This article is part of a directory: The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom - Complete Guide And Walkthrough
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It’s that time of year again. I consider certain rounds of discourse to be seasonal holidays for me and my fellow gamers. Should Dark Souls have difficulty settings? Is Joel truly a hero in The Last of Us? Am I a leftist anti-christ determined to spread my woke agenda long before vanishing into the night? These are all important questions, but none have definitive answers.

With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releasing later this week, I want to crack open a particular chestnut that is bound to spread across the internet soon enough. I am, of course, talking about weapon degradation, a mechanic in Breath of the Wild that sees swords, spears, bows, shields, sticks, and basically anything Link can use to kill things break after enough use. If you throw them at enemies in their final moments, weapons disintegrate, granting you a hefty damage bonus in exchange for your favourite broadsword. Some people love it. Some people hate it. And I get it.

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It’s understandable to be frustrated when your powerful sword breaks in the throes of combat, leaving Link scrambling around for an alternative on the ground or flipping through his inventory hoping that something can help finish this job. You choose a preferred weapon or three and don’t tend to deviate, so when they’re forcibly taken away from you to help service experimentation you’re not even that interested in, the game feels unfair. It’s why so many of us loved the Master Sword, because it recharged instead of exploding into little pieces. Frustrating though it is, without degradation Breath of the Wild would be awfully boring, and spit in the face of its own design philosophy. Weapons fading away and returning also reflects the disposition of Hyrule, which itself remains in a cycle of death and rebirth at the whims of the rising Blood Moon.

link looking over hyrule in breath of the wild
via Nintendo

When Link emerges from the Shrine of Resurrection onto the Great Plateau, he is a sloppily dressed amnesiac twink with little awareness of where to go or what to do. Tutorials and hints are peppered through the first few characters you meet and shrines you solve, but otherwise Breath of the Wild is all about fucking around and finding out. Marching into battle with rusty weapons and gawking in surprise when they break is a failure on your part, and the opening area is built in a way that deliberately educates you, administering the tough love required to claim Breath of the Wild as your own. You grow more confident after figuring out how long certain equipment lasts and how best to make use of it, thinking ahead in most situations to when you’ll need to switch out your arsenal or conjure up a new strategy on the fly. Take it away, and combat falls victim to a foundational simplicity it otherwise supersedes.

Over the years we’ve labelled the presence of weapon degradation as impeding whatever progress we’re hoping to make, whether it be during a shrine or the puzzle-covered innards of a Divine Beast. To that I say - come better prepared if you can help it. Breath of the Wild’s small yet ambitious selection of base mechanics all interact with one another and all of your equipment in fascinating ways. Metallic weapons can be paired with currents of electricity to solve puzzles, or the momentum of stasis combined with quick attack bursts can send Link and pretty much anything else hurtling into the stratosphere. You are rewarded for pushing back against expectations and trying things that wouldn’t traditionally be expected, and so often rewarded for thinking outside the box.

link riding through the sky in tears of the kingdom
via Nintendo

Some of my finest moments in Breath of the Wild originate from finding myself not butting heads with weapon degradation, but dancing gracefully alongside it as I realise how such a major restriction can lead to countless bouts of creativity. You don’t need to upgrade weapons because they’re in abundance, and so varied in the damage they deal and what they can do depending on the enemies and environments that you’ll never stick with the same tools for very long anyway. Take it away, and I could see myself slipping into a tired routine, avoiding natural combat encounters altogether knowing in my mind they will play out the exact same way.

Those who cling onto all their shiny weapons can make the same argument though, and this is where the line has been drawn for so long. Breath of the Wild is a true Zelda adventure in countless ways, but it also diverges from the formula with daring changes not everyone was comfortable with. Some preferred a linear mode of progression with set dungeons and biomes, while others embraced a sense of freedom that reinterpreted several decades of history into something new. I’m in the latter group, and without weapon degradation and this consideration for our own capabilities several other elements wouldn’t ring true, or at least fail to connect in the ways Nintendo likely intended.

Link protects Zelda in Gerudo Desert after defeating a Yiga Clan Member

I’ll have more to say about the evolution of weapon degradation once Tears of the Kingdom is out in the wild, since the presence of equipment fusing not only addresses initial concerns, but challenges them with a fundamental mechanic that serves to make battles more complex and interacting with the environment more innovative than ever before. If nothing on your person broke or weathered away under certain conditions, there would be no need for it. To me, that single-handedly paints weapon degradation as not only a positive idea, but one that Breath of the Wild relies on to pursue the masterful creativity at the centre of its repertoire.

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