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Well, alright.

It’s time for me to tackle the tower at Lookout Landing. I walk over, and I find Purah fiddling with the controls of the tower.

She activates the tower, and it lights up. All around the area, other towers also light up, all at once, as if on a network. A beacon of light streams out of the top of the tower, lighting up the sky.

The towers are activated. That wasn’t hard!

Purah tells me that I can update the map data on my Purah Pad if I visit the tower, and it will install the region that it has in its data banks. This will enable me to instantly travel to that tower, but also to have detailed map of the area around the tower.

So basically very much like the tower-map-fast travel system of BOTW, but updated a little bit.

Purah also gives me my glide wing back, and then tells me that they need me to go up the tower to scan the area with my Purah Pad to obtain an updated image of the terrain. So this is, I guess, why I can’t get the entire map of Hyrule all at once; I have to visit each tower, go to the top, and scan the land with the pad. There’s also map data for the sky level of the map, which is also updated. So Hyrule is effectively twice as big as in BOTW because there are two levels.

OK, so I go do that. I stand on a glowing section of floor in the middle of the tower, and it shoots me up, high into the air, all in a few seconds I’m maybe a thousand feet or more above the ground.

I’m on a tether, and the tether is like a data cable or something, the pad sends the data down the cable to the base of the tower, below.

After that, I’m free to fall, dive, or glide back to earth.

I’m very high up, and can see a long way. As I’m coming down, I try to look about and see what I can see.

I don’t try to move anywhere, because I want to test whether the winds will blow me about, or if I will just fall straight down; I fall straight down, right back into the hole at the top of the tower. At the very last instant, I use the glider to slow my descent, landing without taking any damage. Luckily.

I try going up the tower again, and it shoots me back up into the sky. This time, I test how fast I can move horizontally without deploying the glider. It’s not very fast, but I’m up so high that I can still manage to cover some ground. I don’t want to deploy the glider while I’m up too high, lest I run out of stamina meter and fall to my death. But maybe that works differently in TOTK than it did in BOTW for all I know. I’ll have to play around with it and test theories.

Looking around, nearby I spot a small (pond-sized) chasm in the ground not far from Lookout Landing. And not much past that, there’s a shrine. I decide to fall toward it and check it out.

I land in front of the chasm, and try to get close enough to look in. It’s pretty dark. Gloom is spewing forth from the hole in the ground, and I’m careful to avoid stepping in it. Nearby, there’s a small lean-to, with some building supplies near it. I spot a Hylian man, apparently resting in the lean-to. I go up to talk to him, and he tells me to be cautious about the Gloom, and its ruinous effects on your health. If you’re exposed it will drain your life slowly, and if you can get back to the surface, your health will slowly recover.

So, basically it’s kind of another environmental themed timer that prevents you from spending a lot of time in Gloomy areas, and forces you to hurry. So a lot like the cold and hot zones, but eeeeevil.

I continue to the shrine, and enter. The challenge is pretty simple. It involves manipulating large blocks of stone using the Ultrahand ability, and is a test of your ability to rotate and manipulate the shapes. There are two sub-challenges, and the idea is that you need to position the shape so that it will pass through a hole in the wall designed to accept the shape. This is like an IQ test for a 2 year old.

I feel like this is super simple but it’s still not entirely clear what I’m supposed to do with the shape once I get it to pass through the hole. At first I’m thinking I’m supposed to rotate the shape while it’s in the hole, using it as like a key in a lock. But that’s not it. I’m just supposed to take this long shape and pull it through an X-shaped hole, and use it as a bridge, laying it across a trench that I need to cross over to get to the next part of the shrine.

The second challenge is another block, this one is like two cubes that are welded together at the corners, creating an asymmetric shape a bit like a staircase. There’s a section of wall that I can use to position it to climb up, only it’s still not possible to climb up using conventional standard climbing techniques. It doesn’t take very long for me to realize that I can use the Ascend power, standing in the overhang of this block, and pass through the block to get to the top.

This gets me access to a chest with a potion of speed, and then I re-use the same block to get to the spirit orb and pass the challenge.

I have two spirit orbs now. Only they call them something else in this game, somethingsomething of Light or whatever. Same thing.

So that’s done. What next? Will the game tell me? Or should I just meander and screw around and figure things out?

I head up the way to Hyrule Castle like I’m supposed to. Along the way, I find more Hylians, standing around on watch. They’re part of Hoz’s search team, but they seem disorganized and inexperienced, and a bit aimless. They don’t really know what to do, but each of them tells me to continue a bit further onward, to the first gate tower, where I will find Hoz.

One of the guards is blocking a gate deeper into the Castle, and says I’m not allowed in without permission from Hoz. He doesn’t even trust me even though I’m Link.

I eventually do reach Hoz. There’s no combat or challenges to speak of. Hoz is relieved to see that I’m safe and asks me about the Princess. I explain quickly what has transpired, and then we both see Princess Zelda appear on a far tower, some distance away, yet unmistakably her.

She stands there for a brief moment, then turns into light and shoots off into the sky.

Hoz is amazed and we are all baffled. Hoz tells me that I must return to Purah at once to report what we have seen.

Huh? I just came from there. Can’t we just send a messenger? Or doesn’t Purah have another smartphone that we could just call her on??? Oh, OK…

So I head back, talking to the guards on the way, just to see if they have anything new to say.

