What you need to know about Zelda Tears of the Kingdom 

Nintendo set the standard for open world video gaming when it released The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game did not force players to complete rigid tasks as it had in previous games in the series. Instead, it let them explore Hyrule and choose their own adventures. The game still included battles against Bokoblins and monsters but also allowed users to explore the natural world and cook their own food.

Breath of the Wild was a hit, converting many who wouldn’t otherwise call themselves gamers.

Now, six years later, Nintendo has dropped the game’s sequel. The highly anticipated Tears of the Kingdom is situated on the same map of Hyrule, but expands the world up — and down.

You can find out more about this by clicking here. Today, Explained, Polygon senior editor Mike Mahardy joins host Sean Rameswaram to explain why this franchise is so influential in the gaming world, and why it seems like — with the success of HBO’s The Last of Us Adaptation and the Mario movie — video games are having a moment right now.

Here is a short excerpt, edited to make it more concise and clear. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today’s Explained Listen to the podcasts wherever you listen, such as Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

This game is incredibly popular, including with people who previously weren’t gamers. Breath of the Wild brought in how many people to this game?

Breath of the Wild is estimated to have sold 30 million copies. Breath of the Wild sold more copies in the early days than the consoles required to play it. Breath of the Wild is one of those watershed games.

Wow. What if Breath of the Wild had sold 30,000,000 copies at…? Ish?

This was $60 per game. So that’s about $1.8 billion, just doing the general multiplication. There are many deals and trade-ins that would have allowed people to avoid paying full price. Tears of the Kingdom costs $70. The cost of games has just gone up in line with inflation.

It is similar to Top Gun Maverick Money, if you can. This is just as profitable as an enormous blockbuster film and more so than many popular TV shows.

Yeah. You can, for instance, look at the new Mario The movie has just crossed $500,000,000 in box office sales. Granted, that’s only five weeks into its run, and Breath of the Wild is six years old. But right now, if you’re comparing them, sales of Breath of the Wild more than triple the Mario Movie box office sales

Wow. What made Breath Of The Wild so revolutionary? What was it about this game that made it so popular and profitable for Nintendo?

It’s the same thing that made the original Legend of Zelda in the late ’80s so powerful. It was all about exploring this world for the sake of exploration, and developers were clever enough to reward it. Players kept exploring, confident that they would find something cool or interesting.

Breath of the Wild actually is very similar to that first game. The only difference is that the technology has improved. The developers are more experienced and have better hindsight. It was 2017, not 1986. So all these open world games that were coming out in the early aughts and the 2010s were very much about like, “Go knock these boxes on a checklist off.” Breath of the Wild was just much more organic in the way you’re exploring. And it really was just kind of like going back to the concept of the original Zelda, but with new tech, better hardware, more experience on the developers’ part.

Wow. And is the sequel to Breath of the Wild — Tears of the Kingdom, which comes out today — going to be bigger?

It’s hard to say. They haven’t released figures yet. Nintendo is normally a bit secretive when it comes to their finances. But it’s one of those games where Nintendo released a teaser a few years ago and people were not just combing through this 30 seconds of a teaser to see what that character said. They were like, “Oh, I heard this weird little sound snippet in the background.” Some people were even playing them backward, almost like you would an old-school Led Zeppelin record to hear demonic messages that Robert Plant might have been sending you.

You may remember that Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo The remake was not as good. There is a chance Tears of Kingdom The disappointment of fans What is Breath of Wild?

Today is the day that this game was released. The game has been with me for about two weeks.

You’ve had it for two weeks! How did you manage that?

I reviewed it for Polygon. I’ve played it for 70 hours and still have not scratched the surface: It’s actually not really one open world in Tears of the Kingdom like it was in Breath of the Wild or any number of other open world games. It’s actually three, layered atop one another. There are these Sky Islands above Hyrule that they’ve been showing in the trailers and gameplay demonstrations. But there’s also an entire subterranean map, basically the size of Hyrule above it, that is much bigger than these Sky Islands.

So, effectively, you’re finding an item in the Sky Islands — like a treasure map — that leads you down to that subterranean map. You’ll need to collect certain items in order to illuminate the dark darkness of Hyrule, the middle-world, to be able to explore the Depths.

