There’s been a terrible pattern in AAA titles lately, and that issue is that many of these games have come out broken upon launch and thus need massive patches to fix everything that’s wrong with them. Unfortunately, sometimes they can be so bad that they force players to wait for numerous patches to arrive before the game is playable on their system or PC. However, things were much more positive in the case of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. The game was immediately playable at launch, and gamers found no major issues as they started their new journeys with Link and Zelda.
But, even with the greatness that is Tears of the Kingdom, it was inevitable that there would be problems. After all, the game is massive in scope, has three different kinds of “worlds” to visit via the skies, the land, and the depths, and there are innumerous sidequests for you to partake in. So eventually, something was going to be found that mucked things up. Sure enough, Nintendo released Update 1.1.1 for the title, fixing some significant bugs.
As noted by VGC, the biggest issue was the quest known as “The Closed Door.” With this bug, you couldn’t finish the quest, even if you had already completed it. If you were one of the people that had this issue, all you need to do is download the update, and it’ll ensure you get the “clear” notification.
They also said in the patch that they fixed things to help with the “gameplay experience.” It’s good to see Nintendo trying to get these issues fixed ASAP. But in truth, aside from a potential progression glitch on that one specific quest, people haven’t been posting much about the glitches in the game. Instead, they’ve preferred to post things like the vehicles they’ve been making or how they’ve overcome certain puzzles. That shows you how much the team put into the title so that massive bugs wouldn’t be a part of it.
In fact, in a developer interview, the game’s producer, Eiji Aonuma, said that he played and beat the game over 20 times to ensure that things worked properly.
That’s the kind of effort you love to see in AAA titles, and it’s sad when something like that doesn’t happen. Hopefully, there aren’t too many other “big glitches” like this in the title. But again, with the size of Hyrule both above and below, there is a chance that more patches will be needed.