Lol, and on the way back I realize I could have used the Ultrahand to open the great gate to the castle, instead of climbing over them like I did. Whoops. I forget these powers I have sometimes. But there’s always more than one way to do anything in this game…

On the way back, I talk to the guy who was holding up the sign of Hudson, and this time I figure out that he needs help holding the sign up. So using Ultrahand to grab a nearby piece of material, I use it to prop up the sign so it will not fall if he lets go, and then tell him to try letting go.

This works, he is happy that the sign is standing, and takes a moment to securely fasten it to the ground, and then rewards me with some rupees, and some food, and tells me he’s going to go everywhere and set up more signs. I have a feeling I’m going to end up seeing a lot of him… his name, Addison, seems to be a pun for “Add a Sign”. I think a lot of the names in the game are subtle puns. There was a guy in the search party back at the castle named “Sawtu” or “Saw, too” who also saw Princess Zelda when she appeared briefly.

After finishing with Addison, I return back to Purah’s and without wasting any time, run up and talk to her. She asks to see the Purah Pad, and says that we need to add map data to it, and to do that we need to activate a travel tower, which there happens to be one right here that they are working on completing…

Purah shows me around the town and explains the sleepover spot for resting, and a clothing shop that I can buy better clothes at if I want to, and then says when I’m ready to go up the tower, I can try it.

So I go around the area, which is called Lookout Landing, and I talk to a bunch of people. Everyone’s pretty helpful, in a tutorial kind of way, but also offering me useful information and items here and there that I might find handy later on in my quest.

I learn that the Upheaval is the term they use to describe the event that put the islands in the sky and revealed more of the Zonai technology and artifacts. This caused great rifts in the surface of the world, called chasms, and out of these chasms there is this stuff called Gloom, which is a red glowing smoke, from what I can tell. It reminds me of the Calamity from BOTW, but less oozy and gooey. But exposure to Gloom can make you ill, and there is some kind of yellow plant that can help treat the illness if you get it. There’s also a newspaper operating somewhere in Hyrule, I’m not sure where but it seems a lot of the people here are talking about Hebra, which has gotten even colder than it used to be, which was pretty darn cold as I recall from BOTW.

They are working on constructing a stable where I can board horses, but it’s not finished yet. Oh, and all the weapons in the world have decayed as a result of the Upheaval, I guess as an effect of the Gloom. So wherever I go, weapons are in poor condition, and in short supply.

There’s a royal shelter hidden below Lookout Landing, where there’s a cooking pot, a weapon supply store, and a bed I can rest in, along with a person named Nappin (ha) who can’t get out of bed because he’s so affected by the Gloom from when he went exploring in the Chasms.

I also learn from one of the people in the shelter that Lurelin Village has become dangerous due to pirates in the area.

I think that’s about it. I guess it’s time to return to Purah to do whatever it is we need to do with the Travel Tower so I can get the map activated on the Purah Pad.

As I proceed toward the outer gates of Hyrule Castle, there are two Hylian men looking at what appears to be a fallen chunk of skyland that has landed here beside the road.

I talk to them and they are curious about the upper world and concerned about Zelda’s safety and whereabouts.

I take a moment to climb up on the chunk of rock that fell from the sky; I find a Steward, who is stationed to work on producing Zonaite energy, er, stuff, I’m still not clear how all that Zonaite stuff works together. F me, it’s going to take me forever to remember how all that stuff goes together. Anyway, there’s a machine there that I can put stuff into to make other stuff, if and when I’m ready to. OK.

I climb down and head into the castle ruins. Just inside the outer gateway, there’s a guy holding up a sign post, advertising Hudson Construction. He tells me he’s very proud of the company that Hudson has created. Remember Hudson from the Tarry Town storyline in BOTW? He built that town, and now he’s charged with rebuilding all of Hyrule, and he has left stations of material staged throughout the land. Good for him.

Up in the sky, I notice the moon is a familiar shade of blood red… Oh good grief, has NOTHING I accomplished in BOTW been of lasting impact? We have the Blood Moon resetting the world again and again every so often? Oh FFS. Damn it. I did NOT want to see that. One of the things I really grew to dislike about BOTW was how meaningless everything you do in the game feels, because ultimately everything resets every Blood Moon. Every weapon and item you find is temporary, optional, and ultimately inconsequential. Every enemy you defeat doesn’t matter at all, except for the boss battles, because every Blood Moon everything goes back to how it was. Like Groundhog Day, with Link in place of Bill Murray. I guess it’s helpful to have some mechanic to reset the world so that you can replay parts of it that you enjoy, or unfuck something that you messed up so bad that you can’t proceed unless something resets the world for you. The worst thing of all is when a blood moon happens right as you were about to fucking finish something, clear out some area or whatever, only the shit you just killed two goddamn seconds ago gets resurrected because you picked the wrong fucking time of the month to do that part of the mission, and now you basically have to do it twice, back to back. But god damn it, I was hoping that they would have done something different in TOTK, to make it seem more than just BOTW 1.5.

Up ahead, I see a shrine, right there in the open, so I ride over to it. There’s a woman standing there, and I talk to her and then enter the shrine.

Why are there still shrines all over the place in Hyrule? Didn’t I discover and clear them all out in BOTW? Why are there more now? And why do they look different from the ones in BOTW? Who can say. It’s just a thing we do in this game. We go around, we find shrines, we go into them, we do the thing, we get the power.