Explore the Sky Islands

Nintendo

Breath of the Wild is a great game, but I can see how it could turn off some people who really enjoyed it., Breath of the Wild, compared to Tears of the Kingdom was more like an introduction. Even 70 hours into Tears of the Kingdom, I’m still — even right now, while we’re speaking — I’m thinking of things I haven’t tried. Like, “How can you build these vehicles? How can you fuse together different items to make new weapons?” I think people might find it overwhelming, especially those people who came in with Breath of the Wild.

This means that it will be at least as large, if no bigger, than the predecessor. What would it mean for Nintendo and the gaming market?

Breath of the Wild for Nintendo was their repudiation, so to speak, of open world games — those maps you’re dropped into to explore. Since the early 2000s, open-world games have become stale. Publishers like Ubisoft released games where you were dropped into a world with icons scattered all over. The UI looked cluttered and crowded. It had six missions on the side.

Breath of the Wild appeared as a kind of reaction to that. Since its release, we’ve seen tons of developers chasing after Breath of the Wild’s design: Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodborne. If you don’t know those games, they don’t care how difficult they are. They don’t care whether it’s going to take some work on the player’s part to figure out what’s going on. They’re like, “Hey, go find this general boss and then see if you could beat them.” And, you know, we’ll figure out where to go from there.

So I think the games industry at large — I’m hoping, at least, as a fan of those games — will chase after Tears of the Kingdom the way huge studios have chased after Breath of the Wild.

Nintendo needed this on the tech side as well. They’re definitely behind other large companies, like Microsoft with Xbox and Sony with PlayStation. Even Valve now with SteamDeck for PCs. Breath of the Wild pushed the Nintendo Switch hardware in 2017 Tears Of The Kingdom is no exception. They recently said not to expect the Switch 2 or Switch Pro — whatever it happens to be — in 2023, so they really needed a big win on the creative side, the software side. So it means a lot for Nintendo — financially, sure, but also in terms of continuing the relevance that Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Breath of the Wild established. It’s a big deal for them.

You mentioned that Mario A little while back, I watched a movie. I wonder, it feels like video games are kind of everywhere right now — in the movie theater; HBO just had a very popular TV show, The Last of USThe film is based on the video game. Video games are they more prevalent in our culture today?

I think it’s less that video games are having a moment right now and more that this is the result of a build-up. I’m hesitant to put the blame on lockdown and Covid but, in reality, during lockdown people were playing Animal Crossing. Video games became less this little hobby you do on the side alongside the TV shows you’re watching, alongside the movies you’re watching, alongside the books you’re reading. It has become a cultural force which is a binder in social groups.

I’m willing to bet most people play games in some respect, whether it’s Wordle in their family chat or it’s Marvel Snap on the subway.

How you use Tinder to find your partner or how you invest in money on Robinhood.

Duolingo! It’s a game-like way to learn languages. These platforms have benefited from the video game UI, and how video games can teach us. In some ways, I think everyone is what we call “a gamer” at this point.

What do you think? The Last of Us This tentpole is on HBO. Mario movie — which is a bit more based on nostalgia than actually trying to be a quality drama — both of those are the result of video games having been mainstream for a while. Now, creators from other disciplines are trying their best to make this a reality for other audiences.

Other disciplines, as you generously call them, have always wanted to profit off of anything that’s popular, be it Barbie You can also find out more about Super Mario Brothers Whatever it is, you can do that. You will return to Tears of the Kingdom or its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, it feels like for a lot of people, it’s about just escaping. It’s just about spending some time in a world that’s really satisfying.

One of the most popular games for Switch that was released during lockdown was about living a normal, everyday life. Animal Crossing consisted of: you wake up, tend your crops, perhaps you harvest some, and then go speak to your friend, who is also the curator at a museum. And there was something really rewarding about having that normal life cycle when we’re all just kind of confined to our apartments.

Today, I think that more and more people have realized that games are not always about combat. Some games can be pure escapism and pure discovery. And Tears of the Kingdom, This is, to me at least, one of the clearest examples of what can happen when developers take into account that people are curious and want to have their curiosity rewarded.