In most Zelda games, solving a puzzle is only useful because it solves the puzzle. You figured out how to Z-target a weird tentacle in Jabu-Jabu’s belly? Great, you can keep moving through the dungeon. You figured out where to position the mirrors in Wind Waker to direct a beam of light? Cool, carry on. This was even true in Breath of the Wild to an extent. Though you could pick up some new techniques in shrines — like using your metal weapons to conduct electrical current — most of the shrines asked you to use your powers to solve a single, specific problem that wasn't replicable in the world outside.
But, in Tears of the Kingdom, every shrine has something to teach you. This is obvious in some of them. On the Great Sky Islands, you learn the basics of how to use Ascend, Recall, Ultrahand, and Fuse. And, as my colleague Jade King recently wrote, you occasionally find shrines designed as tutorials where you might learn how to put an item in Link’s hand and throw it, or something similarly simple. Breath of the Wild had some of these shrines, too, which gave birth to this immortal video where a streamer discovers basic combat abilities after almost 100 hours with the game.
But that’s not really what I’m talking about. Tears of the Kingdom is a game where there are infinite things to learn. Like in Minecraft or Fortnite, both of which TOTK’s design clearly draws from, there are very few limits on what you can build. The game’s systems are so fully realized that a player recently built a fully working engine using the same principles that would make one work in real life. With so much there, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. That would be especially true if the game tried to teach you all of this at once or doled out crafting recipes in tutorials you needed to buy or unlock.
Instead, each shrine functions as a little lesson on something you can do in the game. You leave the Sky Islands knowing the absolute basics, and then slowly learn more as you play. The shrines are a concentrated dose of knowledge; they feel like labs where you can experiment with different techniques before giving them a test run in the field. If you hadn’t thought of attaching flame emitters to hot air balloons, a shrine that requires you to do that will change your perspective. Or, if you hadn’t realized that water and lava make stone, a shrine will teach you that, opening up a variety of new weapon options if you find yourself without a rock to fuse to a stick.
Tears of the Kingdom has way too much going on for a traditional tutorial to do it justice. The idea of having to pull up a list of moves in a menu is a miserable thought. But, by spreading the wealth of lessons across 150 shrines throughout the layers of the map, it gives you a chance to learn at your own pace.