All right. This one is a battle training exercise. I get to re-learn the basic mechanics to enable flurry rushes: the side hop dodge, the backflip dodge, the perfect shield parry move. I manage to do this pretty well, without too many mistakes, and defeat the little training bot on my first go.

Hold the Left Z-trigger (to focus on an enemy), then use the Left stick side to side (side hop) or back (backflip) when the enemy is attacking to enter bullet time and enable the flurry rush attack. Or press A to parry. The parry seems to be the hard one to pull off.

Well, OK. I manage to break a couple weapons, which is nice because it opens up some weapons slots.

Hey, I should probably use my powers to combine weapons into compound items, to free up more slots, shouldn’t I? I’ve been approaching the combat from a straightforward, BOTW purist mindset. I need to think about the new possibilities this game has given me with the new powers. How do I fuse items together, again? Oh hell.

I guess I need to re-learn how to do that, or look it up, or something. I need to not forget how to do the basics.

Well, they told me the quickest way was to take a brave dive off of the sky island, so that’s what I did.

Near the ledge where I had saved my game last time, there is a little one-square tile of a rivulet or spring, cascading over the edge. I reason that below must be a body of water, accumulated from this waterfall, so I jump here.

I fall a great distance, for what seems like more than a minute, and as I descend I can see the ground coming up to meet me. In the center, a small pond. If it’s not deep enough, this will have been a short adventure. I try to aim for the center, but not too far away from the edge, so I can make it to the shore without drowning.

I manage to splash down safely, and just barely with enough endurance meter to make it to land.

I step onto the shore, and am in Hyrule. Near the pond, there’s a large wood crate or something, covered by a tarpaulin. I walk over to look at it more closely, there are materials for construction, and a sign saying that they are for Hyrule Restoration, courtesy of Bolson Construction. I remember Bolson from BOTW. There are wooden sections of what would seem to be pre-fabricated walls for buildings, and some wagon wheels. I realize that I could probably assemble these parts with my Ultrahand ability to create a vehicle, but presently there’s no actual need to do that, and I feel more like exploring. As I’m looking at the construction materials, a Bokoblin comes up and attacks me; I whirl around and face him, smacking him with a thick wooden stick, which does not break after I hit him several times. He goes down quickly, and I’m pretty satisfied.

I cross a little bridge and follow the road away from the pond for a bit. Before too long, I come to a stand of trees, and spot a Bokoblin standing among them. I crouch down low to become stealthy, and sneak up, being careful to keep a tree trunk between the Bokoblin and I. I get close enough, and nail the bokoblin in the head with an arrow. I sit back and observe for a bit to see how the Bokoblin reacts. He seems angry and alert, but he can’t seem to find me. Eventually he settles back down, so I hit him again with another arrow, and follow up with several more shots until he drops.

I run up to collect some loot, when suddenly two of the trees uproot themselves and attack me!

I try to fight back, first with an arrow, but although I seemed to have had good aim, the arrow just passes through it. Could I have missed? Or perhaps are arrows not the best weapon? OK, I try running up to hit the tree up with my club. This proves poor strategy, the tree is much taller than I am and has a considerable reach advantage, bending over at near the ground to club me with its entire body. This hits pretty hard, and I lose more than half of my health.

I decide to run away at this point, but the trees give me a good chase and keep up with me for a bit. But eventually I’m far enough down the road that they give up and decide to leave me alone.

I’m further down the road from the direction I’d come from, and up ahead I can see a Bokoblin camp, and in the field a distance away from the main camp there’s a Bokoblin on horseback.

I decide I want the horse, and I try climbing up on a rock to get a good shot with my bow. The range of the bow is far less than I expect, though, and my arrow lands well short, about halfway to where I had been aiming.

I decide to just run up and shoot the Bokoblin off the horse, and this plan works just fine. The Bokoblin is dismounted and disarmed, and I rush up and finish him off with my club. Then I pick up his weapon and approach the horse, who seems to be already tame, and lets me mount him immediately.

I go back to the road and head back in the direction I came from. The map shows a point of interest marked, and apparently that’s where I’m supposed to go.

A few minutes at a moderate gallop, past some more Bokoblin camps that I just ignore, and I’m at the destination. It’s a little settlement just outside of the location of Hyrule Castle, or what would be Hyrule Castle if it wasn’t floating above in the air.

I walk in, and it looks like a shop, or an inn, there are some items for sale, and a little statue that I can pray to. I spot some arrows and go to collect them, when a little old man admonishes me not to touch them. I talk to him, and he recognizes me, and tells me to go at once to talk to Purah, who is waiting for me upstairs.

I do as he says, and the story advances a bit. Purah recalls the events thus far, and tells me that I should proceed to meet up with the search party that went to Hyrule Castle to search for Zelda and me when we disappeared, and to look for their leader, a man named Hoz.

So I guess that’s the next thing to do.

There seems to be quite a bit more around here for me to explore and do, but I’m feeling strangely impatient. In BOTW, I was exploring every little thing that looked interesting, that looked like it might be a thing; here I’m eager to press on and advance the main quest and storyline. I wonder why that is; do I expect the game to have so little new to offer me in the way of world and ambiance? Or am I simply familiar enough with the basics from playing BOTW that I am more ready to simply get on with it now?

