Since starting The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I've lost count of the number of times I've said some combination of the words, "That probably wasn't the way I was supposed to do it." I've scaled mountains, catching my breath at barely-there ledges, and I've waded the entire length of a river to keep cool rather than dress appropriately for the Gerudo Desert's unrelenting heat. I've pieced together bits and bobs, springs and stabilizers, and bombs and batteries to circumvent challenges, and desperately hit Ascend whilst running through barren rooms in hopes a shallow ceiling or narrow lip might grant me passage to the area above. There have been times my antics felt clever, and other times where they felt foolish. Wrong. Deceitful, even.

I find myself thinking this way a lot--throughout dungeons, as I fling myself through the air, when I assemble rickety vehicles--but I grapple with these feelings the most in shrines. It is in these sterile chambers that my tendencies to overthink, underthink, and second-guess myself rear their heads like Lynels. When I accomplish something in a way that feels right, I worry I lack the creativity and inventiveness seemingly everyone else who plays this game has. When it takes me a bit more time, or I conjure up a more roundabout solution, my victory comes with a peculiar sense of shame. And when I simply can't figure it out and am forced to leave? The feeling then is failure. And of course all these feelings and judgments are all just in my head, but like all things that are just in our heads, they eat at me a bit.

Tears of the Kingdom is hardly the first game to inspire these feelings. When I played Elden Ring last year, I remember regretting my decision to even purchase it when I struggled with the first boss fight. Yet, after I had persevered, sunk over 100 hours exploring the Lands Between, and beat one of the game's most difficult bosses with relative ease, I found every possible way to discredit what I had accomplished. I got lucky, I told myself. My spirit ashes did the heavy lifting.