 Before I get into this video, I want to remind you that we are giving away a Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Special Edition Switch OLED, a Collector's Edition of Tears of the Kingdom along with a special pin from PAX East. You can go ahead and enter down in the link down in the description and or the pinned comment. We're also on our road to 133,000 subscribers. So if you enjoyed this video, I'd appreciate if you would drop a like, leave a comment and subscribe to the channel and maybe even turn on that Bell notification to get all videos notified to you. Now let's get into the video. I have never seen a game get more hate for doing what a massive chunk of the video game industry does consistently, even with the same game series as Tears of the Kingdom. Even after the last story trailer and the 10 minutes of gameplay from IG Aonuma and so much more, we're still hearing how Tears of the Kingdom is $70 DLC. And that the game isn't going to do enough to justify being a standalone experience. The common complaints about Tears of the Kingdom are as follows. It's literally looks the same, visually. They didn't enhance the visuals enough for it to be a new game. It reuses the same world. This is lazy. This is terrible. It is fundamentally mind blowing that they thought they could get away with this. They only can if this is DLC. The animations are the same. Lazy developers, they spent 6 years just twiddling their thumbs. And then the classic, no game is worth $70. Of course, what we're really forgetting and likely the real root of this is simply the company making the game. Rather than issues with the game itself. This is quite popular today to crap all over Nintendo. Recently, you have huge YouTubers like Moist Critical and ReviewTechUSA blasting Nintendo for going too far with a former team executor hacker who sold devices to easily hack Nintendo Switch. Which yes, is illegal. And while he has been let out of prison on good behavior, they were reminded he owes Nintendo $10 million. And that Nintendo can garnish his wages up to 25-30% for the rest of his life. Can, not has. But that's beside the point. That story is actually an old one that was settled last year. And the news from it isn't actually new. And sure, Nintendo did come down pretty hard on that guy, ironically named Gary Bowser. Of course, what is left out of both of those videos is that Gary is a repeat offender. Meaning he already did this before, got busted and was in legal trouble for it in the first place. He knew what he was doing. He's 51. He fully admitted in the court case that he is guilty to everything. The penalty is what it is. Not because Nintendo wants to make an example, although they do, but also in part because this is not his first time. He's a repeat offender who openly admitted wrongdoing in the court. Still, it's a harsh penalty that furthers an already set in stone opinion that Nintendo, the company, is an evil organization. Recently, Nintendo of America has targeted popular content creators such as Point Crow and RGT-85 with multiple copyright strikes. One for modding games that feels right in line with their fair use and Nintendo's own policies on content creation. The other for sharing parts of a leaked commercial that had new tiers of the kingdom footage. Footage that wasn't even groundbreaking and mostly expounds on things we have already seen and is legally protected under the freedom of press laws given he is not the direct source of the leak, but merely reporting on it. Unfortunately on YouTube, real law doesn't always apply because YouTube systems wash their hands of all responsibility. The only way to fight back against a strike is to indeed go to court with Nintendo. Something that is costly can take many years and ultimately may not get you the result you want guaranteed, leading to an even stricter landscape for all content creators. It's a potential lose-lose situation and even on the grounds that you win, Nintendo could simply amend their public policies on content creation to change the rules again in response, making things worse. It kind of just sucks all around. We have seen Nintendo go after ROM sites on the planet, all of them, whether you agree with it or not, and we have also seen Nintendo do other practices many find to be anti-consumer. We're in the seventh year of Switch, hell let's still sell it to you for $300. What special edition OLED models let's up the price $10 to $360. They don't even package games in with those systems. They never lower the price of their games consistently or quickly and they charge quite a bit for an online service that while it has a growing and improving Nintendo Switch online offering, it still lacks many basic features other services at similar price points have. It is literally a popular opinion in the gaming world to hate on Nintendo, to be negative towards them. None of this necessarily has to do with Tears of the Kingdom beyond the $70 price point specifically, but I can't deny that it probably plays a huge role in what Tears of the Kingdom is and how it isn't being treated fairly. Let's get to some examples. God of War Ragnarok just last year was widely considered a masterpiece and it shares the exact same world, some clearly reused assets and animations as God of War in 2018. But nobody was arguing that game was just DLC, nor are they arguing the merits of it being a standalone adventure, or should they? But it did a lot of very similar things we see with Tears of the Kingdom. Heck, within the Zelda series itself Majora's Mask reused a ton of assets in all the animations from Ocarina of Time and nobody got mad and then when you look at a link between worlds it literally takes place in the exact same map as a link to the past. But nobody had these criticisms back then because the games did so much to justify themselves and stand out from the games before them. We can use the resounding game of the year last year as another example if you wish. Elden Ring is fantastic, but did you know a massive chunk of the enemy AI and combat animations are actually just ripped out of many of the Dark Souls games? I am sure you did notice, in fact the game got praised for it for being an open world souls game. Where is the hate over reused animations there? Okay, so the bigger