In the Temple of Time, there’s a large clockwork mechanism, still turning, by what power still flows somehow.

I use my newest power, Recall, to reverse the spin of the gears, which gives me a platform that I can use to climb upwards to a higher level.

Here, there is a massive door, in front of which stands a simple-looking, worn statue. I pray at the statue, but nothing much happens, so then I try to open the door. Pushing on the door uses up my life meter, and when I’m run down to nearly empty, Rauru appears to tell me that I’m not yet strong enough to open the door.

Then he tells me of the existence of a fourth Shrine, and teaches me that the Purah Pad can be used to teleport about the map, just like the old Sheikah Slate from BOTW could. Rauru shows me a spot on the map to look for the shrine, and advises that I should teleport nearby. The nearest location is the Cave of Awakening, where the game began. So I teleport there.

Looking about the cave, I don’t see the shrine within line of sight; I consult the map, and I’m a bit of a distance away from it, and it looks like if I run forward in the cave, like I did at the start of the game, I will be heading in the right direction.

Unfortunately, this path leads downward, as there are several leaps into pools of water, which take me down, and as I exit the cave I realize that I must be somewhere below where the shrine is located. I don’t think to see if my Ascend power will help me here, because it doesn’t occur t me. Instead, I teleport back to the Cave of Awakening once again, and look around to see what I must have missed.

There’s another clockwork mechanism turning here, and it’s another platform puzzle that I can get through by using Recall.

It takes me to a previously unreachable and overlooked hole in the wall, through which there’s a cave tunnel, which leads me for a bit, until I find the fourth shrine that I’ve been looking for. Nearby, there’s another Zonai device, being tended to by a Steward. I talk to the Steward, who tells me that with the right type of materials, I can add capacity to my Zonai charger. But it takes a bunch of Zonaite, or something, and I don’t have nearly enough just yet.

So I enter the fourth shrine, and it’s a series of time Recall puzzles, where I can use the power on a raft to take me upriver, against the flow of a strong current that is flowing out of the shrine.

This is pretty easy, but because of the strong current and my clumsy control, I manage to die a few times by falling into the water and being unable to extricate myself.

After several attempts, I manage to get through it, and then I’m in a chamber with a gate at one end, and a treasure chest at the other. The treasure chest is easy to reach, using Recall to spin a gear backward, turning it into a walking platform. I open the chest and receive a bundle of 10 arrows for my trouble.

The gate proves more difficult. Above the gate, there are two moving arms that look like hands on a clock, moving in opposite directions. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this, but after observing for several minutes I note that the gate temporarily lowers whenever the hands are aligned. But they are not aligned long enough for the gate to open entirely, so I can’t pass through.

I try using Recall to make one of the hands reverse direction, trying to get the hands to keep overlapping for a long enough time or the gate to open fully so I can pass through, but I’m clumsy and just can’t seem to hit it at the right time, and it doesn’t seem to help.

Eventually I try using my Ultrahand power to simply grab one of the clock hands, and hold it, and try to move it manually to line up with the other hand. This seems to work better, and I can get the gate to go all the way down, but it’s very difficult to move while I’m controlling the clock hands, and the camera seems to want to fixate on the clock hand that I’m controlling with the Ultrahand power, rather than allow me to free-look in the direction that I want to go — through the open gate.

Still, awkward as it is, I manage to open the gate long enough that I’m able to step through, solving the final obstacle of the fourth shrine, and I’m rewarded by yet another spirit orb, or whatever they are calling them in this game.

I teleport back to near the Temple of Time, run up to the Goddess Statue, pray, exchange my four spirit orbs for a Heart Container, which gives me enough life meter to open the massive door.

There’s another cutscene at this point, and Rauru tells me that I must find Zelda, who is somewhere below in the Kingdom of Hyrule, or something.

Did I mention? There’s a big white dragon flying about in the background. There has been for most of this. I catch a glimpse of it now and then. I’m not clear what it’s there for, but it must have some purpose, some connection in all this. Just thought I’d mention it. It seems worth mentioning.

I guess I’ve graduated from the tutorial opening, and am now free to explore the vast world. I’m invited to take a high dive off the floating skyland.

Well, wish me luck.

Immediately after the ruined stone shack with the cooking pot, I spot another nearby place of interest, and head there. It’s a little hollow cave in which there’s a pile of wood for a fire, and a treasure chest. In the treasure chest, I find cold weather pants that give me enough cold resistance that I won’t take damage when the food I ate wears off, in about 2 minutes. Super convenient.

I put the pants on and walk out, where I see Rauru again, and talk to him. He talks about the Zonai technology and how it was so useful, and that if I learn to master its use I will have an easier time in the world.

I see something that looks like a giant crystal ball above us on the top of the mountain we’re standing on, and using the Ascend ability, I travel up through an overhang and get to the top. There’s another steward bot, who I talk to, and it tells me that the crystal ball thing is a Zonai dispenser, which I can use to exchange zonai parts for finished zonai technology.

It’s like a giant gumball machine. You put in pieces of Zonai tech that you’ve found, and it spits out those handy little Zonai pods that you can keep in your pocket until you need them.

I’ve found a lot of the stuff all over the place, so I put in five and it spits out a bunch of bubbles at me and I stock up on wings, fans, cooking pots, and flame generators.

