazing. If any of them are potentially listening, you guys were awesome.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I def well, it was just three shows that we put on, and I definitely think the second one was my favorite, just energy wise. But it was very fun putting it on and just doing a silly little voice. And
David Geisler:What's your SpongeBob voice? Can you Oh my gosh. Can you give us I don't wanna put you on the spot. No. Wait.
David Geisler:Let me go try first. I'll do a bad one first. Is it
Kady Roberts:like I'm SpongeBob. What are we doing? Mister Krebs.
David Geisler:Oh.
Kady Roberts:If she doesn't wanna be manager, I know someone who'd be great for the job.
David Geisler:So you do the whole show up in that falsetto nas woah. Did that put any stress on your vocals?
Kady Roberts:Not at all, actually. I mean, I would switch out of it sometimes if I was trying to be a bit more serious with like something that was happening. But even like, if I was trying to sing, like, if I was singing by myself, not with people, I would try and sing in that. And it didn't put any strain on me at all just because I'm able to go into that higher register so easily. If I did anything lower than my normal speaking voice, that's a lot harder
David Geisler:for me. Oh, I see. And Us Us actors, we know how to speak to the back row without blowing our voice out. But apparently actually, apparently, it's been it's been seven years for me, so I don't know how to not lose my voice when I'm at said pool party Oh, and, of course, this morning. Anyways, I'm just joking around.
David Geisler:Katie, let's let's get into this here a little bit. We we don't wanna do a a tears of the kingdom review episode yet. I think actually we gotta save that for almost a year from now. Yeah. I'm I'm about thirty, forty hours in.
David Geisler:You're like a hundred and thirty, forty hours in. We I was actually gonna kinda stay away from doing a Tears of the Kingdom episode, but we've been just getting so many requests for it.
Kady Roberts:Mhmm.
David Geisler:And because this is a little bit of a unique situation, us being here at the Zelda Dungeon marathon, I thought, you know what? Let's just throw caution to the wind here and and let's if we're if we're in a larger sense this week kind of having a party and celebrating Zelda, let's just go for it. Yeah. And so I think we should talk a little bit about our opening impressions, our first impressions with Tears of the Kingdom. I also just realized that I'm now in the shade and I'm cooling off a little and you're still totally in the sun.
David Geisler:I hope Sorry. I hope the shade comes your way over the next fifteen, twenty minutes.
Kady Roberts:Oh, thank you. But yeah. No. I I love Tears of the Kingdom, first off. Let me just say that much.
Kady Roberts:I think it's a really good game. I don't think I'm smart enough to play the game sometimes, but What? I do my best with the, like, ultra hand fusing abilities. Sometimes I see things that people are making online and I'm like, I fused a rock together.
David Geisler:Don't don't let that get you down. It's okay.
Kady Roberts:No. Not at all.
David Geisler:I am I'm sure you're plenty smart to be playing this game.
Kady Roberts:No. Was gonna say, I'm having a blast playing it my own way. But
David Geisler:And that is the point. Right?
Kady Roberts:Exactly. But that means a lot of the times, I kind of like forget that I even have these abilities and I don't use them half the time. Mhmm. Which I'm fine with because I think it's fun. I love playing Breath of the Wild, so I'm kind of just playing Breath of the Wild with a little bit of new stuff with tears.
David Geisler:Breath of the Wild style.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. But no, I went into this game very blind. I didn't even really watch the trailer until, I don't know, maybe like a month before the game released.
David Geisler:You just said trailer singular. So did you just watch like the the five because there were four
Kady Roberts:of them.
David Geisler:Most recent one.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Let me see. The e three, is that the third trailer?
David Geisler:I mean, I don't even know what they're connected to anymore because it's like these these electronic entertainment x, all of that stuff's kinda dissolved these days. It's more just about trailer releases on YouTube. You know what I mean?
Kady Roberts:Yeah. No. I I just watched the most recent trailer before it dropped with Ganondorf and every or Ganon and everything. So I I went in super blind. And I'm really glad I did because normally, I'm I'm a huge fan of watching Let's Players on YouTube.
David Geisler:Okay.
Kady Roberts:So normally, I watch them and that's what gets me into a game is watching them play the game and be like, oh, that looks fun. Wanna play it. But if there's a game that means a lot to me, I try and stay completely blind for it before going in. And so I managed to do that with this game and I got it and I played it, like you said, like a hundred thirty five hours now, I As
David Geisler:of this recording, the game's been out maybe a month? Yeah. Maybe a little bit more?
Kady Roberts:Yeah, my first impressions were, woah. Okay. Woah. I I really like the fact that they open up with a bit of a story because that really just instantly drew me in because I'm such a big story driven person with
David Geisler:too. Yeah.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I was
David Geisler:cool. So we start off with the thing we started the game off with the things that I think many of us expected based on the trailers. I had a similar experience, Katie, where I I watched all of the official trailers, and I think there ended up being there's definitely was four. There could have been five. It's debatable if you count, like, the one in 2019 as you know what I mean?
David Geisler:There's there were many years went by in these as these trailers slowly got released. And then, of course, they ramped up the final two or three at the end there. So I watched all the trailers, but I purposely didn't watch any kind of, like, theory videos or anything. So basically, my rule was, like, I'm going to take in the information that Nintendo has decided is rightful to give to the audience before they get the game. Mhmm.
David Geisler:Hence, the trailers. And that's about it. I didn't wanna, like, I didn't wanna have I didn't wanna do any Zonai theories or anything like that. I was just like, let's just let it come to me as it goes. And actually, on our YouTube channel, I did record myself playing the first ten minutes of Tears of the Kingdom.
David Geisler:Yeah. And when I saw zone the zonai statues in that little ten minute playthrough, I was, like, legitimately excited. You know what I mean? Because I didn't like and there was a few trailers where you kinda saw there was, a playthrough thing that IGNuma did, and technically, you look closely, it said zonai on one of the items and stuff like that, but we didn't know if we would see the Zonai. Right?
David Geisler:And so that was all kind of very exciting to have that little story beat in the beginning for me as well.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I remember when I did see the one trailer I did watch, I so I'm still playing through Skyward Sword HD. I kind of am about halfway through, and then I like took a break from it to play tears because I wanted to play that as soon as it came out, and then I'll go back to Skyward. But seeing the Sky Islands, I was like so over the moon and so excited because I was like, it's like Skyward Sword. And you can argue for or against that being canon within tiers, but I still to this day, I whenever I'm in the Sky Islands, I get really excited thinking about how it could kinda tie in to Skyward Sword in a way.
David Geisler:Yeah. I know. The the I mean, I think there was I think it wasn't an accident or rather it was timely that Nintendo released Skyward Sword HD between these two games, Breath of the Wild and Tears. And I remember when Twilight or Skyward Sword was announced Skyward Sword HD was announced, Eiji Aonuma had a little pre message where he even said, even though Skyward Sword came out 10 ago, it's actually the most recent Zelda game since Breath Breath of the Wild. It goes Skyward Sword Breath of the Wild.
David Geisler:That's it. You know what I mean? There wasn't anything between. Oh, we got a big jet flying over, but it's all good. And so when I when we when we get to the Sky Islands in the beginning, I've I've on Patreon, I spoke a little bit about my thoughts on how technically technically the sky the opening Sky Islands, the first four shrines Mhmm.
David Geisler:Were a little underwhelming for me compared to the Great Plateau.
Kady Roberts:Yes. I agree with that completely. I think a lot of it is because while okay. So while the abilities and tiers are really cool and you can argue that they're more complex, I don't think they're as complex in terms of, like, doing things. Because if you think, okay, you go to a shrine and this shrine, you're learning how to ascend.
David Geisler:Right. So you
Kady Roberts:just go through things. Okay, this shrine, you're learning to fuse. So fuse this weapon together, fight these things. Okay, you're done. So the shrines to kind of teach you the abilities were very easy, very basic, because the abilities are what you make of them in the game.
Kady Roberts:Yes. So you can use them how I use them, which is just very basic, just use one thing together, call it a day. Or you could use it like other people have, where they make huge mechs. And I've seen one where it's a machine where they just throw it in the middle of a ton of bosses and it like insta kills them.
David Geisler:Yeah. I've seen a lot of that kind of stuff. I'm kind of in the middle. I'm making some decent carts. I'm actually finding myself trying to make flying machines more than anything Yeah.
