 If I were to ask you what Breath of the Wild's most divisive in-game feature was, I'm sure most people would talk about how there is an item breaking system, the weapon durability, and maybe not even that you hate the durability, but there's no way to even repair your weapons outside of some core unbreakable weapons that you get from each territory, but outside of that, yeah, the weapons break and some of your favorite weapons you're sometimes afraid to use because you don't want to lose them, especially if it was really difficult to obtain a certain weapon. Well, what's interesting is that's not apparently what games radar writer Joe Donnelly, we're going to say writer, I don't know that this is the opinion of everyone at games radar, but they put up an article that I wanted to check out because they're talking about Tears of the Kingdom, and they're talking about how they want something to be different, how they want to try something different, and how they want Tears of the Kingdom to be different. It says Zelda Tears of the Kingdom looks ace, but I hope it drops Breath of the Wild's most divisive feature. You read that title, you start thinking they're talking about weapon durability, something that's been a topic of conversation for five or six years, but they're not. They're talking about climbing mechanics, and I want to go through this article with you guys and discuss it and give you maybe some counter points of what they're thinking because I think the climbing mechanic is one of the most brilliant things added to Breath of the Wild. So we're going to talk about this. We already know this is coming to Tears of the Kingdom. It's a feature that's already been featured, and they do mention that in this article. That being said, before we get into it, I want to remind you that our video and our channel is sponsored by EWIN Racing. EWIN Racing has amazing chairs for all types and sizes of people, from the little to the big to the super skinny to the overweight, the short to the tall. They got something for everybody, and they have a New Year's sale going on right now for 20% off. You can also use our code Nintendo Prime at checkout for 20% off as well. Either one of these will work. You get 20% off either way, and yeah, just check them out through the link down in the description. Alright, so as you're seeing here, it says, Zell of Tears of the Kingdom looks ace, but I hope it drops Breath of the Wild's most divisive feature. The latest Zell of Tears of the Kingdom trailer doesn't give too much away. One old mechanic has seemingly returned. I think it's a core mechanic to Breath of the Wild, but there we go. After 42 seconds of relative silent and a peaceful camera work panning and tilting around a network of sacred wall carvings, the Legend of Zell of Tears of the Kingdom announced itself to the world in a flash. The latest trailer for the much anticipated Breath of the Wild sequel, now with a new confirmed name, Should Link heaving upon two massive doors of crumbling stone before pegging it towards a sun-soaked ledge beyond which floating islands lined with golden trees stretched off into the distance. Without pause, the plucky protagonist thrust himself overboard with a form-perfect swan dive before we were shown the snippets of some of the stuff we'll be up to in the new Zell of the Game. This is, in essence, Breath of the Wild 2 in all but name due on May 12, 2023 for the Nintendo Switch. As revealed during September's Nintendo Direct with what looks like two separate planes to explore, one in the sky and another thousands of meters below, shouldering five years worth of hype since Zell's last outing, three since this game's first tease at E3 2019. Man, a lot of verbal garbage here. Look, I like to describe things as well, but a lot of verbal garbage here. Anyways, I'm excited to see how Nintendo goes even bigger than Breath of the Wild here, with hang gliding and skydiving, floating rock platforming, and the first proper sense of scale between the lower and higher reaches of this game world. There's definitely plenty to shout about from the latest trailer. But much to my dismay, one of the biggest bugbears from the previous game looks unchanged. Get a grip. Let's cut to the chase. Climbing in Breath of the Wilds is pants. I don't even... Pants are something we wear, right? Does pants have an alternative meaning I'm not aware of? As I kept reading this article earlier today, I started to understand when he meant my pants. But when did pants become something other than something that we wear? Anyways, there's just no two ways about it. An arbitrary stamina bar. A feature first introduced to action RPGs in the mid-1990s, also introduced in Skyward Sword for Zelda, but hey, what am I gonna... Let's not mention Zelda. Governs how far you can go in any direction. Before, once the bar is emptied, you lose your grip and plummet to the next flat surface, and you're untimely death in an instant, or you can have food or there's certain armor you can get that lets you climb even