How and Why I'm Still Playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

This article isn't meant to be my Game EXP article for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but I may just reference back to it (in its entirety?) when I do get around to writing it sometime next year.

I don't know who this article is for or why I feel the need to justify my current 277 hours, although I apparently am 42 hours past the completionist number of hours on HowLongToBeat.  At this point in the year, the game has already been nominated in several categories for The Game Awards and won "Best Action/Adventure Game" so it should be no surprise at the quality of the game.  But I wanted to give a bit of an update as to why/how I am still playing and why I haven't really written much about the game since I first started playing last May.

First off, to understand why I am taking so long to briefly understand how I'm playing the game.  I never used any of the duplication glitches.  Maybe it's a bragging point mixed with a bit of pride, but I like the rate of progression in the game and if I had maxed out my Zonai battery within the first 15 hours, then I wouldn't feel that sense of accomplishment after killing Colgera in the depths and be awarded 100 zonaite charges for one little battery blip.  

Secondly, I often find myself roleplaying with Link, but only in semi-loose terms.  I like to have him sleep during the night, even when there aren't any actual benefits to him sleeping at a campfire, although yes, you do get heart/stamina boosts when you sleep under specific circumstances.  But I like to have Link sleep, preferably in a bed.  Now, I'm not going to completely go out of my way to find a bed to sleep in or a campfire to rest next to.  If Link is up and about in a cave or the Depths and it's 4:30 AM in-game, I'll just keep playing as normal.  It's just that if I find myself near a stable and normal-ish sleeping time, I'll stop in.  I have probably wasted hundreds of rupees on paying for beds at stables and inns because if it's anywhere between 10pm and 3am when I roll up to those smoking equine nostrils; which is probably also why I still have around 20+ free stay vouchers at the stables.  This is probably also why I only have a couple of complete suits of armor upgraded to max, and why I only bought one piece of the Flamebreaker Armor set; that shit's expensive.

Thirdly (?), you may already know by now as I bring it up frequently with open-world games, that I typically don't like to use fast travel.  I do use fast travel on occasion, but if the world is interesting enough and there are places to visit and things to do along the way, then I would rather just run/walk or take some other mode of transportation.  There are obvious exceptions in Tears of the Kingdom though:

• Can fast travel out of the Depths, but only from Lightroots, and only under two circumstances:
• Either back to the starting island, usually point right outside of where you first wake up.
• To the corresponding shrine on the surface.
• Also obviously use the Recall in specific locations where it allows to you pass through to the surface, but this isn't fast travel.
• Can fast travel anytime and anywhere on the starting island.
• No rules on boarding a horse, which is kind of like fast traveling for the horse as there have been times when I've left horses in locations and didn't want to go back halfway across the map to pick them back up.  Horses are allowed to move magically.
• In one instance, one of my horses fell into a river that I could not get them out of, so I just had them boarded at the next stable I came across.

Speaking of horses, I have the maximum number of horses allowed by the game along with all the horses I acquired in Breath of the Wild, but for the most part, I will usually only use the first horse I acquired, Bull (named after the Kevin Costner film Bull Durham, because most of my horses are named after films/characters starring either Kevin Costner or Signourny Weaver, e.g. Locksley, Dunbar, Ripley, Barrett, etc) whom I rescued from Bokoblins and has a gentle temperament.  Bull is a literal workhorse with a "Pull" rating of four stars, but a "Speed" and "Stamina" rating of only two stars, so Bull is not really running very fast for very long.  My kind of horse.  I do have faster horses, including Zelda's super-fast gold horse, but I haven't done any of the Horse God quests where you can, supposedly, revive dead horses, so I'd rather not lose any of those unique horses, and holy shit, no, I don't think Bull is expendable, I'm not that kind of person.  I love Bull.  

Anyway.

I go through phases where I use horses a lot when traveling between locations, but sometimes I know that I will be using blocks that fall from the sky, use Recall on them so that I can get airborne so that I can use the glider (and Tulin's ability) to fly further.  Or if I know I am going into the Depths, I might leave the horseback at a stable before jumping in to do some exploring, although I usually will only go into the Depths if I am trying to uncover part of the map, if I need more zonaite, or if a quest leads me down there.