The steward mentioned using a Zonai wing to descend from the top of this mountain, so I think I’m supposed to use one of those pods right now to create one. Only I don’t know how to properly use it, and can’t get it to launch. I try dragging it to the edge of the cliff and it just drops like a stone, and I lose it.

Then I die a few times trying to figure out how to ride the thing as it’s falling, but that’s not what you do. While I’m doing that, I notice that there’s already a Zonai wing sitting on the ground, so I don’t need to use a pod. But I still can’t figure out how to make it work. I try gluing a fan to it, and it blows but not hard enough to take off. There’s too much friction on the ground and it doesn’t move.

I try everything I can think of, and then I see that down below, on the level where I was talking to Rauru, there’s three more of those wings, and they are on what appear to be more of those railroad tracks. I guess maybe these are launching ramps, and there’s less friction on those rails, so I could probably get that to work. I go down and attach a fan, get on, and activate it, and still nothing.

Then I notice that there’s an icicle that has grown, which is maybe blocking the wing from moving, so I hit it with my weapon and sure enough that does it, the fan blows the wing forward, it picks up speed and when I reach the end of the ramp, instead of a nosedive, I’m gliding.

I can somewhat control my direction and attack angle by positioning my weight on the wing, so I am kind of sky surfing. It’s amazing, and it should be awe inspiring and fun, but I’m still so annoyed at how hard it was to figure out how to launch that I’m not in the mood to enjoy it properly. But this feels like it should be one of the great moments of the game, the thrill of discovery, the thrill of flight, the thrill of seeing the whole world from above.

Far below, I see the Temple of Time. I’m still very high in the air, probably a few hundred feet up. And I’m not descending fast enough that I’m going to land this wing where I want to be, not if my goal is to get to the Temple and find Zelda.

Down below I’m over water, and I decide to dive off and hope that I survive. This works out just great. I splash down and swim over to the shore, right by the steps up to the Temple of Time.

I climb up and run to the Temple’s door, which opens.

I’m greeted by a cinematic cutscene, where I open the odor to find a big golden glowing… comma? It looks like a comma, the punctuation mark. We had seen something like this in the opening cutscene with the Demon King, there was a similar looking shape attached to the glowing arm that was apparently the power keeping the Demon King at bay, until we disturbed it.

Anyway, this comma kind of bursts, or hatches, and there’s Zelda. She touches my hand, my new bionic one, and it begins to glow that same golden color. I gain a new power, the power of Recall, which is the ability to move an object backward through time, through its motion path to where it came from. I guess the Zelda dev team liked Braid.

This is going to be useful, in so many ways, I’m sure.

Zelda disappears, and Rauru appears, and says even he doesn’t understand what just happened, but explains to me about the power of Recall.

There’s a mechanical clockwork mechanism moving in the background, my guess is that’s what I’m going to need to test my new power on.

I ponder, but it’s late and I need to sleep. Tomorrow, then.

So I solved the first shrine. Now where the hell am I supposed to?

I wander around a bit on the skyland I’m on until I find a Steward who is hunting, and he teaches me about using bows and gives me a bow and some arrows. I remember this well enough from BOTW, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much. I use an arrow to hunt and kill a large animal and take its meat, and then cook it by a fire later.

I’m just kind of exploring, foraging, and wondering what I’m supposed to do next. Rauru told me that there are three shrines on this piece of land, and that if I want to get into the Temple of Time, where Zelda is, I need to visit them in order to restore power to my new arm. But he didn’t say where the other two shrines were located.

I keep wandering, and end up in an area where there are multiple guardian robots, and two of them are armed with bow and arrow, another two with melee weapons. I end up getting taken out by one of the bow and arrow guys while taking on one of the melee guys.

I respawn, explore another area, and find a small, floating island that I need to build a bridge to get to, and so I do and there’s a ruined stone building in there, and inside the building there’s a chest which I open and find a piece of amber.

I’m not all that excited about finding this stuff now, because at the end of my run through BOTW I had so much forage accumulated in my inventory that it was ridiculous, I didn’t use or need it all, and I’m not expecting to in this game, either. I mean, I’m sure I’ll use some of it and need a little bit of everything at some point, but I’m not worried about scarcity, because that’s what I learned in the previous game: don’t worry about it, there’s stuff everywhere, you’re not going to need all of it, there’s plenty.

Which is a little weird for a shattered world that you need to save. But these games are not survival horror; they’re more like sandbox games with a quest that you can also do, as an afterthought, once you’ve burned all the bushes and bombed all the rocks to find every last secret in the game.

After I respawn I decide to backtrack to the first shrine, and use the Purah Pad’s telescope and marking feature to try to identify the other shrines and then look at the map to figure out how to get to them.

I do this and sure enough after looking around a bit, I do see two shrines off in the distance. I plant a marker on both of them, and then look at the markers location on the map. That’s such a handy feature, and it is so helpful for navigation. I just love it.

I note that one of the shrines is on the other end of what looks like a big empty expanse on the map, which is connected around the edges by some faint lines. This turns out not to be empty space, but a lake, large enough that you couldn’t swim across it.

The other shrine is up in altitude, in a place that is cold and I would need better gear to survive up there. It’s closer, but more dangerous. I did manage to find some hot peppers, and can make some dishes that will give me temporary cold resistance, but it seems like that is early for me to do, so after stepping into the cold zone for a few seconds, I nope out and go back down to warmer territory, and decide to check out the other shrine first.

