Once in a while, a game comes along that’s so rich or flexible that fans can spend a decade exploring and experimenting, always finding something new. Many of these long-lived games are RPGs, like Skyrim, but Nintendo’s core action-adventure franchise might have such a game in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A central part of the appeal of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the Ultrahand system that allows players to combine just about any objects they like to make vehicles and puzzle-solving contraptions. It’s a wellspring of creativity and an achievement in video game physics, so it’s a shame that it’ll probably never get the one thing that could improve it: official mod support.
Modding is a time-honored tradition of the gaming community, but the way that it works has evolved in a big way over the years. A lot of studios actively encourage their fans to develop mods and continue engaging with the game, like the aforementioned Skyrim and the more recent phenomenon Baldur’s Gate 3. Nintendo, however, isn’t party to this increasingly common choice, which is a missed opportunity. Tears of the Kingdom mods do exist in their own right, but official support for mod lovers would’ve gone a long way.
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Official Mod Support Would’ve Been a Dream Come True for Tears of the Kingdom
Modding Has Come a Long Way in the Game Industry
Mod support from a game’s developer can be invaluable in a lot of ways. For one, modding tends to be a little more accessible on PC than on consoles thanks to a computer’s versatility, so when a developer adds an official modding portal in the console version of the game (like, say, Larian Studios did for Baldur’s Gate 3), it takes a major technical load off fans. For another, game developers simply have access to the very fundamentals of the game, so they can open doors for modders that fans can’t open themselves. Earlier this year, Saber Interactive released the official dev toolkit for Space Marine 2, which enables mods to look and feel as close to official content as possible.
Any kind of mod support like this would be a godsend for Tears of the Kingdom. When it launched, Tears of the Kingdom‘s physics earned rave reviews, and ever since, amazing Ultrahand designs regularly make the rounds on social media. Ultrahand alone is a great reason for mod support; if Nintendo released a dev toolkit, it could open up untold new ways to manipulate TotK‘s physics and implement items to engineer with, until the only limit on Ultrahand is the player’s imagination. Beyond that, it would also be the ideal way for modders to expand on basic features like quests, enemies, and weapons in a way that feels authentic, all while making mods more accessible for less tech-savvy fans.
Nintendo’s History Doesn’t Point Towards Official Modding
But that’s simply not going to happen. While many other game devs have learned to love modding, Nintendo is notoriously wary of letting fans tinker with its games. It’s even known to take legal action against certain modifications to its games, like when Nintendo shut down Super Smash Bros. tournament The Big House in 2020 for its use of Slippi, a Super Smash Bros. Melee emulator that adds features such as online matchmaking. If Nintendo is so averse to emulated versions of games as old as Melee, there’s little hope that it would enable modding for its modern games in any official capacity.
Tears of the Kingdom‘s new Zelda Notes app on Switch 2 allows players to share items and Ultrahand creations; this may be about the closest TotK ever gets to official mod support.
Zelda fans have found ways to craft Tears of the Kingdom mods without Nintendo’s help, and they may only get bigger and better on the Nintendo Switch 2. Modders have generations of practice at altering games without the developers’ help, after all, so it’s far from a total loss that Nintendo hasn’t shown interest in modding. Still, as Tears of the Kingdom finds a second wind on Nintendo’s new console, it’ll always be a little sad that Nintendo has left modding’s full potential untapped.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Released
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May 12, 2023
- ESRB
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Rated E for Everyone 10+ for Fantasy Violence and Mild Suggestive Themes
- Developer(s)
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Nintendo
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo
- Engine
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Havok
