People are crucifying Koroks. The poor little leaf waifs who are strewn across Hyrule’s map, so often stranded helpless and rendered immobile by enormous backpacks filled with goodness-knows-what, are being crucified by Tears of the Kingdom players who are eager to test the limits of the game’s new building ability, Ultrahand.
The crucifixions are the most brutal display of creativity I’ve seen (like, ever seen, not just like, seen in a Zelda game), but there’s plenty more NSFW creations where they came from. A viral tweet shows that someone built a giant stick figure with a board for a body and logs for limbs. This figure had what I can only describe as a humongous chopper, probably longer than his legs. Upon striking said wang, it emits flames. Then the balls explode and the whole thing goes up in flames. Do Zelda players have a problem? No, but Ultrahand might.
You see, I don’t actually mind these vicious displays. They’re cruel or obscene, but they are creative. I wouldn’t think to depict the death of Christ and parade a thorn-crowned Korok about the streets of Hyrule when a couple of wheels would do the job. Likewise, I didn’t see two bombs with a log and immediately think ‘fire-breathing dong’. I’ve seen catapults and cars, people are immensely clever with their creations in a thousand ways that the developers probably didn’t expect, but it’s the boring ones that do my nut in.
Ultrahand rewards creativity until it doesn’t. Often it rewards shortcuts. Not exciting, creative shortcuts, either. Shortcuts like long lines of logs stuck together. Take the entrance to Rito Village for example. There’s a blizzard and the bridge has come a cropper. But, nearby, there’s a nice lady warming herself by the fire. Talking to her reveals hints as to the properties of Hylian Pinecones, and how her friend made the dreadful mistake of throwing one onto the fire. Consider my curiosity piqued. The pinecones in question are abundant in this area of the map, so it wasn’t long before I was back at the fire, aiming one right at its centre. I tried to tell her to step back, but Link was as silent as ever, so I blame him for what happened next.
The resulting explosion was huge, and created an updraft of wind so mighty that it carried me across the bridgeless chasm and to Rito Village. I was satisfied, I’d completed the simple puzzle. I had a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, and it wasn’t just airsickness from my rapid ascent. These are the New Zelda puzzles. Instead of finding a key for a door and then a bigger key for a bigger door, you have environmental brainteasers that encourage you to interact with your surroundings and piece together the solution from pine cones and dialogue.
I later found out that most people just cut down some trees and stuck the logs together, then walked across the gap. I’m not saying it’s cheating, but it’s not particularly creative, is it? I thought Ultrahand was supposed to give players the tools to come up with ingenious ideas, or at the very least flaming dongs, and instead everyone is just building bridges?
Therein lies my problem with Ultrahand. Instead of offering a creative solution to Tears of the Kingdom’s environmental puzzles, it’s just a way to circumvent them. Can’t be bothered Fusing a fire arrow to burn some thorns blocking your path? Build a bridge. Don’t even build a bridge, move a plank and walk over it. Not got enough stamina to climb a cliff? Build a ramp. You don’t even need to use the Zonai machinery most of the time, just the convenient piles of materials dotted egregiously around Hyrule.
I’ll admit that there was one time where I thought Ultrahand was implemented well: at Rabella Wetlands Skyview Tower. This tower is surrounded by thorns, but, being in the wetlands, it’s always raining. You can build a bridge over the outer layers (or a Fuse missile-shield or Ascend if you want to engage with another mechanic), but there isn’t enough space for a bridge over the thorns by the tower’s door. This puzzled me for a short period, before I read a note left by the materials company next to its logpile. The poor, sodden worker had requisitioned a tarpaulin to keep the wood dry. It was above my head as I read it. I was dry, and so was the wood.
I quickly Ultrahanded (is that a verb now?) together a makeshift tent – it was more of a table really, but it worked well enough – and placed it over the door thorns. Now sheltered from the monsoon above, my fire arrows did the job. But this is the only time in my first eight-or-so hours that Ultrahand has forced me to engage with the mechanics that make modern Zelda games so special. The rest of the time, it’s just been a shortcut, and a boring shortcut at that.
You don’t gain much from using a pinecone fireball over cobbling together a bridge. It doesn’t make me a better player than bridge-builders. It doesn’t mean that you’re playing the game wrong – you’re engaging with the mechanics just as the developers intended! – but, for me, some of the magic has been lost. It’s as if the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time gave you Hover Boots, but instead of just helping you across gaps, they teleported you straight to Bongo Bongo.
I’m only just starting my Tears of the Kingdom journey, but I’m struggling to see the point of Ultrahand. I like seeing players flex their creativity, even the most obscene examples, but the flexes are always just for fun. It’s players’ minds that are leading them to craft crucifix carts and combustion engines, not the game. Tears of the Kingdom is happy if you just glue 12 logs end to end and slap it over a gap in the mountains.