What Is the Most Boring Place in Tears of the Kingdom? This Content Creator Investigates
Posted on March 20 2025 by Nick Miller
Back when Zelda was still in its infancy, the games’ overworlds (with the exception of The Adventures of Link) were 2D maps that the player could interact with in real time. In these games — namely The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, and Link’s Awakening — overworlds were carefully crafted to give every area or frame a purpose. Typically, each area would have secrets to find or enemies to fight. At the very least, there would be something interesting for the player to look at while they moved to the next frame. With the limited scope of the player’s view and strict rules on mobility, developers didn’t necessarily have to worry about designing a world with any semblance of reality and could craft it purely for gameplay.
For example, the developers of A Link to the Past didn’t have to worry about designing the backside of Death Mountain because they could just put up barriers to prevent the player from going there, or even seeing it. Likewise, Koholint Island in Link’s Awakening didn’t need to provide a transitional area between the grassy Animal Village and the sandy Yarna Desert because a screen transition and a sleepy walrus were enough to separate the two areas.
However, as Zelda — and gaming as a whole — push into bigger 3D worlds with fewer boundaries on exploration, overworlds cannot be so segmented, nor as dense. There is a certain expectation for realism, or for perceived realism. We can no longer go from swamp, to mountain, to village, to desert in the blink of an eye. Players expect transitional areas that meld the differing regions together in a natural and pleasing way. Likewise, taking the player’s view from the birds-eye looking down to the ground-level looking outward with a player-controlled camera means that, to a certain degree, world designs need to account for natural laws and geography. As such, game worlds will inevitably end up with places that exist purely to form a cohesive world or to be viewed at a distance, and they can be really quite boring. Enter, Any Austin.
In a recent video, YouTube creator Any Austin explores the most boring places in Tears of the Kingdom. Any Austin dives into areas that seemingly even the developers didn’t expect anyone to visit. These areas are completely devoid of content and serve no real gameplay function, and yet they exist. One such example is a barren strip of land that divides a deep chasm from the ocean; to form a cohesive map, this piece of land needs to be there, but that doesn’t mean we need to be there.
Any Austin explores his fascination with this type of unimportance and somehow makes the most interesting video I’ve seen all week out of a topic that is inherently very boring. So check it out! You won’t be bored to tears.
Be sure to check out Any Austin’s other videos for Zelda and gaming content alike. You can also find previous coverage of Any Austin’s Zelda content here at Zelda Dungeon, including an assessment of Clock Town’s unemployment, the formation of Breath of the Wild‘s waterways, and a critique of Hyrule’s woodworkers.
Now tell us what you think. Are there any locations in Tears of the Kingdom that you find particularly boring? Do you share Any Austin’s fascination with odd or out-of-place locations in video games? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Any Austin
Nick is a writer for Zelda Dungeon and a longtime fan of the Zelda franchise. In his free time, he enjoys fishing, archery, skateboarding, and some good ol’ fashioned family time. He’s an advocate for physical media and an avid video game collector. His favorite Zelda game is Ocarina of Time, though Breath of the Wild and the Link’s Awakening remake are close contenders. His other favorite video games series include Kingdom Hearts, Fallout, and Ratchet & Clank.