further. Let's not talk about all the mechanics behind climbing in Breath of the Wild. Let's just focus on one. Anyways, and again, there's so forward thinking in so many ways. One that puts exploration so front and center in both its narrative and moment to moment discovery, this throwback to such an archaic, awkwardly executed mechanic for me really puts a damper on the free-wheeling nature of Breath of the Wild as a whole. Stamina bars are a staple of the ARPG genre, of course, from Skyrim to Dark Souls, Neo to Elden Ring, but the restrictions they otherwise impose on combat and, say, sprinting from enemies feels less forced. Because in these moments, you're managing stamina as a depleting resource and you're not doing that while climbing. I mean, it's more realistic, I think, to have stamina while climbing because people can't climb forever before they fall. There's a reason most of us can't climb to the top of a rock wall. Like, it's not easy. It's pretty tiring. Even the world's most professional rock climbers out there will tell you it's a very tiring thing and there's some mountains they can't climb. Like, it's not easy. Anyways, that's another error there. I guess it doesn't matter that it takes a lot of stamina to actually climb in real life. You're working to overcome the loss of a commodity on the fly in order to succeed, which you are also doing with climbing. Anyways, ultimately, in these moments, you're being judged on how you play and how it plays you and you're being judged on how you chose and what you chose to climb and the way in which you're doing it. It's very, very similar to combat, but that's neither here nor there because to you it's not. Obviously, this is an opinion piece. So his opinion can't be wrong for his preferences, of course. All right, during tears of the kingdom's newest trailer, we do see Link climbing in various vertical structures, hauling himself up and down with the same labored weight shifting animations from the previous game. There's no sign of the dreaded stamina bar granted. But given the fact there's also no visible HUD throughout the trailers and entirety, my guess at this stage is that climbing is like for like this time around, probably it's a direct sequel. Yeah, they're probably going to use stamina and we'll have ways to increase our stamina like we did in the first game. All right, high rule. I realize I might sound like a grumpy old man here, but my reason for coming down so hard on this facet of Breath of the Wild, which is why they consider one of the most brilliant additions to exploration in a game is because it's so, so capable elsewhere. GameRadarPlus doesn't hand out five star reviews without good reason. And I suspect we'll be having similar conversations about tears of the kingdom when it launches in May of next year. Breath of the Wild's constantly breaking weapons are another of its most divisive features. And while I'm still on the fence about whether I love them or hate them to mark its fifth anniversary earlier this year, reminder, this article is written about September of last year. I wrote about how Zelda Breath of the Wild broke the mold and by me, by breaking its weapons, this design decision shook up the ARPG formula enough to earn my respect. Unlike Fallout 4, The Witcher 3 and a vast majority of other open world games that leverage talent trees and familiar role playing gimmicks. Breath of the Wild drops leveling up entirely. I mean, you could argue, increasing your hearts and stamina is a form of leveling up, but I hear you. Instead, in order to balance progression and difficulty, the durability of weapons plus the finite number of weapons we can carry at once puts a precise cap on how much damage we can deal at any given time. In practice, we therefore find ourselves constantly tossing away weaker arms as we discover new ones. And only by doing that can we hope to overcome the game's toughest baddies. Also, just pure skill. You can, with a tree branch, go ahead and head off to Ganon right away and and defeat Calamity. I'm just I'm just pointing out that there's a lot of skill involved with the combat in Breath of the Wild, which was very much appreciated. Something I'm not accustomed to seeing really since Zelda 2. Zelda 2 had a lot of skill in its combat, but anyways. The latest Tears of the Kingdom trailer admittedly doesn't show any bouts of combat, but I'd be happy enough with the return of perishable weapons. So this person likes durability. OK, cool. So as long as they are equally intertwined with exploration and discovery as per Breath of the Wild, stamina, tied traversal, on the other hand, can do one. Don't get me wrong. I'm proper excited about Tears of the Kingdom. I fully expected to feature on the Game of the Year list in 2023. Well, definitely climb in my own estimations. If it ditches, what I reckon is its forerunners, most frustrating and most outdated mechanic. And this is what I find really fascinating. Climbing anywhere is not a common mechanic in open world games. To be