Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The Joy of Movement
Watching Link fall through the clouds, plummeting to Hyrule, while in the distance a dragon floated through the sky, created in me what can only be described as an overwhelming emotional reaction. Specifically it was pure joy. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I laughed in a way that, I’m ashamed to admit, I don’t do very often. I was almost trembling; the joy was so encapsulating. I cannot begin to fathom how the developers of this game managed to make me laugh that way multiple times throughout my playthrough of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Upon reflection I know for sure that a constant source of this joy was simply moving Link in, around, below, above, and through Hyrule.
Which leads me back to the question I asked about Pac-Man, Spartan: Total Warrior, and Wario Land 3.
Why is it so fun to move Link?
But before I answer that let’s get the facts of the game established.
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released for Nintendo Switch on 12th May 2023 to great fanfare and not only because the previous game in the series, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released six years earlier in 2017 and fans like me were ravenous for DLC content or an outright sequel.
Cover art provided by The Cover Project
On that note, before I can talk about Tears of the Kingdom, I need to discuss its predecessor.
Breath of the Wild was, simply put, a moment in the videogame industry because it marked the first instance of a Legend of Zelda game dramatically altering its familiar structure. Typically Legend of Zelda games were Metroidvanias, i.e. games that were built around obstacles that could only be passed by progressing the main story and acquiring items. For someone like me who was virtually raised on Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the idea that Link would hop into an “open-world” game left me bumfuzzled and more than a tad dubious. Eventually I bought a Nintendo Switch, and the first game for the system I purchased was Breath of the Wild. It took only ten minutes to make me realize this was probably one of, if not the best open world videogame I’d ever played. And 180 hours later it still is. The open world of Breath of the Wild, and the controls the players were taught using the Sheikah Slate (a.k.a. The fantasy smartphone) felt revolutionary because they were such a dramatic departure from the typical weapon system that had been coded into my neurons after spending literal decades consistently playing Zelda videogames.
Breath of the Wild gave players new options for movement, specifically Link’s ability to jump, climb, and glide through the air using his paraglider. It’s important to remember that mountainous terrain in previous Legend of Zelda games were exclusively obstacles, and unless a path had been coded there was no way across or around a mountain. Likewise Link could technically jump in in the Legend of Zelda games, but typically that was restricted to when he acquired the Roc’s Feather, or when he was leaping to attack an enemy. The possibility of vertically rising up for the purpose of exploration wasn’t even a foreign concept in the Legend of Zelda videogame series, it just wasn’t a concept period.
It’s not hyperbole to write that Breath of the Wild was revolutionary because Link could jump and climb.
These mechanics would return in Tears of the Kingdom, but while the notion of vertical space was limited in the first game to the heights of mountains or the various towers that are obligatory to any open-world game in this post-Assassin’s Creed reality, Tears of the Kingdom took the original notion of space and, to quote the Roman philosopher, senator, historian, and early christian theologian Boethius: “cranked that dial up to 11.”
Not enough people appreciate Boethius these days. They always focus on his theological treatises, but the dude had some great stuff to write about Crash Bandicoot.
Just saying.
I could write extensively to the point of Ad Nauseum about the open-world structure of Breath of the Wild (actually I could write an absurd amount of analysis about that videogame and why its the bees freaking knees dude), but what’s important for this essay is how this new system altered my perception of movement, and how it persisted through Tears of the Kingdom. Both of these games rely on the same mechanics so to some extent this essay is about both videogames, but I really want to focus on Tears of the Kingdom.
So, let’s get into the narrative of Tears of the Kingdom, and how it inspires joy of movement.
