TL;DR: The writing of Tears of the Kingdom devalues the rest of the franchise while cheesing out old fans. They had lots of great opportunities to make the story amazing and tie it in to the rest of the timeline but decided to go in a completely opposite direction and the game much worse because of that. The gameplay is pretty dang good though and that makes for a very conflicting experience. Without the gameplay additions, it would be my least favorite Zelda game.

-----

When I first started playing Tears of the Kingdom, I was convinced that it was a near-perfect game, one of the greatest of all time. The more I played, the less I wanted to play it and the more I saw the cracks, especially in the narrative (but also just in how long the game was without feeling like I was being given much in return for my time investment). The more time that passes since playing Tears of the Kingdom, the more it has been grinding my gears, particularly in the story department and the lack of respect the writers/director seem to have for the rest of the series.

The team had every opportunity to tie Tears to the rest of the timeline. Breath of the Wild set an incredible stage for that, and even with the trailers of Tears there were SO many avenues to take.

They could have easily tied it in to Skyward Sword and/or Twilight Princess.

Skyward Sword has a lot of the same sort of ancient technology from people not very well known about. They could have had Ganondorf channel Demise into an ultimate form of some sort. Demise could have been sealed within the Master Sword this entire time, and it breaking could have released him. There could have been a time loop that resets Hyrule back to the Skyward Sword era, maybe even with a way to finally break the curse and alter history. Everything from the way Ganondorf looked when he was powered up, to the tears themselves, to dragons being prominent, to the ouroboros logo of the game was hinting at that sort of thing.

Twilight Princess, Ganondorf gets a massive chest wound in the events of that game and ultimately, the Master Sword is driven through his chest at the end of the game to kill/seal him. Ganondorf in the TotK trailer looked incredibly similar to TP Ganondorf, even down to having Rauru's seal on his chest. On top of that, you have the Zonai bearing some resemblance to the Twili, with dragon iconography. The trailer music had vocal parts that sounded like Midna's speech and some vocal parts in TP. Twilight Princess also has tears as an item.

The Zonai could have ended up being the interlopers that turned into the Twili, or they could have been the ones who stayed in the skies after the events of Skyward Sword. Hell, I'm sure with enough creativity they could have even been both.

The game also completely throws away any and all mystique surrounding the Sheikah. That was a massive part of BotW, the Sheikah tech which nobody knows where it came from or really how to even operate it for the most part. Totally swept under the rug. Could have had some really cool tie-ins with the Zonai, or just any sort of recognition would have been appreciated.

The opportunities in the story/worldbuilding department for this game were boundless and they took NONE OF THEM. Instead, Aonuma decided he wanted Zelda to go down a completely different path, actually stating that he thinks the only reason people like the old Zelda games is because of nostalgia. In the same interview, he says that they want to still cater to the old fans of the series but what does that actually represent when it comes to the game itself?

I'll tell you what it represents. A bunch of shameless easter eggs. Every single cosmetic item from every single Zelda game shoved in as (non-upgradeable) rewards for beating enemies or solving puzzles in an open space. Names of locations that have absolutely zero explanation or cool stories beyond just the text on the map. "Dungeons" that only resemble dungeons from old Zelda games cosmetically and are actually worse than the Divine Beasts from a gameplay standpoint. Zelda's dialogue while she's more or less "knighting" Link in Breath of the Wild references completely different games from different timelines depending on the language you're playing in, for hell's sake.

The worst offender of all is the nerve they had to call the fight between Ganondorf and the Sages "The Imprisoning War." That's the exact same name of the war that took place in between Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past. That's talked about very early on in the game, and so many people (including myself) thought it was a direct confirmation of the timeline placement for the new games, but they pulled a bait-and-switch and well, it was just CALLED the same thing. It's not even a war, it was one battle. They couldn't have called it anything else?? Seriously, who greenlit this? Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure NOWHERE ELSE in the Zelda franchise is one event referred to by the same name as another one. They're all totally distinct and have their own relevance to the story of the game you're playing, as well as an impact on the rest of the timeline.

So thank you, Aonuma. Your dedication to making these new Zelda games "their own thing" and "better than the old games" has actively degraded how actually well crafted the rest of the series was, despite being developed out of order without much planning. I can't believe I'm saying this, but this infuriates me just about as much as The Last of Us 2 did. Sometimes sequels just don't deserve to be made and I think that, unfortunately, Tears of the Kingdom is one of those cases.

Tears was originally supposed to be an expansion for Breath of the Wild, much in the same way that Majora's Mask was originally an expansion for Ocarina of Time. I don't know what the original scope was, but it obviously quickly got out of hand to the point where they had to spend 6 years developing it into its own game. I think that, story-wise, they bit off way more than they could chew and it really shows, right down to the ludonarrative dissonance literally everywhere and using the same story-telling mechanism as BotW which doesn't work here nearly as well.

It's really unfortunate because the gameplay, or at least the concept of the gameplay, is fantastic. I think its novelty does wear off a bit later on but it's still incredibly innovative and fun. The dungeons are subpar, and they added even more shrines for some godforsaken reason, but the addition of caves was cool, there were some cool new enemies and mini-bosses, and I enjoyed seeing the old characters grow up a little. It's just a shame that, for Nintendo's most story-focused franchise, they did the dumb Nintendo thing and decided to focus solely on the gameplay while letting the story fall completely to the wayside. It was just decided that they'd write whatever the hell they wanted, whether it made sense or not, whether it was actually tied in to the rest of the games or not, and then added a bit of cheese on top of it so that the old Zelda fans would look at it and say "look, they remember us!!"

There are Zelda games that I fully dislike such as Minish Cap. There are some I have a bit of a hard time playing like Twilight Princess due to its wolf gameplay. This is the first Zelda game I'm extremely conflicted on, and if it weren't for the heaps of cool, new mechanics and world elements they added to Tears of the Kingdom I'm pretty sure it would be my least favorite Zelda game just by nature of what it is and what it DIDN'T set out to do.

@beardalaxy
I think the shrines are actually the best example, of just how shallow the storytelling and lore is in that game.

In Botw, you have shrines belonging to one group, each ending with a monk. Ok... The endless ceiling of the shrines implies, that the entire kingdom is on top of some superstructure, that we know nothing about. Ganon as well as guardians and beasts have heavy technological grounding of the same design.

But in the Totk, literally all of these shrines look completely different, are called by name of a different civilization, and all superstructures including 4 divine beasts are just gone. For no reason.

The reskin of shrines was pointless, and visiting the wreckage of each beast would be a great base for more memorable quests. But the sheer disregard shown by ignoring all of this buildup cannot be justified.

@Awoo @LukeAlmighty since they put the zonai in botw to begin with, they likely had planned to expand on them a little bit with an expansion. however, once it ballooned into a full game, they perhaps had to focus on them entirely instead.

like i said, bad call making it a full game. it would have worked way more if they trimmed off everything but what was absolutely necessary and told the story in the modern era. it is painfully obvious that they had an idea that would have worked better as an ADDITION to breath of the wild rather than its own entire game that had to rely on its own merits.

@beardalaxy @Awoo
What do you mean?
Weren't Zonai mentioned a total of... 1 time in BotW, and that being in a location name?

@LukeAlmighty @Awoo there were no physical zonai, but they had ruins all over the southern province.