The sheer creativity that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's building system allows has opened the doors for fans of the franchise to craft all sorts of hilarious and mindblowing creations across Hyrule. That said, just about everyone can agree that this system, and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as a whole, are being held back by the Nintendo Switch's limitations as a console.
So, let's go over just a few of the many small fixes this system could use, even the ones that might not seem realistic for Nintendo to actually implement, to show just how much a small change could open up this crafting system even more.
7 Increasing The Attach Limit
While the 21-item limit for building with Ultrahand/Autobuild has forced many players to get even more creative with their machinations, an increase to that attach limit, even a minuscule increase, would have a gigantic effect. If the attach limit was, for example, 25 instead of 21, the few remaining parts that stopped players from crafting the perfect Korok Cooker or a perfect Metal Gear recreation would then be available to use.
Granted, Nintendo obviously included this limitation for a reason, as they deemed anything over 21 items would be a major performance issue (and it is). That said, now that the game is entirely out as a finished product they can take their time figuring out optimization so that this fix would work in some future DLC or patch. And, worst case scenario, even if they couldn't figure it out, fans would still likely just deal with the performance issues of it being upped to 25 anyway.
6 General Autobuild Menu Changes
The way Autobuild currently works in Tears of the Kingdom is more than satisfactory for most players. The sheer fact that players can save their absurd designs for later and rebuild them at anytime (for a Zonaite cost, of course) is a genius idea. That said, the system isn't perfect. For example, only giving players 8 Favorites slots to work with is silly. And, on top of that, players can't name these Favorites, change the default position these Autobuild load up in (easily, at least), or easily make quick minor adjustments to their Autobuild designs.
Again, this 8 Favorites limit is likely an issue of optimization more than anything, but that still doesn't stop it from feeling restrictive in-game. And, it doesn't explain why players can't just have an 'empty' Autobuild slot that they can use to hover over their design and 'save' it rather than having to stick an apple (or any other random object) onto their build to make sure the most recent addition is at the top of the timeline.
5 Performance Improvements For Certain Zonai Devices
Let's be honest, while a lot of those tanks, Gundams, Metal Gears, and all sorts of other 'battle vehicle' inventions players have been seeing online are great, using them absolutely tanks the performance of the game.
In particular, the builds that use a lot of Cannons, Beam Emitters, or Flame Emitter Zonai Devices are more difficult to enjoy using simply because of the drop in FPS while they're being used. So, if Nintendo somehow managed to figure out a fix for this, such as massively decreasing the visual fidelity of the fire or laser effects when more than a certain amount of them are present, then players could actually use their walking doom bots without having to deal with sub 20 frames-per-second the entire time.
4 An Eay Method For Activating Build Sections Separately
This next small change is one that could easily come from some sort of discovery by the fanbase instead of being added by Nintendo. It's similar to how they figured out the Cooking Pots also work as ball and socket joints even if that wasn't the original intention. Essentially, it would be fantastic if there was an easy solution for separately activating and deactivating parts of one build. For example; if players could easily turn the Cannon on their makeshift mech into the 'on' position without having to also pilot the mech at the same time, that would go a long way.
From a developer standpoint, the easiest way to do this would be to introduce a new Zonai Device that simply acts as a 'separator' of sorts, allowing for two parts of a build to still be attached to each other but the Zonai Device would block anything attached to the right of it from being activated by anything attached to the left side of it.
3 Any Sort Of Addition To Link's House Or How It Works
One of the few disappointing parts of Tears of the Kingdom has to be how limiting the customization and house-building options are for Link's home in Tarrey Town. A 15-room build limit, the lack of any sort of real cosmetic customization for these rooms (be it props, paint, or wallpaper), and the inability to 'add onto' the house are all pretty saddening.
Nintendo addressing any one of these aspects would go a long way to maintaining the game's player base long after they've beaten the main story. Just to give a few example ideas, they could:
- Add a gardening aspect to the home so players would have to maintain their plants or collect specific crops out in Hyrule to grow back at their home.
- Add any sort of color or item customization for the rooms that players could unlock through certain special tasks or by meeting specific requirements.
- Allow players to 'stick' objects onto the interior or exterior of the home, up to a certain limit, allowing for more individual expression.
- Increase the build limit of the house overall.
- Allow players to take their rooms into the open world with them. Imagine if Link could slap some Small Wheels, a Steering Stick, and maybe even a Cannon on his Kitchen and drive it around Hyrule with him?'
2 More Precise Item Rotation
Players may have noticed a pattern by now that a lot of the more nuanced builds that people have discovered in Tears of the Kingdom require certain parts of the build to be at specific angles and so on. For example, the hoverbikes that everyone seems to be using usually rely on one of the Zonai Fans being attached to the Steering Stick at a very particular angle, and lining up that angle can be tricky.
But, if players simply had an option in the Options menu to enable Gyro rotation or if they could hold a button to enable 'free rotation' with the right analog stick, it would have a massive impact overall on both the puzzle-solving and building aspects of the game.
1 More Horse Equipment & More Functions For The Towing Harness
And for a final fix, let's talk about Horses in Tears of the Kingdom and more specifically, the Towing Harness. Overall, horses are just being collected and used way less often in this sequel than they were in the original Breath of the Wild. And, the primary reason for this is that it's much easier (and most of the time, faster) just to use a custom-made flying/driving device than to rely on a horse.
On top of this, the Towing Harness, a piece of gear Link can have his horse equipped with that allows players to pull objects with the horse, is essentially useless. For one, it makes the horse much slower while it's equipped. Two, it's slow and awkward to even equip in the first place. And three, there just aren't many uses for it outside of the occasional cart that needs to be pulled along. Sure, some players have managed to make portable laser cannons using the Towing Harness and others have fun with it by using it to drag Koroks around, but that's still not a lot of usage overall. If Nintendo added more horse equipment in a future patch or somehow added content that made the Towing Harness more viable, then people would actually care about collecting horses and upgrading them again.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now for Nintendo Switch.