Taking place after the events of Breath of the Wild, Link and Zelda discover a cavern beneath the ruins of Hyrule Castle that appears to be the source of a steadily increasing corruption. They discover a withered corpse within an antechamber held in place by a disembodied arm that is projecting a coiling green-blue energy up towards the ceiling. Only a minute after this discovery the hand falls off, the corpse awakens revealing itself to be the classic Zelda antagonist Ganondorf and attacks them both, Link’s arm is nearly destroyed by a blast of corruption as he protects Zelda, and the Master sword shatters. The floor beneath the pair crumbles and Zelda falls into the abyss before being consumed in a quick snap of white energy. Link is saved by the disembodied arm, and when he awakes he discovers that he’s in the ruins of an ancient civilization…and those ruins are floating stationary in the sky above Hyrule. From here Link will learn from a ghost named Rauru that Ganondorf has reawakened after centuries being held under by a powerful spell, the land of Hyrule is littered with the fallen rubble of the original kingdom of Hyrule, and that it is up to Link to find Princess Zelda and stop Ganondorf from destroying the kingdom.
Also, there’s 1000 koroks to find instead of 900 this time, but that isn’t part of the main story, or this essay.
So, the plot’s established, but what’s the rest of the game about?
Well, simply put, moving.
The very first lessons of Tears of the Kingdom are, much like Breath of the Wild, about encountering shrines and learning the four fantasy powers Link will use throughout the game. These are Recall, Ultrahand, Ascend, and Fuse. Each of these powers have their important roles in the game (and not just because one of them allows you to make things like Gundams, low-riders, Batmobile’s, and tanks using only wood and magical, fantasy engines), but the most crucial role they play is how they allow Link more liberty to move and operate in Hyrule.
Looking at the power Ascend the player can situate Link under a platform, hill, wooden infrastructure, solid stone walls, etc and with the activation of this power send Link up and into the very object. Sometimes a thin wooden platform will allow Link a quick way up, but occasionally the player will find themselves in the Depths and discover a near mile high column of solid stone. It’s impossible, even with all the stamina mushrooms in the world, to climb this obstacle, but the circle at the base of the pillar is indication enough to players.
Constantly throughout Hyrule there are heights that are seemingly insurmountable, but with a quick flourish Ascend makes crossing these obstacles easy. But this ease is only part of the joy because the actual visual and auditory display of using this power is, simply put, marvelous. Link doesn’t just move through solid stone he “swims” vertically through a green miasma of interdimensional potential before arriving at the next level his head bursting back into existence making him look like a meerkat.
One of the first times I actually used Ascend through one of these colossal underground pillars, Link arrived right in the middle of a Yiga Clan hideout. The banana obsessed weirdos stood beside each other, hunched forward discussing their vaudevillian machinations unaware that I had transcended through literal miles of solid rock just to appear behind them. I have to be honest this moment made me laugh for a solid five minutes, and this wasn’t a chuckle, this was a hearty guffaw that had literal tears rolling down my face.
The magic tools Link has access to are only part of the wonderful design that went into Tears of the Kingdom, and just as much time should be spent celebrating moving Link himself.
Since the first Legend of Zelda videogame for the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) one of the greatest appeals of the series is moving Link through the open-world of Hyrule. I recognise that contemporary readers would likely scoff at considering the original NES game from 1986 an “open world” game; it seems laughable. Compared to games like Skyrim, Brutal Legend, Final Fantasy VII, or even Tears of the Kingdom the original Legend of Zelda is more akin to a cuckoo clock than a traditional open world videogame. It's important to remember what videogames had accomplished up to that point however, and how far they’ve come. Link moved through a large open world (by the standards are of the NES system) and with each new game his sprite was continually programmed and designed to make motion fluid and, far more importantly, fun.
Link is a dynamic character right down to the most minute of physical motions.
In Tears of the Kingdom Link can run, jump, sneak, ride a horse, climb, fight, and glide through the air. Each of these actions are done with a fluid grace, and that isn’t just poetic language on my part. Simply watching Link swing his sword, run through a field, or even just gently float through the air inspires joy because of the way his body moves through 3-dimensional space. Often while playing Tears of the Kingdom I have found myself simply running through the fields of Hyrule watching Link run, his arms ahead of him, the sound of his pack and gear on his back gently clinking along with him. Just having this character running through the damn grass is fun and leaves me feeling happy, not just because of the aesthetics of the game, but from the ability to control this figure.