It’s a long walk, and takes me back to where I died the first time — it turns out that I was wandering in the right direction, and if I hadn’t died I might have stumbled upon that second shrine anyway. This time, I’m mentally prepared for those guardians and take them out with little difficulty, and even manage to farm a few arrows from them while I’m at it.

I continue onward, eventually reaching an area where I meet a little Korok, who is trying to reach his friend, who has gotten separated on the other side of a gap. There’s a rail line connecting the two, and materials that I can use to build a platform with hooks attached, to create a zipline or cable car that we can ride down to the friend.

I do this without much difficulty, having gotten more used to the powers I learned how to use in the first shrine, and we reunite the two koroks. They give me two seeds as a reward, and somewhere earlier I found another korok, in a ruined little building, and so I now have three seeds.

There’s another zipline running down to a lower level, to the area with the large lake that I saw on the map, on the other side of which is my destination, the second shrine.

I re-use the platform I built and zip down there. Once I’m there, I find materials to build a raft, including a mast and sail. There’s a steady wind blowing across the lake, in just the direction I happen to want to go. So I build the raft, attach the sale, put the raft in the water, and board it, and in a few minutes I’m on the other side.

I climb up to where the second shrine is, and enter. Rauru gives me a new power for my arm, the power to fuse objects in my inventory together to create enhanced weapons. I can seemingly attach anything to anything, but only one thing, and then if I want to undo it, it breaks the item. So I have to be a little careful.

The shrine challenge is to use this new power to join a boulder to a weapon and use the combined weapon to smash apart some crumbly looking stone barriers. I also learn that I can combine items with arrows, and use them to create flame arrows, which I need to get the key to unlock a door at the end to complete the shrine.

All that is pretty easy, but I still manage to screw it up. There’s a rusty broadsword in the shrine that you’re supposed to use to attach a boulder to, but I mistakenly attach the sword to the weapon I’m carrying, a wooden stick, creating a long-handled sword that can’t smash the stone obstacles. I reload from my last autosave and re-do it, this time attaching the boulder to the end of the sword like they intended, which creates a crude, ersatz hammer that smashes things apart.

This stuff reminds me of Object Oriented Programming, where you can use multiple inheritance for one object to inherit properties and methods of another. It seems like everything in the game is probably implemented using multiple Interfaces to support combining objects in any way the player can dream of, apparently, affording the player endless opportunity for creativity and game breaking hacks using the objects in the game in ways the designers never intended or tested for.

This game is going to be endlessly replayable for that very reason. People will never get sick of this, I bet, and there will be new things discovered and invented by creative players forever.

The final challenge of the shrine is a combat test, against a guardian who has a compound weapon of their own. I’m still very clumsy with the combat and manage to miss an opportunity to use flammable ground to make the combat very easy, and instead die once again.

I fight it a second time, and it kills me again. I learn that my combo weapon is powerful but too slow, and if I try to use it, the soldier will always get its attack in first. So I switch to a weaker, but faster weapon, and take it down. Then I collect my spirit orb and complete the second shrine.

After I emerge from the second shrine, another steward is there waiting for me. It gives me a battery pack thing, with one battery, and explains that this is for powering the Zonai equipment that I will find throughout the world. I can get more batteries and it looks like there will be 8 when the pack is full, but for now I just have one. The battery is basically a time limit or endurance meter for how long I can run a Zonai device before I have to stop and wait for the battery pack to recharge. So it’s basically like my stamina meter, except it applies to tech. Cool.

The Steward points me in the direction of a hidden cave, just ahead. To get to it, I have to defeat a couple of the soldier robots, which I do pretty easily. I have fire seeds and fire seed arrow headshots take them out in one hit. This is easy enough that I consider I may not want to waste this ammo on such easy foes.

I reach the cave, and hook up a fan to a cart and use it with my new battery pack power to ride a rail system into the cave, which is extremely dark. I can see some glowing things along the walls, but they are out of reach and I’m moving too quickly to grab them.

At the end of the line, I get out of the cart and there’s a steward working in the cave. It explains to me about darkness and how to use brightbulb seeds to light up an area. I can use the seeds to enhance my arrows, and fire them ahead of me to light the way. Cool.

I proceed forward and deeper into the cave, and find some Zonai ore deposits, which I take the time to harvest, breaking my heavy weapon that is useful for this. I don’t have bombs like I did in BOTW, so I can’t easily extract more of this ore. I decide if it’s important I’ll go back later and get more.

There’s more stewards working at refining and constructing the Zonai ore into Zonai equipment. They explain the basic concept to me, but it’s a bit much and it goes over my head a little bit. Basically it’s a currency system, which you can mine stuff to turn into other stuff to buy/trade/refine into more stuff that has useful abilities to help you in your quest.

I’m like OK, great, whatever, can we move on please?

These mechanics are going to be central to the game, I can tell, and they are cool, but I don’t know that they feel like a Zelda game to me. I guess they are now. And it’s fine for the series to do something new. And this is both new and cool. And it’s explained well enough in-game by Link’s new bionic arm. So let’s do this.

I yadda yadda though the conversation with the Zonai stewards about their Zonai tech, and figure I’ll probably regret not paying better attention to this, but right now it’s moving a little slow and I don’t care about it yet because the opportunity to use and need to use the stuff hasn’t presented itself yet.