David Geisler:Because that is the most difficult way to get around. When you're up on a sky island, sometimes you're like, I really wanna just make that rocket jet bird thing and Mhmm. And get over to another side. Or I've been playing around with the hot air balloons a lot more and then having them kind of fan in different directions more so than even like carts or vehicles on the ground because when I I think for me, I didn't realize I was gonna say this, but for me when I'm on the ground, you and I have already talked off Mike a little bit about how I'm kind of accidentally playing Tears of the Kingdom like it's a traditional Zelda game.
Kady Roberts:Mhmm.
David Geisler:And and I kinda mean maybe only aesthetically. Like, I've absolutely I'm only playing as Twilight Princess Link. I've I do have the Twilight Princess Amiibo Link Amiibo. Yeah. And on the first couple days, I, you know, mega scanned that thing so I could get the the three outfit items for Twilight Princess.
David Geisler:And the maybe the first week, I did I I wouldn't say that I farmed star fragments, but I definitely would, like, sleep till night, go up on a mountain, look for one. I mean, I kinda, like, lightly farm star fragments because that's the only way to update the the classic outfits. Yeah. And so I've got them up to like, you know, the couple layers up now. They're a couple they're they're they're strong enough that I can be playing the game in a regular way and they're not just aesthetic.
David Geisler:Right?
Kady Roberts:Yeah. No. I I like in this game, I didn't realize until it happened to me that when you, like, dive from an island, you can catch star fragments midair, which is really cool.
David Geisler:The first time I encountered a star fragment in Tears of the Kingdom was when one just kinda popped up next to me while I was falling, and I thought, this is so neat.
Kady Roberts:I wanna say, like I mean, it probably is just, like, random game generated, but I wanna say, like, it feels like they do that purposefully.
David Geisler:I think I know I know that where and when one star falls every night, basically, think is what's in the code. Where, when, and how is is essentially randomized. There's a few modifiers to that algorithm where the way that like the direction that link is looking, sometimes those x, those literal longitude, latitude coordinates get prioritized in that randomization. So it's a little bit more likely to happen on screen.
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:Furthermore, I think they took that algorithm and went even further with it. If you're skydiving, I think they take, I have no evidence about this, but my guess is I think they take the the longitude, latitude coordinates of where a star could fall, and I think I think they shrink it down to,
Kady Roberts:like Yes.
David Geisler:10 feet around length.
Kady Roberts:It feels like most of the star fragments I have, I've caught while skydiving.
David Geisler:I think it's such a fun, cool dynamic, and it would be so random and hard to have it happen organically that they've modified the randomization a bit. Yeah. But that's fine.
Kady Roberts:No. I think it's really, really cool.
David Geisler:If I may, the one thing I wanted to say about this whole Link thing, playing as Twilight Princess Link is is is to circle back to the vehicle making. When I'm on the ground, I've already talked about in other episodes how I'm playing not no warping, but low warping. Like Yeah. When I'm on normal Hyrule, I don't I'm trying to not warp at all. I'm I'm it's like if I need to go back to Hateno or something, I'm riding Mhmm.
David Geisler:I did Amiibo Epona in as well. Nice. And so it's basically it's my Twilight Princess Link with my Hylian shield. I don't have the master sword yet, but, you know, whatever. I just kinda find, like, normal looking swords.
Kady Roberts:Mhmm.
David Geisler:Twilight Princess Link on Epona riding through Hyrule. So if you took a screenshot of my tears of the kingdom, it would look like a like a like a upgraphic Twilight Princess or an upgraphic Ocarina, and I'm fine with it. I love it. Like, I I want I want the green hood hat. And for me, that's making me happy.
David Geisler:But that means that I'm usually riding my horse around. If I'm not warping and I'm not really building cars, my main mode of transportation is Epona.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. No. I I might be kind of weird about this. I don't normally make devices to move on the ground, and I don't usually use horses either because I do warp, but also I climb a lot. Yep.
Kady Roberts:And I can't can't climb with my horse. Or if I am on a mountain, then like my horse half the time can't get down. So it's just it it was like a whole thing. So I normally just don't use them. Yeah.
Kady Roberts:Or kinda go without.
David Geisler:I think that's me culling from my twilight princess roots and my you know, like like back in those days, the coolest fastest thing you could do, I mean, was always warping, but was get on Epona and ride somewhere. And so Yeah. Whether I'm doing it because that's my instinct or whether I'm doing it because I'm trying to passively evoke some nostalgia, I'm not sure, but I'll take it.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. If I may, I was looking I don't know if you noticed, but I was looking something up during
David Geisler:Listening to feedback?
Kady Roberts:No. So sorry. Sorry. I shouldn't interrupt. Sorry.
Kady Roberts:Not listening to feedback. But I wanted to kind of pull back for if if I ever, like, catch up with the games, I definitely wanna do, like I know you probably have done a timeline thing, but, like, a timeline thing because I noticed someone talking about back in Breath of the Wild, and I kinda wanted to tie it into Tears of the Kingdom. When Zelda is knighting Link, she has a very cool speech that I wanted to pull up so I don't get it wrong.
David Geisler:In Tears of the Kingdom?
Kady Roberts:Breath of the Wild. Oh. But I wanna talk about how it ties into Tears of Kingdom. Okay. So it says, you have shown unflinching bravery and skill in the face of darkness and adversary.
Kady Roberts:You've proven yourself worthy of the blessings of Hylia. Whether skyward bound, adrift in time Mhmm. Or steeped in the glowing embers of twilight, the sacred blade is forever bound to the soul of the hero.
David Geisler:Yeah. I remember that.
Kady Roberts:So which is really cool, but then it kind of ties into, okay, if these timelines are kind of together, talking about Skyward Bound. Okay. There's the Skyward Sword and then Twilight Princess and all that. And then it also can tie into the fact they I think it's like Misko's treasures or whatever Mhmm. That you find are the different renditions of Link.
David Geisler:I think so. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't I've done some Misco stuff, but it was it was other outfits so far.
Kady Roberts:Oh, yeah. They they have like half of them are like new outfits, and then the other half are like, you can find the Skyward Sword outfits, you can find Twilight Princess, Link's Awakening, like, all of that.
David Geisler:I see. I wasted no time in I Amiibo Twilight Princess in as fast or, yeah, as fast as I could. I also kinda got Ocarina Link in there, but I'm just for some reason, the Twilight Princess and I also have the Skyward Sword Link in there, but I like that Twilight Princess aesthetic in the Breath of the I feel like it translates to the pseudo cel shadedness of Mhmm. Breath of the Wild or Tears of Kingdom or whatever. But anyways, I think I'm I'm I'm allowing us to get into the weeds here a little bit.
David Geisler:So how does that quote transfer to Tears of the Kingdom?
Kady Roberts:I think for me, it's just a lot of a again, I'm huge stories, so I like thinking about that quote in terms of the overarching story of all of Zelda
David Geisler:Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:And how that kind of correlates with the new games of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. So they're I mean, they're making direct references to the past iterations or past reincarnations Yeah. Of Link and Zelda and kinda talking about how that ties into. And we talked a bit over on Zelda cast, I believe.
David Geisler:Yeah. The the Zelda cast.
Kady Roberts:The Zelda cast.
David Geisler:This is technically the name.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. The Zelda cast.
David Geisler:We were over on the the Zelda cast.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. We talked a little bit over there about, like, a potential if they did make a third game, if they should, if they shouldn't, whatever. And it would be cool if they did. I don't think they Nintendo actually would, but it would be cool if they did. And if they did do that, then they would go into the reincarnations of Link in time, kind of like trying to tie it all together even though I don't know exactly how they would do that.
David Geisler:When I first started playing Tears, in that first ten minutes, my first reaction was, I want a third one. Haven't started tears of the kingdom yet, but tears of kingdom felt so much like a sequel. Even in that opening scene, like, it was there was there was a certain emotion. You know, there's there's there's mixed emotions about how much tears of the kingdom is like breath of the wild and how much it's different. Should it be more different?
David Geisler:Should it be more similar? All the different things. Mhmm. We could all wish a bunch of different things. Nintendo did what they did.
David Geisler:They still surprised me with enough things that I feel like choose the kingdom feels like a new enough experience.
Kady Roberts:Oh, yeah.