In terms of motion controls Link is designed at every level to respond to the player’s directions.
I typically play Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom using a control pad, specifically a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller(a solid black one(I miss see-through controllers(and see-through consoles))). I’ve played, and continue to play a number of PC games in my life so I’m not ignorant of the combination of mouse and keyboard control, but a majority of my experience with videogames is using a controller so I tend to fall back on that familiarity. There have been literally thousands of games produced for console systems, but anyone who’s played more than one videogame can attest that not every game is so fine tuned that controlling a character is easy or fun. There have been plenty of games I’ve played and quickly dropped because they employed directional pads but did not develop a control response system that’s satisfying or even aesthetically appropriate. The ease of motion whether it be walking, climbing, or gliding is fine tuned to respond to player controls, and even in moments when players are climbing up rainy mountains or shuffling through puddles of gloom the controls never feel like the player is losing control of Link.
Put another way Link doesn’t fight the player in any way, and I recognise some clarification is needed with that sentence.
I’ve been slowly working through Silent Hill 2 off and on over the last few months because it is, and I mean no hyperbole here, the most important and influential piece of media in my life. I’ve written, as of this writing, two essays about, one about the Fog and the other about Room 109, and I guarantee you by the time this essay is published I’ll have written more. What’s important is that the protagonist of the game, James Sunderland is not an easy character to control, or, more accurately compared to Link, his motions can be frustrating. Swinging a pipe at enemies, or shooting his gun, James’s controls are designed to be slower and often imprecise; this makes sense given the context of the game. Tears of the Kingdom allows players to control Link, a seasoned warrior and veteran of combat, whereas in Silent Hill 2 the protagonist is James Sunderland, a depressed and socially awkward man with no military background(that we know of) who’s trying to find his wife in a town full of monsters. It makes logical sense that controlling James would not be as fun, but beneath this is a deeper understanding of design. The makers of Silent Hill 2 were trying to create a horror experience and so the response time for movement controls contribute to the general fear and frustration of the player who’s simply trying to survive. In Tears of the Kingdom, the player controls a character who isn’t wavering despite his fear, rather they’re controlling a character who likely still feels fear but is driven by his conviction.
It doesn’t matter what manner of obstacle Link faces he is ready and willing to challenge it whether it be a Lynel, a mountain, or even falling right out of the damn sky itself.
Which of course leads me to my favorite part of the game.
Once Link has mastered the initial training levels of the ruins of ancient Hyrule the ghost of Rauru, who has by now been revealed to be the ancient King of the first kingdom, not to mention the previous owner of Link’s sweet new magic arm, tells him to return to the world below and take the fight to Ganondorf. There aren't any minced words about this since Rauru gives you the hang glider that Link possessed in Breath of the Wild and points you to a platform overlooking the kingdom below. What’s changed is the sheer distance, because while Breath of the Wild had Link jump off of a plateau, Tears of the Kingdom places Link miles above the surface of Hyrule.
Rauru didn’t have to tell me twice.
I took a deep breath, readied my thumbs over the controller, and trying my best to mimic the exact jump I had watched in the trailers over and over again I sent Link leaping majestically off the edge into a familiar, albeit new world.
I said it at the start, but it’s worth repeating, words cannot properly express the sheer emotional and intellectual weight of this moment. It bordered on the sublime, in the purest sense of that definition. Cutting all the fluff and romanticism, watching and feeling Link fall from on high created a moment of real mindfulness of where I was.
I was alive and playing a beautiful videogame.
Life was, to quote the Roman senator, dramatist, and philosopher Seneca, “Pretty damn great.”
Side note, Seneca also wrote insightful speeches about Banjo Kazooie, but most folks these days prefer his tragedies. I mean yeah Hercules and Agamenmon are sublime works of literature but, like, come on…Banjo Kazooie dude. How can you beat that?