There’s another mine car and a train track leading out, and I’m supposed to attach a portable fan object (they explained that you can pick up these things that are like little techno pods that are portable, more so than the tech bits and bobs you’ll find strewn about here and there. So whenever you need one you can just fish it out of your pocket and use it. But you need to be sure you really want to because once you pull it out of your pocket, it enlarges and won’t to back in your pocket, so you can’t accidentally pull it out and then put it back. Which, that kinda sucks and makes me want to not use those things as much as possible. “No undo” is a surefire way to make me hoard an ability and never use it.

Sigh.

Well, I said Ima hoard this stuff, didn’t I? So rather than use one of the pods they just gave me to try out, I go all the way back through the cave I just walked through, and use my arm power to grab the cart I came in on, which has a fan already mounted on it, and carry it all the way to this exit track, put it on, get in, and turn on the fan.

There’s always multiple ways to do things in this game, and this is one such alternative.

I ride the mine car out and get back to a part of the Island not far away from the third shrine. Super convenient. I meet a steward here who teaches me about how cold works and how to survive using good, gear, or fire, and it’s just refresher from what we already knew from BOTW, so I’m good to go.

I had already cooked some hot pepper food earlier, and so I take the time to eat it, and get a 12 minute cold resistance boost. I use my sprinting ability to make the most of this, and go forward quickly, mostly ignoring stuff along the way that I could stop and pick up, although if it’s in my immediate area and I don’t have to slow down, I do grab it.

I fight some soldier robots and defeat them, nothing too difficult, and then I hit a dead end where the way forward is up. It looks like I might have to climb? But the walls are too tall for my current endurance meter. I look around a bit and find a cave in the wall, leading upward. And it’s dark.

Good ole Nintendo and their game design philosophy. Give the player an ability, an easy tutorial demo for how to use it, an optional way to use it tied to an optional reward to encourage discovery, then present it in the form of an obstacle that you have to use it in order to move forward, then escalate the challenge making it necessary to use in order to survive.

So this cave is exactly that, like the cave I just went through to learn about the Zonai tech from those friendly steward bots, this time it’s in a deadly cold cave (which imposes a time limit/urgency on me), combined with enemies. A flock of keese flies out of the cave as I approach the entrance, but somehow I escape their notice and don’t have to fight them. I just watch them fly by me out of the cave, and run in after they go.

There’s a frog-like creature, clinging to the ceiling, which spits these bubbles. It doesn’t seem like much of a threat, but it’s a cool new enemy, and I can’t reach it on the ceiling, so I headshot it with the bow and knock it to the floor, then beat it until it dies.

There’s more ore everywhere, but I ain’t got time for dat, and ignore it all. I can come back when I have cold gear and a durable or persistent tool that I can extract with, if I need to, and I probably won’t.

Still further into the cave, I encounter a large creature that reminds me somewhat of the peahat flowers from Ocarina of Time, bit maybe a bit more resemble a Like Like. They’re attached to the walls of the cave, attached like a barnacle. And they can extend, accordion like, to attack. I knock a flame arrow and fire it, doing some damage, and the thing seems to be stunned and takes some damage, but it has a lot of health and I don’t kill it.

BOTW taught me that combat is not important unless it’s a mandatory boss fight, so the best thing to do is to run away and avoid fighting. Fighting just means using up your weapons, or your supplies, or both, and you risk getting killed, so why do it if you don’t have to.

I run past the big creature, and proceed up the cave, where I encounter a second one. This one manages to swallow me, and I switch weapons to my most stabby, sharp, damage dealing weapon, and start slashing away like mad while I’m inside it, hoping that’s what I’m supposed to do. Apparently it is, as I’m spat out, and manage to escape, albeit down to one heart.

I eat some food once I’m safely out of the creature’s reach, and I’m at the exit to the cave. Hooray.

I still have about 6 minutes remaining on my cold resistance boost. The third shrine is right nearby. I check the map, and it’s just a little climb up. I get there, and enter.

Here, Rauru greets me again and gives me a third power for my arm: Ascend. This is a weird ability and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with grabbing things or fusing things together like the first two did. This one gives me the ability to turn any ceiling into an elevator shaft, essentially I can meld into solids and “swim” upward through them, moving vertically only, until I reach an open space, at which point I can extract myself.

What a weird ability.

The shrine puzzle is a series of simple examples demonstrating the use of the new power, at the end of which I think there’s a combat, but if there is it was simple easy enough that I’m not even sure whether it happened, it was that forgettable, if it did exist at all.

I collect another spirit orb and have completed my tests.

Now I’m ready to go back to the main quest to find Zelda, who is waiting for me in the Temple of Time, which I can now open because my arm is powered up enough now.

I walk out of the shrine, and I was so quick at going through it that my cold resistance still has a couple of minutes remaining. Straight out from the shrine entrance, I spot a ruined stone building, and head to it, hoping to find a treasure chest or something worthwhile.

I get to it, and find a cooking pot with an unlit fire and a flint sitting next to it. I light the fire with my one metallic weapon, a rusty broadsword, and now I have a safe spot that is warm from the fire, and can be used to cook more cold resistance food from the supplies I picked up in the region. I can take my time, reconnoiter on the map, figure out a route that is direct and easy from where I am to the Temple of Time, eat a hot pepper meal, and head to Zelda.