David Geisler:But that does remind me that, you know, really, this is the most sequelae sequel of a Zelda game we've ever gotten. Majora's Mask is technically a sequel to Ocarina, but it's in a totally different time and place. You know? Well, now I don't know about time. Well, that's debate well, that's not getting because of the Ocarina timeline.
David Geisler:But this one really is really is the really takes place after Breath of the Wild. Like, we are still in the Breath of the Wild universe.
Kady Roberts:And I you you can speak to this more than I can, but I wanna say it's like one of the first time in this old game, they give you like a specific, like, has been like two or three years.
David Geisler:Yeah. I think so. I think so. There's like, you know, kind of Phantom Hourglass says, it's been a hundred years since or Spirit Tracks is like, it's been a hundred years since Phantom Hourglass. So there's a there's a universe connection, but it's not the same characters.
David Geisler:Yeah. You know, that kind of stuff happens. Wind Waker Wind Waker vaguely references Ocarina, and that there's been a passage of time, and then they had to flood the oceans and all of that kind of stuff. But, yes, this is the first time where I think we're the same peep the people from that other game are still alive and well, all things considered, in this game, and we get to go back and see these people again. You know?
David Geisler:I said this over on the Zelda cast, maybe we'll go to break here in a second, come back and really kinda let this thing open up, but I I feel like I wanna say it on AZP. When I was playing Breath of the Wild and and some of the other people with AZP have expressed this as well, many people have expressed this, once you defeat Ganon, Ganon Blight or whatever, the big pig at the end, it's hard not to feel like, oh, now I just wanna go around and see how all the towns are doing. Like, how is everybody doing? I wanna see what's the game after the game. You know what I And we've been feeling that for five or six years.
David Geisler:And I think for better or for worse, Tears of the Kingdom gave us that.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I definitely agree with that. I that that was one of my favorite things about, Tears of the Kingdom is going through and seeing like, okay, Kakariko, how how are they doing? Hateno. Oh, Hateno has like a whole mayoral thing you can get into.
Kady Roberts:That's cool. Mhmm. Because a lot of the quests are more people based than world based, I think, enters the kingdom. Yes. Which is really cool because you get to interact with the NPCs more and kinda feel like you're more in the world because Link has been in this world for like three, four years now.
Kady Roberts:So he kind of does know the people. He kinda gets the town. So it is less world based. It is more like Link interacting with the people around him.
David Geisler:I do think that's where Nintendo put a lot of their energy into Tears of Kingdom. Yeah. Fine. The Breath of the Wild map is there, and it's a re it's remixed a little bit. There's a lot of areas that like, the towns have changed in ways, but they still feel like the towns.
David Geisler:Yeah. A lot of the space in between, there's a lot of times where I'm like, alright. This feels similar, but I don't know if this hill was here. I'm not sure if this ditch was here. So there have been and that's kinda how I think Nintendo motivates it with this upheaval storyline.
David Geisler:Like, oh, the whole there's probably earthquakes and whatnot, and things fell, and things broke and opened. Mhmm. And that's what motivates I mean, I would actually guess that Nintendo modified maybe 80% of the map, you know, to what one degree or another. Yeah. I think most of the map is I say modified, I won't I won't say changed.
David Geisler:Some of it's flat out changed. Mhmm. Some of it's like just additional things. At at worst, it's just some sky island blocks Yeah. Shoved into the ground.
David Geisler:At its best, it's like completely new areas that didn't even exist or or complete reinterpretations of areas. One of my favorite versions of that is the the the super dark island in Breath of the Wild. I don't even remember what it's called. Oh. Where you have to do a couple quests with just your only your own organic light.
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:You know, those ruins, you can see those that that's not dark anymore. You can just go there and there's, like, humans or living there Halyans living there now Yeah. And you get to see some culture there. And so that's an that's a version where I got there and I was like, this is a great way to remix or modify what happened here. This feels completely new even though I I I'd be pretty interested in finding out.
David Geisler:I bet I bet you those ruins are still in the exact same spots as they were in Breath of the Wild.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I do wanna say though, I was a little upset with the Korok Forest because I went into it thinking like, oh, okay. I like I like the fire and I follow the thing. That's not how it works.
David Geisler:I I've tried to get in two or three times so far, but I've done I haven't done it the classic way, and it just kicks me out each time. I've not gone into
Kady Roberts:You literally have to dive down from the sky. That's like how you have to get in, which was kind of a bummer because I was like, I know how this works. I can't wait to go in, and I had to like look it up and figure out how, why I wasn't getting in.
David Geisler:Interesting. Well, maybe we'll go to break here, and when we come back, we'll just kind of keep talking about some of the things that are different and the same or, or, or, or what are, really, I guess it is just first impressions, right?
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:Like where we're at. I I will say, think overall, I'm very much enjoying the experience. It took a few hours for me to adjust to it, and and I think I think I'm cool with it, though. I think I like you know what I mean? If this if this is if this is Breath of the Wild version two point o, if this is really just a massive 16 gigabyte DLC update, which it isn't.
David Geisler:But, like, if it even you know, I'm okay with it. It's actually kind of fun to finally, whether I agree or like or dislike the things that happened in Tears of the Kingdom or the choices that were made, it is fun to have the opportunity to go back into a game that I've loved for five years, that being Breath of the Wild, if if I may. And so when we come back, wanna kinda hear your overall thoughts about that. Yeah. Absolutely.
David Geisler:We'll go break and we'll come right back. It's the first day of school and I'm walking around Downtown Chicago with hundreds of other students. Everyone's getting back from summer break and you can tell that they're happy to see each other after a couple months. For me, however, it's been a little longer. Hi.
David Geisler:I'm David, and I wanna introduce you to Returning Student, a documentary podcast that I've been making about my return to a college that I left twenty years ago. I'm back in the same city, at the same school, the same student ID number. Everything else feels completely different. My fellow classmates are literally half my age. My professors work in my industry.
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David Geisler:Let's get back to the show. And if you're already on Patreon, we are so grateful that you're helping us keep another Zelda podcast vibrant. Alright, we are back and Katie, I couldn't help myself when I summarized some of my thoughts and emotions about Tears of the Kingdom as we went into break. I'd like to ask you, what are some of your overall thoughts and opinions?
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I so I obviously am a huge Breath of the Wild fan. It was the game that got me into all of Zelda. Mhmm. I've played it a ton, like a 100% except for Korok Seeds because I'm not doing that.
David Geisler:That's
Kady Roberts:fine. Going into Tears, I was excited but I was also nervous because I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about it. If it was going be too different, if it was going to be too similar, was I going to get bored of it? I wasn't sure. And so I'm happy to say that I love the game.
Kady Roberts:I went into it and it was similar enough that I was still very attached to it. Like, went in attached to Tears of the Kingdom because
David Geisler:I see.
Kady Roberts:It has the same feelings in as Breath of Wild, and it feels very similar with similar characters. Kind of like a season two of a show, you're still very attached to the show.
David Geisler:Yeah. Yeah. That's a great idea.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Yeah. So I was still very attached to it. So I think Nintendo did a very good job of instantly making like, oh, if you like Breath of the Wild, okay, you have to love Tears. Right?
Kady Roberts:I'm trying to think where my train of thought just went.
David Geisler:Well, it's okay. It's okay because so often we get a Zelda game and what the only thing that's similar, sometimes it's the mechanics. In the old, you know, during the GameCube days and the Wii days, we got a couple Zelda games and they were always set in a reinterpretation of Hyrule or a different universe or something. So every time we started playing those games, everything felt new, but like the z targeting was still there, the way the combat worked was still there. So the mechanics very rarely changed, maybe slight modifications here and there, but the game and the universe and the presentation would totally change.
David Geisler:Now we have a situation where the game and the presentation hasn't changed that much.
Kady Roberts:But the mechanics have
David Geisler:changed Exactly.
Kady Roberts:Come out. Yeah. No. I I would say I'm a really big fan of the new mechanics. I
David Geisler:feel about it.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I mean, I do miss some things. But if you think like, okay, Magnesis is kind of just Ultra Hand. Ultra Hand just has some extra things to it.
David Geisler:It's ultra Ultra Hand is Magnesis for everything.
Kady Roberts:Exactly. Yeah. So there's like a few things there, but I think they did a really good job giving you more of a range of abilities in this game because, okay, you can use the Ascend. So Ascend is really good for just placement and like getting places. Fuse, okay, That is for your combat.