I know that Tears of the Kingdom is a videogame, it’s a work of media composed of computer code and pixels. In that same breath, it’s also a work of human effort that brought me joy, not simply from the interactive quality of the media itself, but because it made me happy to be alive.
There have been so many moments during my playthrough where I slowed down and just watched Link walk through a patch of grass, ride his horse, or meander down the back of a dragon.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. You can literally walk on a flying dragon in this game.
Opening my Nintendo Switch’s captures can be a tad embarrassing because it’s typically large clumps of photos of Link just standing on Dinraal or Naydraa’s head while they float through the sky.
But I mean come on dude, how could you not?
The opening paragraph of this essay perfectly encapsulates what this first jump was like for me, but even after multiple jumps there really aren’t words for joyous exercise of having Link leap off the floating islands in the sky and navigate his way back down to Hyrule, leaping into the depths to explore that cavernous region, or being lifted up into the sky by the towers that act as mapping stations.
Speaking of.
Whereas Breath of the Wild relied on the now familiar trope of “Climb the Tower” to expand the map, Tears of the Kingdom redesigned this familiar game loop. Link no longer climbs towers, rather he enters them, triggers a podium, and is shot into the sky miles above to scan Hyrule beneath him with the Sheikah tablet at which point there is no other option than to simply fall back down to earth. The player can actually use towers for this exact function even after the initial interaction and it can quickly become part of the gameplay loop. There are dozens of temples, chests, treasures, and resources available in the islands in the sky and part of the fun is launching Link again and again to see how to navigate him through the stretches of empty sky and try to land on one of these airborne archipelagos. And this is nothing compared to the sheer endorphin rush of watching Link being propelled upward at the speed of a bullet. The physics of motion are on full display and calculating the arc of Link’s jumps and falls are less cold mathematical calculations are they are playground experiments.
Link’s continual kinetic energy(say that five times fast), and the ebb and flow between actions and reactions are non-stop. The aesthetic effect on the player is just an overwhelming sense of pleasure navigating Link in any and every direction possible.
I could talk, or more accurately write, about Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for hours, and not just about the design of motion within the game. Tears of the Kingdom is an exquisite gem of a videogame filled with mini-games, puzzles, side-quests, easter-eggs, and sandbox play and at the core of all of this gameplay is a joy of movement(hey! (I did the thing!)) that keeps me, well, moving. As of this writing I’ve cleared well over 180 hours[CHECK THIS***] of play on the game, almost twice as much as what I have spent on Breath of the Wild. Part of this is simply the depth of content in the game (and I do mean “The Depths”(I haven’t even explored all of that area)). Besides the sheer meat of the videogame, Tears of the Kingdom has provided me and players all over the world an incredible software program that incorporates and prioritizes motion at the core of the interface.
I feel comfortable writing it plainly: Tears of the Kingdom is, and should, be a standard for any potential player and/or designer of videogames to consider when looking at motion mechanics, and not simply because of the joy it inspires.
Link’s physical motion through his reality is one of the most finely tuned and detail oriented bits of programming I’ve encountered. While companies invest millions of dollars into R&D budgets hoping desperately that virtual reality will create the next milestone in videogame design, Nintendo has already created a virtual reality (get it?) that has brought that excitement to me as a consumer. Every aspect of gameplay involves motion, and even though I am employing a gamepad rather than joy-cons, the user interface still creates a perception of energy and agency that is emotionally and intellectually invigorating. This reflects the longtime design philosophy of Nintendo as a gaming company, and it follows the rhetorical pattern established across every Legend of Zelda game to date(except of course for Link’s Crossbow Training (but I’ll tackle that one another day)). As a work of interactive media, Tears of the Kingdom makes the player perceive themselves as strong, agile, and capable to tackle any challenge.
So, before I spend more time and digital ink extolling the accomplishments of this game, it’s worth asking the question again.
Why is it so fun to move Link?
The answer is simply too multitudinous, but boiling all the possible explanations down to their core flavor they all align along the same basic answer: once I start moving Link, I simply don’t want to stop.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
6.2.2025
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