Hindsight is easy, making something is hard. But pretty much from the get go I felt the surface of Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom was uninspired. Just to ease my mind, I’m going to try to come up with some alternatives I would have enjoyed:
I think Central Hyrule should have been undergoing winter. I know it conflicts with Hebra for theme, but we never see Hyrule experience anything but nebulous spring/summer. It wouldn’t be so cold as to require warm clothes, but maybe cold enough that shallow water is frozen over and very light snow swirls in the air. Buildings would have a thin layer of snow on top. Potentially the north-west could be colder, and if the Wind Temple is complete, return to normal. Putting everyone in winter clothes and hats could have set them apart further from Breath of the Wild.
I think a sequel would have given the developers the ideal opportunity to expand the Lost Woods and make it a much spookier area. This tracks with the Deku Tree suffering due to Ganondorf’s meddling. A gnarled, dark forest that’s encroaching on its surroundings is a cool image, and can pull from Studio Ghibli’s iconography, which this era of Hyrule loves to do! The fact it now covers the Thyplo Ruins up north is neat, I reckon.
Akkala is out of synch with Hyrule it seems, as it was Autumn during Breath of the Wild. I’d love to keep that up by putting it mid-Spring! Lots of pink posies, yellow daffodils, perhaps extra large thorny pink rose bushes as obstacles. Light rain showers followed by sunshine and rainbows. New shoots and young trees, and a lot of birds singing from their branches. I think it’d really elevate Tarrey Town to have buildings overgrown with flowering vines.
To me, the Zora reservoir dams are begging to be destroyed. They appear to be incredibly deep and control the flow of water down the mountain—shatter them and everywhere lower gets flooded suddenly. Along with the whole poison goop phenomenon, this could turn the surrounding area into a classic poison swamp zone. Throw in a lot of Link to the Past’s Misery Mire and the swamp from Majora’s Mask in here, and ta-da! You’ve got a biome type that was absent from this era added in a narratively sound way.
Perhaps the Switch can’t handle this, but all I’d really add to this broad area is mist blowing in from the southern sea. Lake Hylia especially would be well served by early morning mist just above the surface. If the Lost Woods is spooky ghosts and skeletons, this zone would be magic and mystery. The kind of land that has creatures just out of sight, and strange music playing distantly in the night.
This stretch is simply a buffer zone that allows for Central Hyrule’s winter to fade into the desert. Maybe a few Autumn trees? But maybe not. In this hypothetical redo you’d have to keep tweaking it until it made sense. More of a wetland? Forested? Just having it be average temperature and cloudy?
The heat of the desert, its sudden sandstorm phenomenon and the, perhaps, much damper land to the north-east on the border to Hyrule, the Gerudo mountains are no longer covered in snow. At this point you got to get rid of some snow, right? So now it’s covered in sand from the sandstorm, and it turns out the snow was much deeper than previously thought! This would be a great excuse to reveal new terrain, ancient ruins and carvings into the rock.
Last one, a new oasis. A small stream, or streams, could be running down from the mountains and pooling here, causing dormant seeds to spring into life as if it’s the rainy season. I’d keep most of the desert the same, if only because I’d have to rewrite the game and I don’t have the time nor desire to do that. It’d shake up an area that stayed the same nonetheless.
Just thoughts. Tell me what you would have liked to see!