Kady Roberts:Rewind, it can be for places, it could be for combat. That's very versatile. And then, bolster hand is Magnesis, and you can build things to help go places. So I feel like they kind of oh, and then auto build also is the last one that they added.
David Geisler:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is Ultra Hand Plus, basically. Ultra Plan Plus.
David Geisler:Ultra
Kady Roberts:Hand Plus. Mhmm. Which I have to admit, I don't use as much as the other ones.
David Geisler:I'm kinda just starting to crack that one. I've got a few devices that I've built that I favorited, and I'm just starting because I also didn't really comprehend how much I needed to keep collecting zonite in the early parts of the game. So now I'm kinda a bit more actively doing that so that I can use the the ultra hand mega build one, the three purple hands.
Kady Roberts:Uh-huh.
David Geisler:But anyway.
Kady Roberts:No. I and I think if I may talk about ultra hand or not ultra hand, the auto build for a second. Yeah. There is a little quest that you can do with the Yiga. I won't spoil anything for anyone who hasn't played it, but basically, you can pretend you're a Yiga for a bit and go in and kind of see what they're all up to and what they're And are two machines that these two different Yiga are building and they have this whole argument of like, one's better?
Kady Roberts:Mine's better, right? Mine's better, right? And they're two completely different things that can help you in the game. One is like a really cool land one. One's a really cool I believe it was the sky one.
Kady Roberts:And the whole thing is they're like, oh, well, if you want the schematics for this, you have to pay us a thousand rupees. And it's like, I'm not gonna pay you a thousand rupees for that. That's crazy. Uh-huh. And they set it up as there's one piece for each of these that have to be attached, the guys can't figure out how to do it.
Kady Roberts:Mhmm. So if you attach it, that goes into your schematics.
David Geisler:Oh. So then you
Kady Roberts:can favorite it and you can use it forever. And I like that. Like, that's so smart that the game
David Geisler:sets up like that. The designers made it so that you can be taught favoriting things.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. And you don't
David Geisler:need them you don't need the schematic. That's wonderful.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. They really taught you how to, like, kind of work around the system a bit and, like, be like, oh, no. This is, a really cool ability. You guys need to use this. Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:Which I feel guilty because I don't use it very much, but I think it's really cool.
David Geisler:I do miss the ice blocks a little bit from Breath.
Kady Roberts:I would say I miss the ice blocks probably the most out of all of them. I there is kind of a way around it. If you use, like, a frost weapon on the water, you can kinda make an ice block.
David Geisler:Yep. Exactly.
Kady Roberts:But it I don't know. It's not the same, but it's fine.
David Geisler:I Yeah. Please.
Kady Roberts:Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say, I know a lot of people I personally didn't use Revolve's wind too much, but I know a lot of people were really upset that Revolve's wind was gone.
David Geisler:I use it all the time, and I I think actually that's another one I miss a lot.
Kady Roberts:I will say though, I this obviously, you can't do it in the air like you could with Revali's wind, but they do make it so because they introduced Highland pine cones into the game. Mhmm. Mhmm. And what you can do is they they teach you this on, like, you can just find an NPC somewhere. But if you have a campfire or a fire on the ground and you throw a pine cone in it, it makes a huge gust of wind like Rivoli's wind that you
David Geisler:can Oh, use I had to go idea.
Kady Roberts:It's very cool.
David Geisler:And that kinda fits with the real world because pine cones burn so well. Usually use them to start a fire.
Kady Roberts:Exactly. Which I think was really cool because at first I was like, why why did they introduce another useless
David Geisler:I
Kady Roberts:don't know. Nut. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's acorns and it's like, okay, like seasoning, I guess.
Kady Roberts:Right. But the pine cones, I'm like, what is the point of this? And then I came across that. Was like, this is really smart. Also, now you can make like a a nut pie or whatever with all of them, which is kinda cute.
David Geisler:But That's cute.
Kady Roberts:I digress.
David Geisler:I just keep strapping rockets to my shields, and I ride them
Kady Roberts:up. Yeah.
David Geisler:No. That's smart. Burning through rockets though. Every time I wanna quote unquote, Revali Gale, I'm like, you know, using a rocket, but Yeah. I'm finding I'm using it less.
David Geisler:That does remind me that another major mechanic change is that the way that we use arrows has completely, I guess via a version of fuse, it's a little gray because you don't actually use the fuse mechanic, but you're in story, you're using the fuse mechanic, but you're expressing it through different buttons. We don't have fire arrows or ice arrows or anything like that anymore. We just attach fire and ice and bombs and and things like that to our arrows. And so I'm using arrows non all the time now. Hundreds and hundreds of arrows.
David Geisler:I'm finding I'm using them a lot more than in Breath of the Wild, even just natural arrows. Like, I'm actually fighting enemies with the arrows more than I did in Breath of the Wild. Are you finding that experience?
Kady Roberts:Absolutely. Yeah. In Breath of the Wild, I think when I finished the game, had, like, 300 arrows stocked up. So I was like, I kind of use them for hunting, but, like, that's kinda it. Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:With this game, because they kind of took away the fire and ice arrows, which has been very kind to my rupee pockets. Oh, Not having to pay for that. It's made it so I naturally am more inclined to use arrows, whether because I need the fire or ice or something. But now I'm so used to using the arrows that I'm like instantly just using them without much thought, even just normal arrows.
David Geisler:Right.
Kady Roberts:I love the bomb arrows that they made in the game because I never had enough of them in Breath of the Wild because they were so expensive and you can never find them. So I'm really glad you can find the bomb flowers around, which is a nice tie in to older Zelda games.
David Geisler:It is because even in A Link to the Past for Game Boy, there was a way to attach bombs to your arrows. And so even though even if fuse feels like a weird new mechanic, it has its roots in in some of the classic games.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I I think I mean, it's Nintendo, so obviously they did their research. But, like, it feels like they really, really did, like, go back to the old Zelda games and kind of figure out, okay. We can tie this little thing in here or we can make this really big thing in here. And that also ties in with the new creatures and monsters, which I have been having a blast getting to, like, learn about.
Kady Roberts:Because, again, we talked about this off Mike a little bit, but when I originally started playing, I didn't realize a lot of these were monsters from other Zelda games until I I now know I was thinking of a Glypto or not a Glypto.
David Geisler:Well, there's Gibdo. Gibdos.
Kady Roberts:Gybdos. I was talking more
David Geisler:Glyock?
Kady Roberts:The Glyocks. Thank you. I thought the Glyocks were the Hydra from Skyward Sword, which is my mistake. But when I saw that, was like, these aren't new monsters. They are taking Zelda creatures from other games and putting them in, which is so cool.
David Geisler:I one of my favorite things about Tears of the Kingdom, and I really mean this, is that I feel like there's a lot of classic Zelda game vibes.
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:Everything from the new the wells that are new remind me exactly of going through the holes in Ocarina of Time. Mhmm. The cave system, it it gives me the depths in general completely give me the adventure of Link vibes.
Kady Roberts:Yes.
David Geisler:I feel like it's kinda funny. For me, I think I'm liking the depths more than the Sky Islands, personally. Sky Islands, it's like okay, it's like Skyward Sword and fine, you know, it's been years since we've had kind of this slightly and I know Twilight Princess aesthetically is realistic and moody and all that kind stuff, but this kind of like feeling you get when you're in the temples and the caves playing Zelda two back on the Nintendo, the depths for me evoke that. I'm like, they're I'm like, oh, it's it's it's weird again. There's weird plants again and it's dark and and it's it's it's an absolute well, from a from an adventure point of view, it's an absolute pleasure to be down there and, like, have this adventure.
David Geisler:I'm loving that. The sky islands are a little less exciting for me. I think there's some cool stuff going on there, but it's probably just because aesthetically, I'm more familiar with that look right now. Mhmm. Know, there's there were other games.
David Geisler:There was that Greek god game that basically was sky islands that was like a Zelda like or a Breath of the Wild like. And and we see a lot of sky islands in video games these days. And I think it's because it's well you just don't have to you don't have to build as much geometry.
Kady Roberts:I was gonna say it's not as hard
David Geisler:to Yeah. You can right. Exactly. Yeah. Which which if you think about it from behind the scenes, it's either smart and economical or it's a really handy shortcut and you don't have to design as much level stuff.
