During the holiday season, we’re republishing select articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2023 series. Enjoy!
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Realm was a critical and commercial success, garnering rave reviews from all quarters (including here) and making many Switch owners happy in the process. All of that praise is well-deserved, but with several AAA developers and publishers slowly but steadily upping their game when it comes to including detailed accessibility options, we wondered how Nintendo’s latest hit ranked in that regard.
We’ve previously looked at various Nintendo titles from an accessibility perspective, and now it’s TOTK’s turn. Via Hilliard…
There was a pretty vocal group of people who argued that Tears of the Kingdom was nothing more than a glorified $70 DLC for Breath of the Wild. It was all irrationally based on the fear that the game couldn’t live up to the hype (or the hatred that the game wouldn’t be like the 50th iteration of the Zelda template established by Link to the Past). I knew they were funny, but I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t afraid that Tears of the Kingdom would do something exactly like its predecessor.
The big difference was that my fear was justified. I was afraid that Tears of the Kingdom would not have accessibility features. Before launch I said I would dye my hair the signature Nintendo red if the game included something as simple as in-game button remapping. Instead, I counted everything out.
I was paralyzed about 14 years ago (C5/C6 tetraplegic), so I pretty much understand Nintendo’s feelings about adding accessibility features to their games. They just won’t do it.
Why did the organization and its creators take this position? I can’t read minds like Professor X so I don’t know the answer (even though I’m bald). Maybe a wheelchair user accidentally stepped on Eiji Aonuma’s foot and this is his way of getting revenge? It must be something like that because Aonuma knows it’s a problem. Read this exchange with Jason Schreier when asked why button remapping wasn’t in Breath of the Wild in an article published by Kotaku in June 2019:
Aunum: When we have a button layout, we think a lot about how we’re going to do it, because there’s a specific way we want players to feel. In a way, if we freely allow players to make adjustments to key tasks and such, I feel like we’re abdicating our responsibility as a developer by kind of leaving everything up to the users. We have something in mind for everyone when we play the game, so we hope that players will experience and enjoy it as well. But we also understand that players have a desire for free customization.
Shouter: Also, physically handicapped players may not be able to play the way the developers intended.
Aunum: Definitely, that’s very good, and it’s something we’ll keep in mind in the future, thinking about it.
Aonuma admits but misses the point and ends up doing nothing. Look at what your peers are doing, Aonuma-san. Sony, Microsoft and all the major developers are doing the equivalent of installing a push button door opener while you park your car in a disabled drop zone.
I don’t want to read another press release that says “Nintendo strives to offer products and services that can be enjoyed by everyone,” which is what the company said after criticism from AbleGamer’s Steven Spohn in 2021. Or be honest and say you’ll keep leaving people disabled in the cold or join the accessibility revolution.
By the way, corporations that add accessibility features to their products aren’t just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it for good PR and to enter an underserved market.
I experience playing Tears of the Kingdom
All that said, I can still play Tears of the Kingdom relatively well. I can’t move my fingers, but when I slide my pro controller on my leg, I can very easily fiddle with the joystick with my palms and very easily jam the face buttons with my right thumb.
Sometimes the controller starts sliding around, but the game lets you pause whenever you want so I could readjust as much as I needed. I can press the shoulder buttons with my knuckles, but that requires me to take my left hand off the joystick and my right hand off the face buttons. This means I can’t grab onto any enemies if I don’t keep Link still. Obviously, this isn’t ideal so finding a solution for this was my top priority when remapping the controls in the Switch’s settings. This is the setup I made:
By moving ‘ZL’ to ‘A’, I can grab onto an enemy and still move Link around. This move also benefits me because I have the ability to press two buttons on my face at the same time. This means they can still attack as well as perform jumps. Hitting ‘Y’ (attack) while holding ‘A’ is a struggle so I switched it to ‘B’. I rarely feel the need to aim while using the bow so moving to ‘Y’ from ‘ZR’ works pretty well.
Moving ‘A’ and ‘B’ to the left and right fenders is weird and by far the main reason I pressed the wrong button, but changing their position is not without its advantages. Shield parrying with ‘L’ isn’t a problem as Link doesn’t have to move to do it, and I was already used to using ‘R’ to sprint thanks to playing Dragon Quest XI (the best RPG on Switch in my humble opinion). The only problem is tapping ‘L’ to grab things while moving the link. If I need to do that, like when I’m trying to catch a bug, I reach in with my right hand so I don’t have to take my left off the joystick.
