A man stands on the side of the road in the pouring rain. He clutches the tablet as if his life depended on it. If you talk to him, you will know that he is an idiot. Passionate, but an idiot nonetheless. After 70 hours of play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the KingdomI am also convinced that he is one of the best things in the game.
Addison works for the Hudson Construction Company, which is rebuilding Hyrule after the Coup. The kingdom was left in proper condition after Princess Zelda and Link accidentally awakened an ancient evil that tore the earth apart, opening up a vast, dark-filled chasm underground and revealing floating islands filled with ruined buildings in the sky above.
The Hudson Construction Company has left piles of resources around the earth—wood planks, wagon wheels, and wooden beams—that anyone can use. It is a noble cause to wish to recreate Hyrule, to bring a semblance of normality to a world that is now overrun with monsters and strange poisonous clouds seeping from the chasms into the darkness below. Addison is, frankly, a fan.
However, in his excitement to set up signs pointing to free recovery resources, Addison did not set up a sign with a base. If he lets go, the sign will fall to the ground. Addison can’t bear the humiliation of Hudson’s nameplate on the floor, even if it’s only for a moment.
Like I said, Addison is an idiot.
To help
That’s where you step in: Link, the last hero of Hyrule, Princess Zelda’s loyal swordsman on a quest to find a future queen and turn back the tide of darkness and poison that has swept the land. Addison asks you to hold his sign while he scores the base.
Except that he doesn’t trust you to hold the sign itself; So, using the powers of an ancient glove that lay untouched in the temple in the sky for thousands of years until Link took it to fight the Demon King, you need to place something under the marker that will support it with a wedge of wood. beam under the sign.
The gauntlet gives you the ability to levitate and rotate objects, as well as the ability to connect objects together. You can turn loose pieces of wood into complex structures and vehicles. In the right hands, you can create hovercraft missile boats, flamethrower turrets and lava-proof tanks. Or, indeed, a support for the pointer, which is now hugged by an idiot.
When the sign is fixed and you’ve convinced Addison that it’s okay to let it go, he’ll hammer the base into the sign, thank you warmly, give you a present, and rush off to pick up another marker. You will find him all over Hyrule, and no doubt he forgot to secure the tablet properly. You can always walk right past him, leaving him alone with his eternal struggle, but each sign is a delightful puzzle.
Back to drawing board
Each pointer is different, which creates a bit of a building puzzle. The first one was simple enough, only a wedge was needed to support the sign. I fused two pieces of wood together in an L shape, rotated them so that they sit under the sign like the roof of a house, with the marker firmly resting on the top of the spacer. However, the next one was shorter, so the wedge brace did not fit. I had to make a T-shape out of wooden beams and insert it as a support. More recent signs needed ancient technology such as low-gravity hoverboards and stone pins fused to wood planks to match the signs’ strange shape.
Every time I found Addison in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, he raised the pointer too greedily and had to hold it, waiting for someone to come and help him. He did it even at sub-zero temperatures. An idiot of the highest order, but I loved his stubborn determination and the straightforward enigma that every appearance presented. In a physics engine driven open world sandbox the object had to be supported and I could use any combination of power or object to make it stand.
Now when I see Addison, I chat with him to see how he feels: “It’s cold in this snow”, “I’m chilly in this desert”, “There are an awful lot of spiders in this jungle” – inspect the sign and inspect objects nearby to develop a solution.
In a kingdom where an ancient evil is slowly poisoning the world, I’m happy to take a five-minute break to use my priceless magic glove to help an idiot put up a sign.
