WhenThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildcame out back in 2017, I didn’t have the money to buy a new console, so I playedNintendo’sbig launch game on my agingWii U. Now, asTears of the Kingdomapproaches, I feel like the same thing is about to happen again.
This time around, I’m not a generation behind but I don’t have the best tech possible for Nintendo’s big new exclusive, and I’m starting to get worried. TheSwitch OLEDhas been out for nearly two years at this point, and I’m still playing on a launch model.
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I like mySwitchand its age isn’t typically a problem, mostly because I don’t play cutting edge games on it. I have aPS5, anXbox One S, and aPCand, when in doubt, I know that each of them can provide better performance than the Switch for games that are available on multiple platforms. But Tears of the Kingdom isn’t giving me that option, and I don’t have it in the budget to upgrade before it comes out.
This will probably be fine. A lot of people complained about Breath of the Wild’s framerate, and I never really noticed having issues with it. I’m not an especially technical person, and I didn’t start playing on PC until a few years ago, so I have no expectation that games will run at 60 frames per second. If I can see the difference by swapping between Performance and Resolution modes, I’ll pick Performance. But, if I don’t see the difference side-by-side, I’m not going to notice on my own.
With Tears of the Kingdom, I’m mostly worried that I’m going to hit some really egregious load times. If this sequel is anything like its predecessor, those won’t be a concern most of the time. In Breath of the Wild, the loads you did hit were fairly long, but you only hit a loading screen when you were fast traveling, entering a Divine Beast or shrine, or exiting one. The rest of the time, you were free to explore the whole world without pausing for the game to catch up.
So it may be unreasonable for me to be worried. But I’m so excited to return to Hyrule that anything that might throw a wrench in the works is going to make me nervous. This is the brave new world we live in, thanks to mid-generation refreshes, and multiple consoles launching per generation. I have a Switch, Tears of the Kingdom is releasing on Switch, and for most of the history of console gaming, that would be all I needed to know. A game might be buggy, but it wouldn’t run better or worse depending on when you bought yourGameCube. But in the past decade, console gaming has become more like PC gaming. A PS4 game might run badly on the original PS4, better on the PS4 Pro, and better still on the PS5.Forza Horizon 5, for example, is natively available on the Xbox One, but runs much better on the Series X where load times are instantaneous.
I’m hoping that Tears of the Kingdom isn’t noticeably worse on a launch Switch than it is on OLED. But either way, I’ll be back where I was six years ago, exploring Link’s future with a console from the past.
NEXT:Tears Of The Kingdom Looks Much Less Lonely Than Breath Of The Wild
