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In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you have a power that lets you combine all kinds of devices into contraptions of your own design. There are things to fly, ride and things that emit flames or beams; as well as things that home in on your enemies. These can be combines to make any kind of “mecha” that dispatches even the largest of enemies with ease. There is a whole cottage industry on YouTube that shows the most fantastic, useful or useless contraptions that can be made in the game.

Sometimes there is a sentiment that making the most powerful contraptions and killing the hardest enemies with ease is somehow “cheating”. But it’s not — it’s really clever game design! I don’t think the designers have thought of every combination of elements, so I’m sure there have been some builds that were, indeed, not something they thought up. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re still only using the mechanics in the game.

Instead, the building mechanic has a very clever side-effect of making you feel like you “outsmarted” the game, while staying firmly within the possibilities provided by the mechanic.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.