Hoo boy, this is already getting complicated. It’s a good thing I’m keeping this diary so I can keep track of everything I need to do, and everything I need to remember.

So on this Skyland, I have encountered a few Zonai constructs. There are these friendly ones called Stewards, which tell me about the place and how to do things in the world and explain how stuff works. They’re living tutorials, basically. Then there are these other ones, I forget what they’re called, but for now I’ll call them guardians, because that’s what they remind me of. Those patrol and treat unknown beings like me like enemies, so they’ll fight me. They’re not that tough, but they give me some practice fighting.

Since I haven’t played BOTW in a hot minute, my muscle memory for the controls is all but gone, and I have to relearn everything.

So, it’s Left Trigger (ZA) to lock onto a target, and also to raise my shield up, if I have a shield equipped and am not equipping a 2-handed weapon.

Hold right to ready the weapon in hand to throw, release right to throw it.

X to do a melee attack, and you need to be within range and not too close, not too far.

A jumps. Y dashes.

There’s other things I can do, I hope I can remember them all. Shit.

I find a few items about the Skyland. There’s some tree branches and sticks. I defeat a Zonai guardian and get a long stick, which is a two handed weapon good for a more distanced thrusting attack.

I find a few Skyshrooms and apples. Later on I find some Rushrooms.

A Steward tells me I need to find Zelda, and gives me the Purah tablet that she was using in the opening scene. It’s mine now, I can use it like I used the Sheikah Slate in BOTW, but mostly all I can do with it right now is take pictures, apparently the other powers it will grant will become enabled later.

The Purah Pad has a map feature, and I’m supposed to go to a location on the map indicated where Zelda is, and find her. I do as I’m told, encountering a couple of Guardians along the way. They’re easy to defeat, and I gain some basic experience with the melee combat system, and pick up their weapons and a shield.

I get to the place on the map where I’m supposed to go, and I’m greeted by an apparition of a being named Rauru, who is a Zonai. he looks like a tall, goat-headed humanoid. He’s probably actually just normal sized since Link is a shawty and everyone he meets just seems tall.

Rauru tells me that he gave me my new arm, and it used to be his arm. That’s a little creepy. He also tells me the arm should be able to open the door to the place where Zelda is, but it can’t right now because it is powered down. To regain strength, he suggests I visit some shrines nearby.

This is all rather familiar by now. Very much like BOTW. Visit the Shrine, Do the Task, Get the Thing to Enable You To Do The Thing To Do the Thing to Do the Thing to do the Really Important Thing.

So for the next few hundred hours, I guess that’s what I’ll be doing.

I look over at the shrine that Rauru points out to me and head that way.

I go into the Shrine, and a power of my arm is to grab objects and manipulate them. It’s a bit like the Magnesis power that the Sheikah Slate had in BOTW, but it’s a little more refined. I can rotate objects, giving me a bit more control over them. I can also stick things together, to create compound objets.

There’s a basic test of this ability, to create a bridge, then to join two pieces together to make a longer bridge. then to connect two hooks onto a platform, and mount it on a cable, so that you can ride it across an even wider gap.

I am awkward as hell, embarrassingly so, and I have to read the on-screen text telling me how to control the power I’m using for every single thing I do.

I’m rewarded with an Orb of Light. I have passed the Test of the First Shrine.

Onward.

SPOILERS

Read more: Tears of the Kingdom Diary 1

An unknown amount of time has passed since the defeat of the Calamity in the events depicted in Breath of The Wild.

Link and Zelda are exploring deep beneath Hyrule Castle, investigating a strange “Gloom” that has been emanating from below the ground, and making people sick.

As they descend deeper, Zelda informs Link that these caverns are forbidden, for generations her family has not been down here. Much of what was known about them has long since been forgotten. But clues remain, tantalizing murals depict an ancient race of beings called the Zonai.

Discovering a mural depicting a great war, Zelda recounts a Demon King. Descending deeper still, they come across the apparent remains of this Demon King, dessicated and unmoving, a strange, glowing arm seeming to pin its body to the ground.

Something happens to disturb the arm, and it shifts slightly, then falls away. A moment of dread passes, and the sound of a single heartbeat reverberates off of the chamber’s walls. The Demon King awakens. A dark stream of gloom emanates from its body, striking Link’s Master Sword, shattering it! The gloom strikes Link, injuring him gravely, and infecting his arm. The Demon King recognizes the pair, seeming to disregard them since the fabled Sword that Seals the Darkness was so easily shattered by his power.

Then the floor of the cave gives way, and Zelda tumbles into the darkness. Without a thought, Link dives after her in an attempt to protect her, but she falls further than he can grasp. Something catches LInk from behind, holding him back — it’s the strange, glowing arm that had been pinning the Demon King.

Fade to black.

Link wakes up, alone, in a darkened chamber underground. A voice, disembodied, speaks to Link. Still more indeterminate time has passed. Link learns that he was gravely injured, his right arm lost to the Gloom that infected it, now replaced by… is that the glowing arm from before? The remains of his broken Master Sword nearby, Link retrieves it.

Link explores this catacomb, eventually emerging into the light of the sun. High in the sky, on an island floating high above the world, what I’m going to call Skylands for now. He dives off, far below into a lake in another skyland.

How did he get here? Who are the Zonai? What happened to Zelda? And what happened to the Demon King?