The Legend of Zelda franchise has evolved quite a bit over the last 37 years, going from a top-down NES classic to a revolutionary handheld title to one of the very first 3D adventure games, and now, with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, becoming one of the greatest open-world adventure titles of all time. While it's easy for some franchises to rest on their laurels and keep producing the same experience time and time again, The Legend of Zelda has always tried to do something bold and interesting with its new entries, even if that risk doesn't always pay off.
Thankfully, almost all The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's risks do pay off. Taking the excellent groundwork laid by its predecessor and building upon it, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom refines what made Breath of the Wild such an important game, and heaps on a healthy dollop of its own unique content to boot. And while it may not be its most obvious tweak or addition, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Skyview Towers are a natural, satisfying progression of some of the series' core mechanics and ideals.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Skyview Towers Are a Natural Improvement For the Zelda Series
The phenomenon of watch/radio towers has been a staple of the open-world genre for a good decade now, first being popularized by Ubisoft's Far Cry 3. Very quickly, towers began cropping up across the open-world genre, being used as a means to survey specific areas of the map and unveil a plethora of icons upon completion. While this tower concept has gotten a little stale over the last few years, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild handled them in uniquely Zelda way.
Unlike the vast majority of towers across the open-world genre, whereby the player completes them by simply climbing to the top and pressing a single button, Zelda: Breath of the Wild uses many of its own Sheikah Towers to test the player's skill. Breath of the Wild's climbing mechanics are some of its most innovative features, and many of the game's Sheikah Towers would act as the perfect proving grounds for these new mechanics, testing players by blocking off certain climbing pathways and encouraging them to persevere and find another way to the top.
Once at the top of one of Breath of the Wild's Sheikah Towers, players would indeed press a single button to unlock the tower, but rather than fill the mini-map with icons, it simply revealed the outline of the area on the player's map, still leaving it up to them to discover points of interest. For the most part, these Sheikah Towers were mainly used by players as simply a way to better survey their surroundings, and manually place beacons on Shrines or other points of interest, thus enhancing the game's core ethos of player-made adventure.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom takes Breath of the Wild's Sheikah Towers one step further. Called Skyview Towers, Tears of the Kingdom's tall structures act as a natural extension of what Nintendo was going for with the Sheikah Towers. Now, when the player unlocks a tower, they no longer just stand at the top and have a 360° view of their surroundings, but they're shot high into the sky and given a full view of the entire map below them. Players also have much more freedom in where they go from here, being able to glide to whatever destination they choose, either on land or in the sky. It's a simple change, but Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Skyview Towers enhance the series' emphasis on exploration and player-freedom even more than Breath of the Wild's Sheikah Towers did.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on Switch.