David Geisler:My favorite thing when when I was used to talk about Breath of the Wild and I would I would compare it to Wind Waker Mhmm. I enjoyed Wind Waker. I enjoyed that Wind Waker really is technically the first open world engine that Zelda ever used, and then they modified that a little bit for Hyrule Field for Twilight Princess. But Wind Waker is technically open world, and it does stream load the islands as you go to them Mhmm. The way the way things pop in and are stream loaded in on Breath of the Wild and stuff in all open world games these days.
David Geisler:But with Wind Waker, one of the things that can get a little challenging is that sometimes, you know, between those little islands there's really not much going on. And yeah, okay fine, you're out in the ocean and that's probably how it would be. So sometimes when I'm up in the sky, in the in Tears of the Kingdom, and maybe a little bit of Skyward Sword, but in Tears of Kingdom up in the sky and it's like, well, I mean, there's a lot of nothing up here. Yeah. Okay.
David Geisler:I can go to that little speck of a island and I go to that little speck of an island. That's cool. But it's not so much that I'm getting I apologize. It's not that I'm getting crabby about the game I makers not making get it. They made the correct choices and the depth certainly gives me that more that I never even thought about.
David Geisler:But I think the big thing is is when you can when you have to kind of literally connect the dots from one sky island to the next Mhmm. It becomes less open worldly for me and a little and and it's secretly kind of linear.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I would agree.
David Geisler:If you think about the original sky islands, those first four dungeons, and I spoke about this a little bit on my Patreon episode with Kate and Celeste, it's fine, but I think the reason people are a little less excited about the original those that opening Sky Islands sequence and compared to, like, the Great Plateau Mhmm. In Breath of the Wild, people lost their minds with the Great Plateau. Was like, look at all this amazing openness. The game doesn't teach you anything. It just lets you learn and it just gives you a playground, a little microcosm of the entire game is on the Great Plateau and you could be on there for five, ten hours and just learn how to play the game, and then you find you finally get your hang glider or paraglider and you get off.
David Geisler:If you if you think about it, the Sky Islands and Tears of the Kingdom are technically just a connect the dots line that circles around itself.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. No. I that was one of my biggest, like, kind of bummer moments when I started playing, and I got a little nervous when I started playing. So I'm like, is the whole game gonna be like this? Like, is it gonna be, like, you kind of have to do it this certain way, and we're not really gonna teach you much because there's not really much up here to teach you and like that kind of stuff.
Kady Roberts:And I was kind of worried about that. Then when you get off, had a huge epic moment of like skydiving down. It was so And then it's like, okay, okay, we're playing the game now.
David Geisler:And yeah. And then when you land in Hayward Field, is there was I did have this moment of you know, like, oof. Yeah. Everything's open. Let's go.
Kady Roberts:No. I definitely agree with you because in Breath of the Wild, the opening, like, little section, it it still felt like you were playing the game. In Tears of the Kingdom, it felt like you were playing the tutorial.
David Geisler:Oh, per perfectly said. You're absolutely right. It is it is by the numbers a tutorial, a decent one, whereas I think Great Plateau is a brilliant tutorial. Yes. I think I think think I think the Great Plateau needs to go in the history books of game design as how to how to really make a brilliant tutorial where people don't even know that they're being tutorialized.
David Geisler:Yeah. I
Kady Roberts:was gonna say, like, when I played it, I I for a very long time, I didn't realize there was more map to the game. I thought, like, okay. This is the game. This is awesome. This is great.
David Geisler:Yeah. Did you do you have that first moment in Breath of the Wild where you bring up the map and you see the thing, you're like, this is cool. And then was a And then you zoom out once and you're like, that's amazing. You still get two more layers. And you're like, wait, this is just this little spec?
Kady Roberts:No. That that was like, I was over the moon when that happened. I was very excited. Which was a little bit of a bummer than when we went to like the original map. But I had that same feeling when I saw the depths for the first time.
Kady Roberts:And I got Yeah. The first little guy, and it's like, it looks like it's a huge circle. And it zooms out, it's a little circle. Oh, it's a really little, oh, that's that's a speck Yeah. On the map.
David Geisler:Yeah. And I like how they deal with how the depths get revealed with the little specks of light instead of opening regions, like on the land. Yeah. Not that I prefer it more than the opening regions, but I just like that it's a little different.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I do like that they took the time to make it different. And then that also helped them when they were introducing new armor sets. You get that really cool glow in the dark armor set you can find.
David Geisler:Yeah. I haven't found that yet, I have made a lot of, like, glow in the dark recipes.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. And they have the new recipes too, and then they also got to introduce the new kind of, like, flora and fauna, if you would Yeah. With the light bulbs and then the glow mushrooms and all that kind of stuff.
David Geisler:Yeah. Absolutely. There's a lot of added mechanics. We can talk we can talk for days about the sticky frogs and the
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:You know, so there was a lot let's actually try that a little bit. We got about another fifteen, twenty minutes here that we can chat. There the I do feel like Nintendo was very thoughtful or the the team, rather, the the development team for Tears of the Kingdom was very thoughtful in how they addressed what could be perceived as some of the issues for Breath of the Wild.
Kady Roberts:Mhmm.
David Geisler:You know? I actually didn't mind the rain getting in the way in Breath the Wild. Hated it. I loved it because it was kinda like, well, that's what it's like when you're really out in and I like I like being in the woods in real life. Yeah.
David Geisler:And I and I guess I am a slower player. Like, I don't mind that I have to get on Epona and and ride one hour of real world time to get to a town because I part of me maybe I'm not like a I'm not really like a sim. I don't like I I mean, there's a few of these, like, survival sim games that I do get a kick out of. I don't need that torture and pain of, oh, gosh. This is taking forever to make it feel like it's a good game.
David Geisler:But, apparently, part of that I do like from an emotional storytelling point of view. Yeah. I like feeling like I'm far away from that thing that I need to be at. Do I really need to go there or not? Do I really need to go to Kakariko Village again to get the one thing or can I just press on?
David Geisler:I think there's a lot of drama there and I like it which is why I choose to kind of not warp as much. All of that is to say though, I didn't mind the rain in Breath of the Wild. I didn't mind that sometimes I found myself just sitting on a cliff for three minutes or five minutes and I had to decide, do I wanna jump off and go somewhere else or is the top of this mountain worth it? You know? So I love that instead of just, like, removing the mechanic
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I'm glad they didn't take the mechanic away.
David Geisler:Introduce a new one that allows you to deal with it.
Kady Roberts:Exactly. No. I'm a huge completionist, and so for me, I'm like, okay, I've gotten all of the armor, have that one last piece on the top of this hill, and it won't stop raining. And I can't light a fire to pass the time because it's gonna go out. So it was like a whole thing.
Kady Roberts:It kind of it was like my least favorite part of Breath of the Wild was that rain mechanic. I'm glad they didn't take it out of tiers because I do think it is really realistic, it adds a special thing to the game that a lot of games don't have that mechanic, which is really cool. I was very excited when I saw that they did have this new armor set. And I think the way they introduced it was cool where it's not a set that you can find in the world or you can buy. You have to complete all the Lucky Clover Gazette things.
David Geisler:I see.
Kady Roberts:And that also is like a story mission because all of them are I don't know if you've done any of the Lucky Clover Gazette, but
David Geisler:I think I've done two or three. Yeah. I'm I'm less enthused by that that quest line, but I'm doing them when they kinda come my way.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. But it ties into the story of everyone's like, where what happened to Zelda? Where's Zelda? And this is each one you go to is someone claims that Zelda said something or they found Zelda or something, and you have to follow that quest line and eventually figure out, okay, no, it's not Zelda. It's the Which eventually you think Link would start going and be like, guys, it's it's not worth it.
Kady Roberts:It's the Yiga. But I think it was a really cool quest line.
David Geisler:Well, I'm excited to to do it as it as it comes to me. There's a few other things that I feel like Nintendo, instead of removing a mechanic oh, well, let's talk about weapon breaking. Yeah. I didn't mind weapon breaking in Breath of the Wild. I Neither.
David Geisler:Like, it was sometimes an annoyance, but it was also, like, kinda supposed to be. It it made you value your weapons and value which ones you were using when.
Kady Roberts:Exactly.
David Geisler:And I'm okay with that. I mean, I don't I don't need to I'm speaking as David right now. I'm not saying video games should be this way, but when I'm playing games, I don't necessarily need to feel all powerful in my video games. That's not something that's exciting to me. I think kind of the I love resource management games.
