Soapbox: How Zelda’s Bad Economy Made Weapon Degradation Great Again

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing select articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2023 series. Enjoy!

Image: Nintendo Life
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, Kate examines how Nintendo learned economic lessons from past Zelda games in Tears of the Kingdom…

Much like me, Hyrule has always been bad with money. It’s hardly surprising. In an economy where you can find cold, hard cash in rocks, trees, bushes, pots, grass, and even sometimes just lying on the floor, you don’t have to be a financial expert to know that you’re going to experience inflation at some point.