So keeping everything I have just said in mind, let me give you a recent experience (as in Wednesday night) of me playing Tears of the Kingdom:

• Plan on finally starting the Water Temple quests for the Zora and head to the Ruto Mountain region.
• While in the Zodobon Highlands, I recall I wanted to "turn in" information to the Goddess of Power statue in North Akkala (Part of the quest to repair/revive the Mother Goddess Statue).  I go to the nearest stable, Foothill Stable to pick up Bull, and ride to South Akkala Stable where I spend the night.
• In the morning, I ride out to the woods west of the road, between Ordorac Quarry and Octoroc Lake where I leave Bull, then head to the Spring of Power.
• I'm told I need Dinraal's claw so I head to the general area where I think Dinraal flies.
• Along the way, I find a Korok who's lost its friend.  I attach it to a nearby sled and a fan but am attacked by a Stone Talus before I can get everything in position.  I keep trying to run away with the Korok so I can just do the Korok thing.
• I spot Dinraal off in the distance, heading northwest, and the Korok goes rolling down the hillside, in the wrong direction of its friend.  I chase after it by using the glider and the Stone Talus cannot follow down the hillside.
• I spot the Korok against a rock in a wooded area, just north of North Akkala Valley.  I also spot a Red Lynel a few hundred feet away, and it attacks when I land.
• I kill the Lynel, then decide to just "carry" the Korok to its friend.
• I can still see Dinraal in the distance, but not too-too far away, although it is flying away from my current location.
• I chase after Dinraal on foot and manage to catch up to it just northwest of Rok Woods after constructing a hot air balloon that I accidentally fell off of and then the balloon disintegrated on the second attempt, followed by riding a stone block back up in the sky using Recall and Ascending up through various parts of the mountain just south of Skull Lake.  
• I don't know how to make this sound nearly as interesting and exciting as it was to actually do.  It only took a couple of real-world minutes, but chasing down a flying dragon "on foot" was pretty exhilarating
• I catch the thermal created by Dinraal land on it between its tail and back leg, so I walk along its back picking up Dinraal shards as I make my way to its head.
• We're now somewhere between Lake Darman and Eldin's Flank when I finally jump off Dinraal and manage to shoot its claw.  I follow the claw to the ground as it literally disappears into the rocks, but then respawns a few hundred yards away and further west.  I'm in the East Deplian Badlands, just south of Mayak Shrine where I collect the claw.
• I start to head back to the Goddess of Power statue in Akkala.  On foot.
• I do some running and climbing and decide that maybe trying to climb up Death Mountain would be easier/faster and more interesting than running "around" it.  While looking at the map, I notice that I have three Lightroots I haven't unlocked in this specific area of the Depths yet, so I take the Death Mountain Chasm (after scaling the mountainside) into the Depths.
• I unlock Katijabis Lightroot.
• I unlock Tayamik Lightroot.
• I then noticed that I hadn't been to a large alcove area south of Tayamik, so I go there and ended up fighting a Flux Construct II.
• I then head south and unlock Kisomom Lightroot.
• I notice that it's 1:30 AM (real-world time) and that I can put my laundry into the dryer (after the washing machine ran after I delayed it to start after our dishwasher finished), so I save the game and do that. 

As you can see, I still did not make it to the Zora kingdom to start the Water Temple quest and, I think, my final temple.  Since I am in the Depths and have one more Lightroot to get to in semi-close proximity, I will make my way that way out east, but I'll also keep my eyes out for those small-scale mines and any additional Yiga Clan forts I haven't visited/raided yet.  Then I'll likely fast travel back to the starting island, convert any zonaite charges into one or two battery blips (if I have enough charges), then fall/fly off the starting island and head back in the direction of the Zora to (maybe) finally start the Water Temple.  I also have a lot of unexplored land in the desert.

At this point in the game, I am not really uncovering many more shrines or finding as many caves/wells/Koroks anymore, and there are still a lot of sky islands I haven't visited yet.  Every so often I get the urge to just beat the game so I can feel okay going back to longer games I haven't finished yet like The Witcher III, Kingdoms of Amalur, and Triangle Strategy, or starting new games like Octopath Traveler II, Final Fantasy X-2, and Bravely Default II (you know, sequels), but then events like the one described above happen and it just refuels that sense of wonder and awe that this game and world have managed to supply me with for the last 277+ hours.

I don't want to say that I'll likely finish Tears of the Kingdom before the end of the year, but don't be at all surprised if I'm still talking about playing it after the first of the year.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Destiny Could See We Deserved to Have Another Day

Current Hero's Path Map of where I've been for the last 277+ hours (or at least, just on the surface):