Tears of the Kingdom Saved Me - Jan Ochoa On His Second Favourite Game Of 2023 | Winter Spectacular 2023
Hello! My name is Jan Ochoa. I’m a Senior Video Producer at GiantBomb.com, which is a website full of shenanigans and video games!
2023 has been a tumultuous year for many reasons. There have been multiple instances throughout this year where I have struggled to find my place professionally and personally amongst the greater picture of the world. I believe in honesty and parts of my personal life feel like they’re in shambles because I’ve neglected friendships, had to deal with my parents aging and their health deteriorating, and dealing with a mountain of debt. Compounded with the pressures and responsibilities of working on the internet and wanting to maintain and build a community has been tough. Putting on a happy face for every single podcast can be challenging when your insides are screaming at you and you’re still fixated on the one negative comment on a video from a couple months ago. All of this combined is a recipe for burnout. And not the cool kind of burnout like 3 or Paradise Island. I actually liked Revenge a lot, the shunting was under appreciated.
I’m going to continue to be honest. I started to hate video games for a while and when that is the main aspect of your job it starts to suck. Childhood Jan would be appalled at my previous frustrations with playing video games. Of course there’d be a game that’d pop up that would make me forget about the negative relationship that I was building towards the media, but then that negativity would creep up again and I would start to lose the love I had all over again. I hated it.
And then Tears of the Kingdom came out and saved me.
If you’ve ever tuned into the Giant Bomb GOTY deliberations, there’s a common theme for some of the games that I wind up rallying behind. With 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim and Guardians of the Galaxy more specifically, I’ve found that I am absolutely in love with the idea and theme of found families. Maybe it’s how I’ve dealt with growing up as an only child and really getting attached to friend groups or coworkers. Maybe I see bits and pieces of myself in these games because for the longest time I have always felt like I was part of the ragtag team that finds each other and together is trying to survive. Breath of the Wild is a very solitary and lonely game. You’re navigating Hyrule in a pretty open world, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of feeling alone. Tears of the Kingdom 100% rectifies that feeling. Not only do you start to gain your Sage companions that’ll clumsily follow you through the world, but the world in general feels more lively despite surviving a great calamity.
It’s a tool to help you build throughout the game, but seeing the different piles of wood and other materials to help the citizens of Hyrule rebuild their homes always left me with a smile. I know that no NPC was ever going to cobble a house together and those materials were left for the player to build miscellaneous constructions, but I generally left them undisturbed so in my heart the Hyrulians could rebuild. Even the conflicts that you encounter throughout the story left me with a warm and happy feeling. No one hated each other or really was blaming a specific person or group. Whatever issue at hand was the issue and folks just wanted to solve it. Folks just wanted to get together and fix it. I know that we all can extrapolate or find the meanings we need and desire through art and that all of that is subjective, but I needed to see a world wanting to rebuild together. In the face of destruction, in the face of (un)natural disasters, and in the face of losing a key loved one - the game and I pushed forward with a smile. The silly man holding up a sign for his boss continued to be a fun goof, but he wound up becoming a symbol of perseverance for me. The manbird hunting down stories that were right in front of him because he wanted to be the best journalist inspired me. Those are just tips of the iceberg in amazing characters that you meet throughout Tears of the Kingdom, all of them with their own stories that are still going on in spite of the world on the brink of disaster. I know that they’re just lines of code and computer models, but that spirit helped imbue me with the spirit to push and power through my own shtuff. If people can still be worried about a local mayoral election while a floating castle has popped up, I can continue to push past my personal woes.
But the aspect of this game that really hooked me is how much I relate to it. No, I'm not an elf-like dude trying to save my situationship.
People come to games for an escape from reality. Tears of the Kingdom was a reminder of my own reality. The ability to roll into and stumble upon situations that you are woefully ill prepared for or did not intend on dealing with, yet somehow still manage to overcome - that is my day to day. Accidentally dropping into a dungeon where you are now in a gauntlet facing several Lynel is terrifying, but GREATLY reminds me of how I’ve rolled into some of the most stressful days of my life. You kinda just have to go for it and YOLO. You can be super prepared in this game with multiple leveled up weapons and cooked food, but ultimately you’ll have to be incredibly resourceful in some encounters. And the fact that the game seemed like it wanted me to operate at a resource deficit at times made me love it even more. Oftentimes I’ll experience a little bit of a scarcity mindset when playing a game. That was completely absent while playing Tears of the Kingdom. I wasn’t someone that grinded out Heart Containers. For whatever reason I focused on my stamina to power me through. Maybe that’s how I approach life too? Jesus. I always made due with my box of scraps. I had the ability to prepare and plan ahead, but like my own life I didn’t. Maybe I liked the rush of adrenaline from being thrust into weird adventures and now being a pivotal part of saving a village.
I just know that I, myself, have experienced moments where there is a great resource deficit and I have to make due with what I have. There’ve been moments of productions where I am using three different computers to make sure a stream has gone off without a hitch because something broke or because we had to turn something around real quick. I’d find myself stumbling around in the Deep without any light seeds but I’d set myself on fire to provide a little bit of light. Even cobbling together a new weapon or tool by using your magic wizard glue reminded me that sometimes you just have to have a little faith and be “creative” with your approach. Why not strap a rocket to other various Zonai parts? Why not make an odd M.C. Esher adjacent staircase to activate a Skyview Tower and bypass an army of enemies. Hell, from sharing stories of dungeons with friends and coworkers I know that I may have picked the most obtuse way to complete an encounter - but I did it my way.
Tears of the Kingdom reminded me or at least rekindled that love for video games. It is such a unique experience to be sobbing playing this game on a train as you race to finish it so you won’t have to shave your head at a gaming convention. Long story, don’t ask.
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this might be one of my favorite games of all time. All of that being said, Tears of the Kingdom is still my number two game of this year!
OH.
Yo.
Respectfully.
PURAH.
