Since picking up The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at release I have been making my way through it ever so slowly. My opinion of it so far stands with what others have already said, like my cohort, The Duck of Indeed. My quick review at this point (main story-wise, I’ve so far helped the Rito and Goron) is that Tears of the Kingdom represents a step forward from Breath of the Wild in ways mostly good. On the upside, Link’s new abilities are fun to play around with, there are some excellent story beats within the quests to help Hyrule’s inhabitants, and exploring Hyrule proper is very enjoyable (more on that in a moment). On the downside, the main temples are cumbersome and confusing, the sky and depths provide more areas to explore but don’t offer much reason for doing so, and the overall story is just “there,” like background noise.

Despite any drawbacks, I’m have a very good time with the game in one respect that I mentioned: exploring. While being able to do so both above and below ground in the game is fine, it’s roaming Hyrule – on foot or horseback, using the glider, or via whatever weird machine I’m able to create in the moment — that’s been most captivating. And doing so has reinstalled the simple notion of “going with the flow,” which is something I’d lost sight of in recent times.

It sounds a little odd to admit, what with my preference for open world games in general. Quite recently, I felt as though I had been drifting through various self-directed games like a boat lost at sea. I missed having a certain degree of “thoughtlessness” in games that set objectives and goals for the players. (The waxing and waning of switching between open world games and anything but has defined my own trend with games for some time now. I’ll start most open world games quite enthusiastically, and maybe I’ll roll credits and maybe not. Regardless, the next game in line will likely be something much more “on the rails,” static, goal-oriented, traditional.) So, when I began Tears of the Kingdom, I expected to be met with a “figure it out for yourself” mindset. But the game’s tutorial in the Sky Kingdom, which came with the goal of reaching the Temple of Time, offered quite a lot of help, tips, and tricks, what with the game’s new mechanics. It wasn’t until Link was literally dropped onto Hyrule itself that the fun began.

Well, not that it was exactly “fun” at first. As with me in any open world game, being let loose with no particular goal always feels overwhelming. I wandered for a bit before finding something on which to set my sights: a shrine and a nearby settlement. Before too long, my quest queue was filling up with both main and side missions. The more folks I talked too, the more jobs I received. While it felt good to be so needed, I eventually found that there was a lot more to this version of Hyrule than met the eye. I figured I would just follow the main quest about investigating disturbances around Hyrule, but trying to reach my first intended goal – Rito Village – proved much more challenging than I suspected. The game wasn’t going to just let me march in to Rito Village and start being the hero. I needed to prepare! I need to do some leveling up if I was to survive, find the right clothing (since the Rito’s territory was under a blizzard), and get Link a horse or two, and open up the map so I’d know where I was going. That process alone was what first took me off the beaten path. I began exploring for the sake of, well…exploring.

As I worked to make my way to Rito Village, I stopped thinking “I must do this quest above all else!” and starting thinking “what is out there?” I’m no stranger to empty open worlds, but empty though they may turn out, I still find joy in the journey. Maybe it leads to nothing; maybe in Tears of the Kingdom it might lead to a cave or a glyph or a Korok puzzle. Either way, the search is worth it. It reminds me that I need to stop feeling so uptight about setting and achieving goals in games, any and all games, and just enjoy the world that’s been developed. I deal with plenty of real world pressure to do and make and accomplish in order to meet expectations, mine or those of others, and often my time in games reflects that, unfortunately. Tears of the Kingdom has reminded me that while there’s nothing wrong with fabricating reasons to progress, it’s sometimes better to just go with the flow. Turn those mysterious corners, throw those random rocks, climb that bizarrely-shape mountain, because you never know what you might discover.

All images, including lede, were captured by author during gameplay of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (© Nintendo).