clear, Assassin's Creed has the ability to climb a lot of places, even in its open world nature, especially in towns. But oftentimes you can't just climb anything, anywhere, any time. And for the most part, outside of very specific surfaces, like inside shrines and obviously when it's raining, you can climb pretty much anything in Breath of the Wild. In fact, it was one of its most revolutionary exploration tactics in comparison to other games in the well, action, RPG, action, adventure, open world genre, right? It is very, very much at the core fundamental exploration level of the game and the stamina meter plays a huge role in that, not just in terms of, you know, your traversal climbing up, also your traversal in terms of using the sailcloth, other mechanics in the game like the slowdown when you're shooting arrows. It is so fundamental to the core of how this game, like Breath of the Wild functions, what he's essentially asking isn't to completely get rid of stamina, like let stamina exist when you're running away from enemies. Let stamina exist when you're shooting your arrows in slow motion. He's not asking for that to be gone. He doesn't want stamina to be used when climbing because he just wants to be able to freely climb anywhere all the time without restriction. And that is so fundamentally flawed to the way Breath of the Wild works, because everything in Breath of the Wild has its limits. The weapon durability has its limits. Even when you get the Master Sword, guess what? It has its limits. There are limits to everything in this game. Even the ancient armor, the limits is how many rupees you have. There are limits to everything. And to get rid of one of the core fundamental limits in the game really just breaks the way the game's intended to work. Climbing works the way the rest of the game does. There is a form of exploration here where you are rewarded for thinking ahead. He wants Tears of the Kingdom to be dumbed down. That's the way this article comes off to me. I hate stamina while climbing. It's archaic because, you know, climbing and stamina totally don't make sense together. Right? I'm like, if you want to think of me as talking about weapon durability, I understand how divisive that is. And I can make similar arguments for weapon durability, how it's actually a core of the game, but he actually likes weapon durability. So since he likes weapon durability, he's got to find something to nitpick in. For him, it's climbing. I get it. It's his personal opinion. No matter what I say, it's not going to change this writer's personal opinion. But it just bothers me. It just bothers me that somebody wants one of the core things that made Breath of the Wild what it is to change in a way that, in my opinion, sort of lessens how important climbing is. Without stamina affecting climbing, just the ability to climb all the time, infinitely, it fundamentally changes my approach to exploration in the game. And maybe I'm alone in this. Maybe you guys disagree with me and you think climbing and stamina is stupid. But to me, I found it to be enthralling. It gave you reasons to progress, reasons to increase your stamina bar, reasons to find the extra climbing clothes that make you climb a little bit faster, reasons to cook up stamina food. There are so many counters to this issue. But that's because the game makes you think and I don't want thinking to be gone. Okay, if I'm trying to climb something and I made a mistake and estimated how much stamina I have to make this climb and I was wrong and I didn't map out my climb better. I want to be punished for making that mistake. I don't want to be rewarded by just allowing me to freely climb anything everywhere like Assassin's Creed and even Assassin's Creed has limitations. Like in Assassin's Creed, there's not stamina when you're climbing things, but you can't climb everything. Press of the wild, you can. Even surfaces that make no sense to climb. So, look, I can't disagree with this article any more than the spot. Like when I saw this article pop up in my feet today randomly and I know it's from last year, I couldn't believe what I was reading. It is mind boggling to me. But you know what, maybe you agree. Let me down on the console. Do you agree with me? Do you agree with the author here? Just for full context, this is from GamesRadar and the author is Joe Donnelly. It was published back on September 14th of 2022. Its publication date is a little bit irrelevant, other than obviously noting that it was in a reaction to the Nintendo Direct. That reaction probably doesn't change today. The person that like climbing the last five years in Breath of the Wild. They're not going to suddenly change their mind when we haven't even seen anything else in the game. So you guys, I'm going to think about this down in the comments below. Had a little nice voice over gameplay video to kick off your day today. We'll get back to some normal content a bit later today. You guys are awesome and amazing. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.