David Geisler:I love that kind of stuff. Sometimes it's fun to feel not powerful at all and how you're gonna figure it out and get through it. So I didn't mind the weapons breaking and having to choose which ones to keep, which ones to get rid of, which ones should I use on this enemy, should I save it for a boss or something like that, but I feel that essentially the fuse mechanic is Nintendo's or IG Numa's or the team's, I don't I don't know who the exact director is, it's not IG, he's just the producer now, but anyway, or Anuma, I should say. But bringing the fuse mechanic in, I think, is their answer to weapons breaking. And I think another way they could have fixed it is, like, in Skyrim, you can basically repair weapons.
David Geisler:If they don't fully break, you can go to towns and go to, like, a smith, and they'll slowly fix them for you. That seems like a pretty logical way to to fix the mechanic or, quote, unquote, fix it. You know, you you gotta thought
Kady Roberts:what you thought. I don't because, again, I don't know how far in the game you've gotten, but there are a few things kinda kinda similar to that that you
David Geisler:can do. How they're, like, rusted over in the beginning and stuff?
Kady Roberts:Well, yeah. So with the rust, you can throw them at the rock, octorox, kind of in the Elden region. They absorb them, throw them out, they're clean. But also, if you go to Tarrytown, which is now a very bustling city, which is very cute, there is a little Goron there that if you have these two items forgive me if I am wrong about this, but I believe if you have two items that you fuse together, but there's two weapons, that he can break them apart. You get those two separate weapons again, and I think they're brand new again.
David Geisler:Oh, interesting.
Kady Roberts:I could be wrong about that because I haven't used him personally yet, but I
David Geisler:believe Yeah. That's how it That's interesting. That's cool. You can also unfuse just in the menus, but maybe he's able to re refresh them.
Kady Roberts:That is cool. Refreshes them, and then if you, like, I don't know, put like a bomb arrow or like a bomb to your claymore or something Sure. You get the bomb back.
David Geisler:I see. I see. Well, so my thought there was my thought process there was, so Nintendo said, okay. Well, we're not gonna I mean, I'm deducing. I'm prostating.
David Geisler:I'm paraphrasing. I'm I'm making up my own headcan my real world headcanon. But it it would seem clear to me that Nintendo said, well, let's not let's have the weapon still break because that's still part of this game. It's still part of the mechanics. They didn't do the Skyrim thing and and with with the exception of maybe this Goron, which is obviously a very niche part of the game.
Kady Roberts:Oh, yeah.
David Geisler:It's not a main mechanic. They didn't say, well, but you can fix them at every horse stable now or something. Yeah. Like, which was probably would have been, you know, you just introduce a new character that has a new ability Mhmm. You can work it into the lore.
Kady Roberts:Beetle has been working on his blacksmithing.
David Geisler:Yeah. Now Beetle's got cool welding helmet on, and he can fix his stuff for you. Like, that's one way they could have done it. But instead, basically, they said, like, how about, no, the weapons just keep breaking, but we're gonna make it easier for you to make a strong weapon if you need it in the moment. And I think that's how they quote unquote fixed it.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. One of my favorite things to do is so, like, Stalnoxes, I believe, are what they're called. The the skeleton Bokoblins and skeleton Moblins. Yeah. Their arms are very strong, but they're not durable.
David Geisler:Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:And so one of my favorite things to do is take, like, hold my claymore and attach that to the end of it. Mhmm. So I still get that power, but then when it breaks, I still have a weapon I can keep fighting with.
David Geisler:Yeah. I love that.
Kady Roberts:But yeah. I
David Geisler:I'm trying to think of some other things that were clearly direct responses that that the designers made in Choose the Kingdom responding to positives and negatives in Breath of the Wild. Those are the two that really stand out to me. There is a new light engine. There's a new very clearly a new light engine in this game, or at least a beef I don't know if I should say new engine, but they've they've re they've added it's very clear that there's new calculations going on inside Mhmm. The the main engine to do light.
David Geisler:And I think that's how they get the bright bloom seeds to work so well. That obviously allows them to kinda even do the depths in the first place. Yeah. I think I think the, you know, the lighting in Breath of the Wild was great, but the lighting in Choose the Kingdom is a step up, and there's a lot more processing going on, and I love it.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I do wanna say, also going back to the weapons, I like the new weapon mechanics where certain weapons have certain abilities that you Yeah. Can So, like, one of them is, like, when you're down to your last heart, you do double damage. Or one of them is
David Geisler:Oh, yeah.
Kady Roberts:Like, this has gloom on it. So it'll do a lot of damage, but it'll start to, like, take your hearts away the more you use it. Mhmm. Just different things like that kind of add more to your fusing as well.
David Geisler:And with Breath of the Wild, there were there were modifications, hidden modifications on many weapons where it's like, this one also has attack up or Mhmm. You know, more more stamina or you use less stamina. I feel like over the last four or five years of the team developing Tears of the Kingdom, they were like, let's go nuts with it. Let's just get creative Yeah. And do these weird things like use his hearts or more hearts and all that kind of stuff.
David Geisler:Mhmm. And it reminds me of a throwback to a suit that you get in Twilight Princess by performing a couple side quests where you get to wear a a certain kind of piece of armor that protects you. You don't take heart damage when you get hit by an enemy, but it costs rupees every hit.
Kady Roberts:They I don't know if you found it. They have that in
David Geisler:In tears?
Kady Roberts:The kingdom.
David Geisler:There you
Kady Roberts:go. They do. You can get it by finding the bubble frogs and kind of trading them with the cousin cousin Yeah. Cousin or brother?
David Geisler:Brother, think.
Kady Roberts:But yeah. But you can get this suit that costs rupees instead of hearts.
David Geisler:Yeah. That's cool.
Kady Roberts:So I didn't realize that must have been a direct callback to that.
David Geisler:The first time you really do what we would call armor sets today or costumes or outfits or whatever, the first time that really happened kind of in Ocarina of Time where you basically get like a Zora scale which let help lets you swim. So all of sudden your tunic's blue now, and then you get a special ring so that you can be around hot things and all of sudden your tunic's
Kady Roberts:red. Yeah.
David Geisler:And that's that's about it. In Twilight Princess, they also expressed the Zora outfit and the I'll just call it the Goron outfit. But they did that's like that weird outfit of the money instead of hearts thing was really kind of the first time Nintendo started, maybe even by accident, exploring alternate costumes for Link.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I'm very curious now after we're done with this. I have to look up what that looks like because I'm curious if it looks the same or if it's
David Geisler:Oh, the phone interpretation. Would be neat to see.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I know we're probably running short on time.
David Geisler:We got about ten minutes.
Kady Roberts:Okay. I also wanted to say, I I know this is kind of like a beginning review, but as someone who hasn't played, like, really any of the other Zelda games, I love the dungeons. I think they are so cool. Or the temples, I guess.
David Geisler:Sure. We can so it's it's funny because a temp you know, like, in all of Zelda not canon, in meta Zelda. So if fans speaking about Zelda games, we call them all dungeons, but sometimes in game they're called temples.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I I think of them as dungeons because they are kind of dungeons.
David Geisler:Mechanically, they're they're what we would call a classic or a Zelda dungeon. Yes.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Because my only really other experience with them is Skyward Sword. So when I came over here and they have the fire dungeon, the water dungeon, the air dungeon, the I guess Sand? Sand, guess. The electric dungeon.
Kady Roberts:I don't know. Yeah. But the point is, they are so cool, and they're really really fun to kind of mess around in and play especially with your companion that kinda helps you with each individual one.
David Geisler:Yeah. I'm realizing that your experience with Zelda, your initial experience was not with any what we would call classic Zelda dungeons. It was the four beasts.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. The four beasts were they were they were fun and they were fine, but coming to Tears of the Kingdom, I realized I enjoyed this so much more than the divine beasts.
David Geisler:Yeah. So that makes me very excited for you to play Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess and and even Wind Waker and stuff like that because those are the one of my favorite things about I I'm a big fan of where Zelda is right now
Kady Roberts:Mhmm.
David Geisler:Meaning like the open world thing, Nintendo twisted it up a little bit with Breath of the Wild. I'm all for it. I support it. But I but I will also say that one of my favorite things about what I guess we'll call classic Zelda games is that these dungeons, even more so than Tears of the Kingdom, are just polished to a t. You saw them playing a little bit of an Ocarina one before we started recording.
