Tears of the Kingdom: how Nintendo improved (and ignored) UI issues

The latest Legend of Zelda title has both pleased and pissed off gamers when addressing certain user interface issues.

This article started as, and could easily end up, as a love letter to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Its legendary predecessor, Breath of the Wild, started a kind of video game renaissance in my life. I dedicated time, tears, and two Nintendo Switches to my adventures with Link in Hyrule.

But in the time between the first game and the release of the second, I metamorphosed from a video games journalist to a UX professional. My education opened my eyes to the ways that Nintendo created both a great and sometimes groan-worthy interface for Breath of the Wild. Now, after enjoying a couple dozen hours of Tears of the Kingdom, I can recognize where Nintendo has improved upon and utterly ignored various issues concerning the user interface of the new latest Legend of Zelda series.

No spoilers! This article touches on gameplay and UI, but very little of the story.

The good

Designed with the Switch in mind

Breath of the Wild was the launch title for the, at the time, revolutionary and even controversial Nintendo Switch. Skeptics of the console acknowledged that launching with a highly anticipated Zelda game essentially forced their hand into purchasing what seemed like a tiny, gimmick-y system that paled in comparison to what Xbox and PlayStation were putting out.

Just like Breath of the Wild before it, Tears of the Kingdom fully integrates the design of the Switch within its gameplay. In the first game, Link carried around a familiarly designed “Sheikah Slate” that allowed him to access his map, Hyrule compendium, and inventory among other functions. The sequel sees Link geared with a “Purah Pad” that works the same way, but with a few upgrades courtesy of the great inventor Purah herself.

You can even see her blueprints for the console–I mean Pad–in the game itself.

Making the Switch a physical object in the world connects players with the console, making it a defining part of the overall story. Nintendo’s consoles and The Legend of Zelda are irrevocably linked (pun intended).

Acknowledgement of beginners

With the essentialness of the Switch’s unique design in connection to the gameplay in mind, Breath of the Wild and later Tears of the Kingdom serve as tutorials to the various capabilities of the Switch. Link’s adventures in climbing things, gliding over vast landscapes, taming horses, sidestepping and then flurry rushing enemies, and using the special abilities granted to him almost exhaustively explore all the button combinations that the Switch has to offer.

What’s more is that in the new game these controls–both “Basic” and “Special” — are easily accessible in the Purah Pad menu. Beginners, or rusty veteran players, can brush up on the controls by navigating a menu that demonstrates exactly what buttons to press in what order to execute a perfect guard or to place a pin on the map.

Adventuring made easy

The changes to the Adventure Log, where players can choose their own adventure, as it were, are subtle but significant. Adventures are still ordered into categories like Main, Side, and Shrine, but now there is a distinction between Side Quests and Side Adventures.

• Side Quests take a few minutes of your time. Someone might ask you to find an ingredient for their special stew and they’ll let you in on their recipe for your help.
• Side Adventures are much more involved and unmarked on the map, but can unlock significant rewards like a clothing shop or the Travel Medallion.

This distinction offers players more control over what rabbit hole they decide to descend down in this huge, sprawling game.

Moreover, the new Adventure Log provides a snippet of the map alongside the name of the quest giver and the key information about the quest. As I said, the map is huge (and in this game, has three separate levels!) so giving more context to the quest makes it all the better for players to enjoy.

There are other quality of life updates, like the fact that the game remembers recipes for you, that players have lauded. But these fixes also serve to highlight issues that, for whatever reason, Nintendo developers and designers overlooked or ignored in the production of this sequel.

The bad

Accessibility issues

There are no in-game accessibility controls in Tears of the Kingdom, just as there were none in Breath of the Wild. Players, like Hillard Hendrix who cannot move his fingers, rightfully expect games to have some settings nestled into a menu that allows them to make the game easier for their situation–namely the ability to remap buttons. Although the Switch system in itself allows for button remapping, both Zelda games still prompt players with the “original” button intended during gameplay.

Button remapping has become a fairly standard practice. So why hasn’t Nintendo utilized this basic accessibility feature?

In an interview with Kotaku when the as yet unnamed sequel was announced, Kotaku journalist Jason Schreier asked series producer Eiji Aonuma why the first game decided against button remapping.

Aonuma: When we have a button arrangement, we very much put thought into how we do it, because there’s a specific way we want players to feel. In some ways, if we freely let players do customizations on key assignments and such, I feel like we’re letting go of our responsibility as a developer by just kind of handing everything over to the users. We have something in mind for everybody when we play the game, so that’s what we hope players experience and enjoy as well. But we understand also that players have a desire for free customization.

Schreier: Also, physically disabled players might not be able to play the way developers intended.

Aonuma: Definitely, that’s a very good point, and that’s something we’ll keep in mind going forward, thinking about that.

It seems as if Aonuma didn’t keep this in mind, or else was too preoccupied with the “specific way we want players to feel.” Without accessibility options, many players feel left out and/or frustrated. Hendrix expresses frustration with the fact that “the most basic accessibility options are absent in 2023’s biggest game.”

An endless menu

What’s cool: you can attach just about anything to an arrow.

What’s not: you have to scroll through a horizontal menu to choose your item. And that menu is long.

In Tears of the Kingdom, there are a number of new collectable items with a number of new effects. Instead of purchasing fire arrows or bomb arrows, Link can forage for fire fruit and bomb flowers to attach to his arrows. To do so in the midst of combat, players have to get ready to shoot and then hit the right button on the D-pad. From there, scroll through the items to find the most appropriate for the situation. Time freezes during this deliberation, because otherwise we’d all fall victim to Bokoblin attacks while we rifled through this huge inventory of stuff.

Although you can sort by alphabetical, type, or “most used,” players have still pointed out that this is a pretty clunky UI component in an otherwise largely improved upon game.

You still can’t pet the dog

You can pet your horses, but the dogs of Hyrule get no love. It’s a shame.

TL:DR — The ugly truth

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is obviously a top contender for game of the year. Gamers like myself have been salivating over it since reaching the end of Breath of the Wild, since the first eerie trailers for the unnamed sequel dropped. Incredibly, the game is living up to our sky high expectations, and in certain aspects even exceeding them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fr1Z07AV00

Tears of the Kingdom features an unprecedented amount of opportunity for creativity, a friendlier UI, and gameplay that showcases both the strengths and limitations of the Switch console.

(Note that many people, including myself, assumed that Tears of the Kingdom would be a launch title for a new, beefier Switch to replace the increasingly aging current model.)

Because the game is so good, its flaws feel all the more glaring, especially those involving accessibility issues. Aonuma previously promised to keep button remapping in mind, but that was apparently not a priority when producing this game.

Activist, gamer, and Senior Director of Development at the charity AbleGamers Steven Spohn perhaps best explains why Nintendo needs to consider features like button remapping as a standard in all their games:

So some things, when you think about accessibility, are considered standard now. When you think about the DVD of your favorite movie right now, you know there’s going to be closed captioning, right? There is, because of course there is, it’s in every single movie. Same things with video games and remapping, of course there’s going to be remapping, so when there’s not it leads to a situation where people get upset. There’s the two ends of the spectrum where you have good, bad, and there’s everything in between.

Nintendo’s in that same realm, they really need to come along when it comes to accessibility. Nintendo is lagging behind the other big consoles and I think it’s a shame, because there are so many wonderful Nintendo titles that people just want to enjoy, whether it’s Super Mario or Zelda. We all know these are household names. And you want to be able to jump in and play with friends, no matter what console it is. So I hope that Nintendo starts stepping up and bringing accessibility to the plate too.