We love The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom’s silly cartoon man

Every Friday, AV club staffers start our weekly open thread discussing game plans and recent game glory, but of course the real action is in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What are you playing this weekend?

Advertisements fill the world of modern video games – partly for a little extra veracity, and more often than not as a sneaky little bonus revenue stream for the publisher. But who places these signs? Who will climb the scaffolding, paint the pitches, skillfully put together the advertisements?

In Nintendo’s phenomenally fun new The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, all those responsibilities fall on the shaky shoulders of one man. His name is Addison The Ad Man he is an idiot and we love him so much.

Players probably won’t meet Addison too long in their time Tears of the kingdom, as he posted – pun intended – near Lookout Landing, the first town you see when you get back to Hyrule a few hours into the game. He’s the man holding up the sign. That’s pretty much all he does.

In a game where characterization is already typically pretty thinly sketched, Addison barely scrapes the pencil: he has one major character trait, which he pursues wholeheartedly. That is, he loves Mr. Hudson, the construction magnate depicted on his various boards, and will do anything (except any kind of movement or basic carpentry) to ensure that advertisements proclaiming Hudson’s greatness are in the public eye. be visible throughout the kingdom. The only problem is that while Addison’s signs vary a bit, they all have one major thing in common: they don’t have a second leg to hold them up.

Addison is, in other words, a physics puzzler that waits for the player to encounter it and inadvertently invites you to figure out how to maneuver planks and planks under the far end of the board so that this poor bastard can rest his arms for a while . without his beloved Mr. Hudson knocking to the ground. As we mentioned, the boards (and nearby materials) vary just enough to keep this little task interesting: a board might have an obvious notch for a board to slide into; another may have some kind of hook arrangement you can make use of; a third (because Addison do moving around, apparently using all that kinetic energy he saves by doing isometrics at every moment goods around to book it in Hyrule) can be in an area that is typically ravaged by rain showers, making the whole ordeal much more slippery.

All well and good: playing with Link’s new Ultrahand ability is one of the greatest joys of Tears, and we’re glad we actually have every excuse to do so. But Addison makes his way into our hearts, mainly because he is So incredibly unhappy, but also devoted to his very stupid job. Someone gave him 3/4 of a mark, apparently he’s never heard of “adding a second leg” to anything, and he’ll be damned if he deviates from those basics. Oh, and gosh staff if his beloved Mr. Hudson gets too close to the ground, or, dear Christ, falls over altogether: the poor man immediately goes into apoplectic, forcing you to start all over again. It’s one of those clever ways that Tears of the kingdom builds his tutorials into his happy, colorful world, takes a basic quiz on physics, and turns it into this poor guy’s ongoing existential crisis. It’s charming as hell And it makes you feel like a genius when you figure out how to solve the task; a pretty good encapsulation of the great things about Tears of the kingdom in a nutshell.

Plus: he gives you cash, rice balls, and a free hotel room every time you help him. Thank you Addison! You’re the best. Please take a lesson on what gravity is.