The only thing I couldn’t make it easier for myself was using the D-pad. I can still change weapons and shields by going into the menu, but pressing up is the only way to attach items to the arrow. Although as I was typing this I realized it was much easier to press down so I swapped up for down and it made the experience much better.
The control panel is also the only way to rotate objects while using the Ultrahand. I know the process is awkward for some, but imagine trying to do it until you can’t move your fingers. It’s just bullshit. I can’t jam the control pad very well with my left thumb, so I use the edge of my palm. I hand is a bit too big for this so I get a lot of random diagonal turns. I’ve found it’s easier to turn objects around a bit, drop them, hope they end up closer to what I want, and repeat until I get it right. I’ve backed up every Hudson sign and completed every shrine I’ve come across, so this strategy has worked well so far.
I experience is not without frustrations, but there are more ups than downs with the setup I came up with. I die all the time, at least five times the rate I did in Breath of the Wild, but the game is forgiving with its almost constant autosave. Very little, if any progress is lost if you bite off more than you can chew entering an outpost full of bokoblins, or when your Ultrahand fails spectacularly.
Accessibility feature recommendations
Before I end this section, I want to give my recommendations for accessibility to developers. The first two are extremely obvious.
Colorblind mode and in-game button remapping
Yes, both can be done in the Switch system settings, but there’s no reason not to turn them on in the Tears of the Kingdom game settings. I can already hear the clatter of keyboards telling me it’s a waste of time, but it’s not, especially for button remapping.
One reason is the system-level button mapping change is only reliably compatible with Nintendo’s official controllers. I bought a third-party pro controller after my official one started wandering, but I use my old rat Pro more often because I need access to custom configurations.
Another reason is that the game you’re playing doesn’t change its prompts to match your configurations. I’ve put hundreds of hours into my remap for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but still I always hit the wrong button. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tapped ‘R’ to scroll right in game menus only to have them close because my ‘B’ was mapped to ‘R’. Most of the time it’s harmless, but I missed flurries because I couldn’t ignore the flashing prompt telling me to press ‘Y’ when I remapped the attack action.
On/off functionality
I next recommendation is something similar to sticky keys – AKA the ones that work on your computer that you accidentally turn on by tapping the shift key too many times. This switching option should be available for targeting enemies, swapping weapons/shields/arrow fusion, as well as rotating objects while using Ultrahand.
Here’s how it works: you tap a button to activate their function and they stay active until you tap the button again. Very simple. A toggle option like this existed for targeting enemies in all 3D Zeldas prior to Skyward Sword, but was removed for no apparent reason. I played all those games without having to remap the controls thanks to that option. I know I could do the same if this option was included in Tears of the Kingdom or Breath of the Wild.
Additional ultramanual left stick manipulation
I last recommendation doesn’t really have to do with affordability; it’s just common sense. There’s no reason why you couldn’t use the left joystick to rotate objects while using the Ultrahand. The user has no reason to move Link while rotating the object (plus it would require an awkward position and finger hold to use the joystick and D-pad at the same time), so why are we limited to using the D-pad? I don’t get it.
None of these recommendations would break the game and could easily be added with a patch. There is no excuse for Nintendo not to add these or any other accessibility options to Tears of the Kingdom.
Conclusion
Tears of the Kingdom does the impossible, improving on its predecessor — a game many consider the best of all time — in every way… except for making the game a more accessible experience. It doesn’t have a single accessibility option in an age where this is rightfully becoming commonplace. Yes, I was personally able to enjoy the game thanks to turning on the controller remapping option in the Switch’s system settings, but it’s far from a great solution and may not benefit others as much as it does me.
Nintendo can and should patch accessibility options into the game. But will they? History suggests no. I used to think that Nintendo just didn’t think to make their games accessible, but that’s not true. The truth can only be that our suggestions and pleas have been acknowledged, but at this point the developers are actively choosing to exclude players with disabilities. Tears of the Kingdom is the most glaring example so far.
Table of Contents
