Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Already Has An Advantage Over BOTW

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a tall legacy to live up to, but it also has one advantage over The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from the start. The flagship 2017 The Legend of Zelda game released on two Nintendo consoles, the previous generation’s Wii U and the newly launched Switch. Without the Wii U to hold it back, Tears of the Kingdom can showcase the promise of a future for the series, and possibly stand a chance at outdoing Breath of the Wild.

Nintendo originally announced BOTW long before the reveal of the Switch, initially as a game that would be exclusive to the then-current Wii U. Although the Wii U had a flagship Mario title in Super Mario 3D World, it lacked a new entry in The Legend of Zelda franchise, instead resurrecting the classic Zelda stories of The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess for HD remasters. Breath of the Wild represented a big promise for a struggling system, but Nintendo ultimately revealed a console successor in the Switch and announced that the game would come to both generations. This made an enticing launch for new hardware, but it also meant that the game wasn’t built from the ground up with the Switch’s hardware in mind.

How Tears Of The Kingdom Can Be Even Better Than BOTW

Graphically, Breath of the Wild is no slouch, but Tears of the Kingdom should be able to push the Switch further. Being designed around the Wii U’s hardware means the development team for BOTW had to optimize for a weaker system, and the older console would have informed programming decisions and early artistic choices for Breath of the Wild. The game didn’t waste the Switch’s power, and even struggled to maintain a stable frame rate in Korok Forest, but it wasn’t optimized exclusively for the system. Most areas of the game run smoothly, and it’s easy to imagine that these environments could now be taken to new heights without performance issues or worrying about how an older system would handle them.

Tears of the Kingdom will release over six years after Breath of the Wild, a window of time that has given Nintendo significant opportunity to hone its utilization of the Switch’s hardware. Monolith Soft, a subsidiary studio that assisted on development for both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, has released several Xenoblade titles for the system in that interim. These games showcase an environmental ambition that pushes the boundaries of the console’s graphical capabilities, and Monolith Soft’s involvement with the new Zelda game means that it should be able to showcase some of that progress. Breath of the Wild features a gorgeous art style that blends cel-shading with echoes of realism. Tears of the Kingdom can expand on the possibilities for detail and variety in the world without abandoning the style.

Although Nintendo has showcased some Tears of the Kingdom gameplay through trailers, fans won’t be able to get a grasp on the full scope of its graphics until the game releases in 2023. Hyrule is due for another transformation, and although the results remain to be seen, the new The Legend of Zelda game is working with an inherent advantage. The wait for Breath of the Wild‘s successor has been a long one, but The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has the potential to make it worthwhile.