David Geisler:These things are fine pieces of machinery. They're mega they're they're they're puzzle boxes. They're Mhmm. You know, an entire interior of a building can be the whole thing is a meta puzzle, and every little detail matters and counts, it's just then a pleasure to be in these very curated experiences where you get to solve it. Even the Tears of the Kingdom dungeons, they they evoke that more so than the beasts.
David Geisler:You know? I can I'm thinking about, like, the Rideau Yeah. The the airship. You know, you're kinda like, yeah, I kind of I'm kinda like, you know, in a I feel like I'm in one of these classic dungeons a little bit. You're still doing the whole, like, turn five switches on thing Yeah.
David Geisler:Which is less than exciting for me, but because I part of me, you know, I've spent the last twenty five years, past thirty years finding small keys, opening doors, finding where the next room in the labyrinth might be, and then having a mini boss, and then having another thing. Yeah. You know, that's a that's also that's a really fun kind of almost kind of a D and D type of feel. You know
Kady Roberts:what I I completely agree. With playing I was gonna say my one grievance with the dungeons is that they still have that, the switches. Because I with a dungeon kind of scenario, I would have liked to kind of go a little bit more linear with it. Yep. Because I so I just finished Yunobos last night.
Kady Roberts:And I won't spoil anything. But with that one, it is very easy to just go straight to the switches and not do what they want you to do.
David Geisler:Oh, really? Oh. Wow.
Kady Roberts:And so I was able to get through that dungeon so fast. Because with his, there's a lot of mine carts and stuff because they're the Goron. Oh. You can just climb up the side. You can just climb up the side and get to it and turn it on and call it a day.
David Geisler:Interesting.
Kady Roberts:Instead of trying to figure it all out, which is kinda like, you could also say like, Katie, then why don't you do it the other way? But I'm like, that takes more time.
David Geisler:That's okay. Yeah. I support it. And and, you know, some would argue, well, that's the whole point with Tears of the Kingdom or the the breath or new Zelda, like, there's no wrong way to do it. As long as you can do it, you can do it.
David Geisler:And I actually think that's beautiful about the game. When I see my younger nieces and nephews play the game and they come up with solutions that I'd never think about or they come up with solutions that, I guess you could say, just makes sense, like based on normal physics and the way we understand elements in our natural world to to how they work in the game, I think that's awesome. Because when an adventure game and I'll even include Zelda in this. When when a Zelda game is at its worst, which is not often, sometimes in the older games, you have to go, like, well, wait. What do the designers want me to do right now?
David Geisler:Yeah. Instead of, like, looking at your surroundings and figuring it out. And so and and that happens very rarely in Zelda games, which is why I like them so much. Usually, you can be totally immersed in the experience and and and figure out the puzzle. Speaking about your done your Switches comment though, and I've I've already told you this stuff, Mike, but I wanna include it with for our audience.
David Geisler:You already know this, but I don't know. Maybe three weeks ago, I got to the Water temple.
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:I'm someone who actually likes all the water temples. I know they get a bad rap, but I love, like, a really good challenging puzzle box dungeon puzzle box dungeon where Mhmm. A switch on the top floor of something might change the context of something on the bottom floor, and you have to kinda think about how you're gonna use these, you know. Usually water dungeons deal a lot with like raising water up and And so if the water's at a certain height, like can you access a thing or not or can you not get to a thing or not? And I I love those kinds of puzzles.
David Geisler:I think that stuff's fun. Okay. Fine. I digress. So I'm at the Water Temple and, you know, Siden's like, oh, no.
David Geisler:We have to turn on these four switches or whatever. And I'm like, okay. Okay. Okay. That's cool.
David Geisler:And, yes, the puzzles to turn the switches on evoked classic water style puzzles to me. Yeah. There was raising and lowering water. There was, like, using water to conduct electricity, it was kinda cool. Mhmm.
David Geisler:There were, like, little snippets of some of my favorite aspects of previous water dungeons, but I tell you, I got about three of those switches switched, and I saw the last one, and it was down low, the one that was underneath, and I was like, yeah, you know, cool. I don't know. Maybe I'll just jump off and, like, go back and look around down down in Hyrule. And I I hopped off, and of course, Scyton's like, wait. Are you leaving?
David Geisler:If you leave, you know, I'll I'll be here. Wait for I'll be here with you. Return. And I found myself for the past three weeks, I haven't gone back. Yeah.
David Geisler:Because if part of me, and this is not a complaint, I think this is an an okay and appropriate emotional experience to have, but a part of was like, I don't know. I just I just don't really wanna do that right now. I think I kinda wanna go down and go back into the forest and do whatever. And I don't know if that's good or bad. But
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I will say now that I have played the four main champion dungeons, I think the water one in this might be my least favorite. Mhmm. Not that it did anything wrong or bad because it was still very enjoyable, and there wasn't anything that I was like, this is game breaking. I can't figure it out.
Kady Roberts:It just I don't know. I feel like they could have done more with the water elements of it, I guess.
David Geisler:I'll admit that when you get to that little, like, water cavern under the lake before the water temple
Kady Roberts:Mhmm.
David Geisler:I was into that in a big way. Yeah. That felt like a
Kady Roberts:classic temple to gonna be, like, the water temple because it was so much of water everywhere.
David Geisler:And you are moving the water up and down. It was so
Kady Roberts:cool anyway. No. Just because this one, they do have those like conduct electricity, but it's really just you go to this part. Okay. There's water over here.
David Geisler:Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:You're you're oh, go over here. You're still on the ground. Oh, what is. Water over here. It's it's not like a full water temple or dungeon because it's just water bits and pieces.
David Geisler:You are 100% right. That's what it is. I didn't even think about this. Thank you. It's Each puzzle is kinda contained to itself Mhmm.
David Geisler:And it would have been really cool if by changing this puzzle, it adversely changes a different puzzle somewhere else, and you have to balance those things. That would have been awesome, but it's okay. I'm not complaining about it.
Kady Roberts:Oh, yeah.
David Geisler:No. But my my my my thesis here, the thing I'm spiraling around that I'm trying to kinda make a point about is having it just be switches. Even though some of these classic these dungeons are feeling more classic, the fact that it is just switches give me gives me an emotional exit point anytime I want. And I think that's probably okay Yeah. But it does happen.
David Geisler:Whereas when you go into a classic dungeon, in Ocarina, Twilight, Skyward, Wind Waker, whatever, even the handhelds, you're kind of like, you know, you like, I remember in let's just use Twilight Princess, and you get into the it says Water Temple or something, you're like Mhmm. Rubbing your hands together, like, alright. Here's the next three hours of my life. Yeah. This is a mini gate.
David Geisler:This is a game inside the game. And guess what? There's eight of them. In Twilight Princess, there's 14 of them or whatever. You know what I mean?
David Geisler:And then so you'd get excited to go into these dungeons because you knew you weren't getting out. You could leave to get things, but you really weren't you you had to solve what was going on in there to move forward.
Kady Roberts:Because you couldn't like, it wasn't emotionally fulfilling until you finished it all, you know?
David Geisler:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas with
Kady Roberts:this, it's, it is just like, switch, switch. Okay. Cool. There's no like, There's no like, oh, what what's gonna happen at the end of this? Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:I can't. I have to keep going because I don't know what's gonna happen at the end. It's like, okay. You kind of know what's gonna happen. It's all good.
Kady Roberts:So, yeah, I'll just leave. I'll come back when I'm ready. You know? Yeah. It's fine.
David Geisler:And I'm realizing in a in a more traditional dungeon, when you're you know, as you get to know these dungeons, can beat them in, know, fifteen minutes. But the first time and especially when you're a kid, you're playing, it's an easy it's an hour or two sometimes if you're Yeah. Sometimes you're just circling around trying to figure out what's going on and you finally understand the context of the whole dungeon, then you can make it so that on a second playthrough, can go through pretty quickly. But, anyway, the point is there's plenty of times, even in an of Time dungeon where like, I remember being in the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time, and you're kinda like so deep into it that even emotionally and literally and logically, you're like, well, I can't get out. Like, I'm in.
David Geisler:I'm in. I'm stuck in this.