issue isn't the animations or even the art direction, fine we can point to hundreds of examples of games reusing animations and art styles, it's just that it's in the same world and that's a big problem. Sure, we used God of War Ragnarok as one example and a link between worlds as another but there are more. One that did get some criticism in its day was Far Cry Primal which reused the Far Cry 4 map. Again a problem for that game but not for God of War. Let it be that Ubisoft is also a really popular company to crap on while Sony and their studios are treated mostly like gaming royalty, might be a little bias involved here. I do see a bit of a pattern, but let's look at more examples, Borderlands 2 has massive chunks of areas in it from Borderlands 1, nearly no complaints about that, Destiny 2 did the same thing, Neo 2 as well. The list is truly endless the more you dig into it. There's a lot of games and a lot of sequels that reused the world before it. Yet Tears of the Kingdom specifically, this is now a problem. People will get mad and decry this, but what about the last of us getting remade not once but twice? Okay, that one did get a little flak. But what about the world of remakes in general? I'm not trying to knock remakes, but we literally live in a world where we are repacking games, sometimes games that aren't even that old and reselling them again for full price and nobody seems to really complain about this and everyone is doing it. But Tears of the Kingdom being full priced game that isn't a remake is a problem? How did that $60 Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze release on Nintendo Switch treat you guys? Did you know that it was actually $10 more than the original release on Wii U? Yet it didn't get nearly the backlash over it. Was Funky Kong really a good justification for the increase? Of course, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze may have escaped the heavier criticism because most gamers never even touched a Wii U. There is a reason it suffered the shortest console cycle of any Nintendo home console ever. But I think I've ran the gambit at this point. Tears of the Kingdom is getting special treatment like this even today because it's a Nintendo game. Not because what it's doing is new or what it's doing is abnormal in the industry just because it's a Nintendo game. The $70 price doesn't help but this game was worth more than Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze right? Yeah, I think we can agree to that. I am a Nintendo guy so obviously I have my bias. We all do one way or another. But if you're going to hate so heavily on Tears of the Kingdom for the design choices, the reused map, the animations and reused assets then I simply ask you to hate this consistently all of these practices across the industry. Don't tell me how much Tears of the Kingdom is going to tank compared to Horizon Forbidden West, a game reusing a huge chunk of assets and animations from the first game when you're using those exact same arguments against Tears of the Kingdom. Give that same heat to every game using it. That's all I ask. Hate equally. Not based on inherent company bias. Or better yet, just let things be. The people who buy games will ultimately decide if the game was good enough for them. I'm not saying any of the example games in this video are bad games and you shouldn't play them. And our enjoyment is entirely subjective. Some people love revisiting old lands and don't care about reused assets and animations. Some people hate it. But we'll then go on to talk how lame so many indie titles are that are doing entirely original art styles, animations, and gameplay ideas. Keep that same fire for everyone doing it. Or just better yet, don't do it at all. The worst part is that many of these complaints and hate of Nintendo as a justification to pirate games. Look if you want to emulate and pirate NES games, Gamecube, Gameboy Advance, look it's whatever. They don't even sell those games anymore. But pirating brand new games is not even objectively morally right to do. Forget legally, it's just not justified. I'm not talking about people who buy the game, dump their own files, and then play it on PC so they can have a better experience than Switch provides. That's just user choice of a copy of the game they purchased. I'm talking about people who specifically are not buying the games and advertising how much they love to pirate Nintendo games. Why? What then? Hey, you know what? I too like to publicize myself committing crimes for the lulls. Wait, no I don't. Cause I'm not an idiot. Look, no matter what I or anyone else says, this hate isn't going to go away. It's too popular to hate on a big corporation who make decisions some dislike. Both legally, questionably in striking content creators, and then from what many feel is a moral standpoint. In 2015 chipsets in 2023 at full price is something many will never get over. Nintendo not lowering the price of games and upcharging Donkey Kong tropical frees and arguably upcharging tears of the kingdom is something many will hold on to as examples. Nintendo does a lot of things people don't like. But they also do many things people do like. And that's why Nintendo Switch is their second best selling platform ever. That's why they are selling more games than ever before. That's why the Mario movie is now going to be a billion plus dollar mega hit. Regardless of all the wrongdoings and perceived greed both real and imagined from Nintendo, in the end they do enough right to be a mega company in this industry to entice our wallets and our imaginations. No company is perfect and all of them make questionable decisions. But this is a life where unlike Mario or Link, we truly only do get to live once and there are no do-overs. Maybe we just let people enjoy what they enjoy and if it's something you don't like go play and focus on the things that you do. No amount of whining over tears of the kingdom is going to stop its release, its sales, its success or cause the price to be lowered. It only makes you look petty in the end for not holding every company to the exact same standards. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Let me know what you think about this down in the comments below and I'll catch you in the next video.