The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of the most popular Nintendo game series. You play as Link in the open world of Hyrule and try to find Princess Zelda, who mysteriously disappeared. Along the way, you fight enemies, solve puzzles, explore different regions, collect materials you find in the world to build many different things, and meet locals who need your help.
Nature is not a quiet background actor in this world. It affects the people living in Hyrule. Different areas have different environmental problems. For example, Rito Village is affected by a never-ending snowstorm that makes it difficult for the Rito to get food or just move around. Link has to find out what the cause is and help to stop it.
Another example is Zora’s Domain, where the water seems to be polluted by something. Since the Zora heavily depend on water, this becomes a serious problem. The game makes it clear that a healthy environment is important for people to go about their normal lives.
The game does a good job of making environmental problems part of the gameplay and showing the urgency of solving them. You actually see how the problems affect different communities, and you are motivated to help. However, there is also a downside. Once you solve an environmental problem in a specific region, everything mostly goes back to normal instantly. In real life, environmental problems are usually much harder to fix and require long-term changes. There is also very little shown about what the villagers learned from this experience or what they intend to do in the future to prepare for something similar happening again.
Furthermore, you are constantly collecting resources, mining materials, hunting animals, etc. to further yourself. It gives the idea that natural resources are meant to be harvested and that there is a never-ending supply. On the one hand, the ore deposits in the Depths do not respawn, but on the other hand, there are so many of them that this does not really pose a big issue for the player.
Another interesting part of this game is the technology you can make use of. You can make different machines to help you solve puzzles, deal with difficult terrain, fight bosses, etc. This unique game aspect encourages creativity and problem-solving because there is often more than one way to solve a problem. The game could have taken this idea further by rewarding players for building machines that save resources, protect animals, or restore damaged areas. In this way, the building system could teach us that technology is not only useful for our own convenience, but can also be used to help other people and protect nature.
I think you can see throughout the game, through all the corruption and environmental catastrophes in each region, how important nature is for the people living there. The game does a good job of showing how much these problems affect the communities and motivating the player to help them and solve their problems. At the same time, I think the game could have gone further with its message about sustainability. Resources are mostly treated as unlimited, and the technology you build is mainly used for your own convenience instead of also helping nature or others. And once the environmental problems are solved, everything goes back to normal and everyone is happy. I think the game could have made a stronger message by showing what the communities learned and how they could prevent similar problems in the future.