Like many, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild blew me away the first time I played it. In fact, I got so heavily invested in the game that I abruptly discovered a love for camping in the wilderness. I tried it out for the first time two weeks after finishing my hundred-plus hours with the game, and I’ve camped roughly four dozen times since. BOTW didn’t just knock my Korok socks off; it was a defining moment in my life.
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I’ll be a good Quinton, just give me this one thing.
And yeah, Tears of the Kingdom was a big deal, too. So, when I tell you that holding off on replays of these two monumental video games in the hopes of early enhanced versions for the Nintendo Switch 2 has been an excruciatingly difficult achievement, know that I mean it. My patience has been rewarded with a pair of Switch 2 ports that were, and I say this with an entirely straight face, my Direct announcement highlights.
Mario Kart World looks rad as heck. Donkey Kong Bananza does, too. I don’t think I will ever want my friends’ faces eating up parts of the screen in a Mario Party game – or any game, for that matter – but the pending console’s social functionality is still impressive. But no new game, no hardware perk, is enough to rival the feelings I had upon getting my first glimpses of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom in vivid HDR, with improved performance and bold new features.
Under any other set of circumstances, the middling performance of these two marquee titles would not have impacted my enjoyment much, if at all. But when I am so utterly enraptured in an unrivaled sense of virtual exploration, the chug-along frame rates found in BOTW and TOTK can put a real dent in my escapist joy. Those slowdowns slowed down my immersion, briefly reminding me that I was not, in fact, in Hyrule. I wasn’t wielding the Master Sword; I was holding a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller.
I shudder to imagine, then, what Hyrule is going to hit me with at a silky smooth frame rate. For hours on end, I will forget where I am. Well, save for when my cats meow at me. I promise I’ll play with them, too, but my heart will be in Hyrule, and it will all be more breathtaking than ever.
More than just the improved frame rate, people can build me all the spectacular Tears of the Kingdom vehicles that they wish, and I’ll just download them to my heart’s content, because frankly, I am terrible at building things. Bless you for this, Nintendo. There are new voice memories in the connected smartphone app that’ll fire up when I enter important in-game locations. There’s Zelda Notes, which will function as a GPS to help folks locate those hard-to-find collectibles and more. I’ll never use it, because it rather defeats the purpose for me, but I won’t judge you if you do, I promise.
At the end of the day, none of that matters. They could have re-released the games precisely as-is, and the resolution and performance upticks would still have sent me over the moon. There is nothing else in the gaming medium that so effortlessly takes my breath away, and I am geeking out today just as thoroughly as most Nintendo fans would be if a new Smash or 3D Mario had been announced. Have I already completed every single thing in Breath of the Wild? Yes. Did I come perilously close to that feat in Tears of the Kingdom? Yup. Will I do it all again? You betcha.
On Switch, Breath of the Wild’s forests and lakes sent me to the woods and rivers of reality. When these games see me soaring past mountains at 4K resolution, will I feel compelled to take up hang-gliding? Probably not, but if you’d asked me seven years ago whether I’d be out there on my lonesome, soaking in the great outdoors on a monthly basis, I’d certainly have laughed. Perhaps I’d best start strengthening my arms.
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Finally, I shall be a very cool gamer. And it’s all thanks to you.