Kady Roberts:Again, I haven't finished Skyward, but that's how I feel during Skyward. I'm like, I'm in this temple, in the water Temple. Yeah. Okay. There's a thing here that says, okay.
Kady Roberts:You can go to the sky if you want. Mhmm. I'm not gonna leave. I'm like halfway through. I I can finish this, you know.
David Geisler:So that is so I'm happy that the the dungeon experience is leaning closer into classic dungeons in Tears of the And, you know, we we we were talking about we have a couple minutes left. We were talking about how some so there's, like, classic vibes in Yes. Kingdom. I I said the wells do that for me. Obviously, the enemies coming some of the classic enemies coming back is doing that for me.
David Geisler:I love it. For me, the depths feel like those old Nintendo games for me. I love that the dungeons are leaning back into a classic dungeon experience. There are times where I'm in the caves, and that feels more like a classic dungeon almost sometimes. You know what I mean?
David Geisler:I'm trying to think of some other things where, you know, with Breath of the Wild, Nintendo switched it up so much that I think they just needed to switch it up so that people were just like, okay. We're resetting our palette here.
Kady Roberts:Exactly.
David Geisler:But now to lean back into some of the classic stuff in tears, I'm I'm loving it.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. I I really do love it. And even though I, again, I don't have as much back knowledge to make these connections, even as someone who, like I said, I didn't know for a very long time in the game that these were classic Zelda creatures that I just never seen before.
David Geisler:Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:I went in. I was like, there's a really big that's awesome. Mhmm. Oh, there's a dragon now. That's really cool.
Kady Roberts:So even as, like, if someone went in completely blind with Zelda, didn't know anything about the previous creatures, they're still really enjoyable. And all the new stuff that they added from previous games, if you didn't know they're from previous games, they're still super fun and, like, really cool.
David Geisler:I'm realizing as we're doing this, we really haven't spoken about the story at all. Maybe we can save that for another day. Maybe we because this is first impressions. And and I am I through AZP, I have come to really enjoy the lore of the Zelda games. But before AZP, before 2017, I really view these games more as like a game designer.
David Geisler:It was more just the mechanics, and I didn't really care about the lore so much. I mean, was it was fun in the context of each game, but there are other franchises that I get that personally, like, I get a little bit more excited about Star Wars lore, you know, and stuff like that. Yeah. But these days, I think what Nintendo's doing with Skyward in Breath and Tears and all that stuff bringing a little bit more learn lore in, I'm totally into it. So I'm realizing in this conversation, we spoke more about the mechanics than we did the lore.
David Geisler:I think maybe we save a Tears of the Kingdom story Story recap. Thoughts or whatever, maybe for a little bit later. Maybe it's even in early season seven. Maybe it's the end of season six around the holidays or something like that. Because I do have thoughts about the story so far.
David Geisler:And in broad strokes, I'm I'm perfectly fine and enjoying the story so far. In if you're listening to this episode, we recently did an episode with the Zelda cast where we also spoke about some of the story elements of Tears of the Kingdom. And so I invite you to go over to that. Maybe I'll throw it in our comments here, a link to that episode where we can start talking about that a little bit. But on the whole, I'm cool with the Tears of the Kingdom story.
David Geisler:Mhmm. Broad strokes, as we finish the episode up, what are your thoughts and feelings on the story?
Kady Roberts:I enjoyed the story a lot. I think I like Breath of the Wilds a little bit more though. That's my broad stroke
David Geisler:Mhmm.
Kady Roberts:Which I'm happy to go into more in another episode if you guys keep listening.
David Geisler:Oh, that's another good point. Yeah. Another, like, thing where we're leaning back into classic Zelda is having Ganondorf back. Everyone already knows it from the trailers. For the most part, I'm very pleased about that.
Kady Roberts:Oh, no. I am thrilled about the thought of having Ganon. Mhmm. And and I wanted to say way back, I kinda forgot about it, like, towards the beginning of this when I was talking about if they made, like, a potential third one and talked about the reincarnations, it would be really cool if you had to go up against the different Ganons from the different games.
David Geisler:Oh, wow. Interesting.
Kady Roberts:Because they do have oh, which I again, I was talking with Nico downstairs Yeah. When I was watching them fight Phantom Ganon, and I'm like, that that that's the Phantom armor that you can get in your kingdom.
David Geisler:Exactly. Yeah.
Kady Roberts:You didn't know that? Was like, no. I didn't know that. And so with that, it would be kinda cool to tie that into.
David Geisler:I agree. I agree. And I'm gonna push up my nerd lore glasses here for a second. Actually, one thing that would be really cool is that personally, I think the vehicle they could use to do that would be to, like, have Demise bring all these different Ganondorfs in. Yeah.
Kady Roberts:I mean, they have the Phantom Ganons already in Tears of
David Geisler:the Kingdom. Have not I have not finished most of the story of Tears of Kingdom, but I think you and I might agree on something that we didn't have a chance to discuss this on the Zelda cast episode. I think we both feel that the Calamity Ganon Mhmm. Is not the same creature or situation as the the demon king Ganondorf Absolutely. Which is the kingdom.
Kady Roberts:Feel like they're two very separate entities.
David Geisler:My headcanon, because after playing Skyward Sword, you you'll eventually meet Demise as you play Skyward Sword. And Demise is, like, this kind of all being evil power that basically says, I'm always gonna come back and haunt you highly up. In other words, I'm always gonna find a Ganon. I'm gonna find some kind of entry point back into the world. And my so far my headcanon is that Ganondorf, you know, Demon King Ganondorf, Mummy Ganondorf, Tears of Kingdom really is down there under the castle.
David Geisler:I feel that Calamity Ganon wasn't coming out of the demon king Ganondorf. I think for me, if I wanna lean into the the Demise thing, I think it was Demise just trying any way to get back out into the normal world. Yeah. And the best he could do was essentially a force of nature, which is really what Chlamydogan is. Chlamydogan is even, you know, the final boss and all the little blights and stuff like that, they're just really kind of just
Kady Roberts:You put it really well when you talked about it kind of like a fungi.
David Geisler:Oh yeah, did mention that. Yeah, like it was growing, right?
Kady Roberts:Yeah.
David Geisler:And so if Ganondorf from Tears of the Kingdom and Calamity Ganon are both fueled separately but from the same source that being demise, I can wrap my head around that. I think that's kind of
Kady Roberts:cool. I think that'd be really cool.
David Geisler:Anyways, was just I couldn't help myself and just throw that in at the of the episode here. So I think we'll obviously, we're gonna return back to more Tears of the Kingdom stuff. Right now, we're gonna go back down. I think they're transitioning into I'm not sure what they're what's on the schedule right now, actually.
Kady Roberts:Clue.
David Geisler:But in about a half an hour, we record another episode with the Zelda cast, and then in a couple hours, I'm gonna be recording with Mazes, the the the man who runs Zelda Dungeon. It's gonna be a lot of fun. So Katie, this is a great conversation. Do you have any final thoughts that maybe didn't give you a chance to say?
Kady Roberts:I don't think so. I feel like I kinda put it all out there.
David Geisler:Alright. Cool. Cool. Where can people find you?
Kady Roberts:You can find me at katyroberts.com, k a d y, if you wanna see my website, or you can go to mind underscore of underscore k a d y on Instagram.
David Geisler:And you can find me on Instagram and raptor paint or Instagram and Twitter at raptor paint. Katie, I just realized, as we're finishing the episode, the shade is finally just hitting you.
Kady Roberts:It's finally out.
David Geisler:I've been in the shade for most of the episode. I'm so sorry about that. Had we known that that's the way the sun was gonna move, I just didn't pay attention. Thank you for enduring.
Kady Roberts:Oh, it's all good.
David Geisler:People can find the show at anotherzelda.com or on Twitter at another Zelda pod, Instagram another Zelda podcast. Really that's kind of all we have to say these days. We're available on all the podcast services. We've got a YouTube channel. We've got some extra content there.
Kady Roberts:You can find us somewhere.
David Geisler:You can find us pretty easy. One time we had a guest that was on that was just like, just Google anotherzelda podcast. There's a whole page that pops up Yeah. Of all the accounts and all the things. So, hopefully you can find us there and listen to some of our other episodes.
David Geisler:Katie, I think we'll get out of here and go rejoin the marathon party.
Kady Roberts:Yeah. Sounds great. Thanks you guys for listening.
David Geisler:See you later.