Zelda series producer demonstrates 10 minutes of gameplay of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom-- the sequel to Breath of the Wild.
The Zelda series producer, Eiji Aonuma, took to Nintendo's official YouTube channels to demonstrate over ten minutes of gameplay within The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom coming this May for Nintendo Switch.
One of the biggest criticisms from the very brief glimpses fans of the Zelda series have had was the lack of change in the environment, which was the first issue to tackle. While the environment 0f Hyrule has familiar landmarks, the main attraction isn't the vast land this time. Instead, Link will be able to traverse "Sky Islands" that float above the kingdom of Hyrule.
In the demonstration, a piece of what appears to be a rock crashes from the sky island fell to the land for Link to go investigate.
Link's newest ability "Recall", uses what Breath of the Wild players will remember as a Sheikah Slate ability similar to the time stasis ability from Breath of the Wild. Holding L allows the play to focus on moving the camera around Link and aligning the camera to the object, then pressing A to confirm what to interact with. Once confirmed, Link then has a few seconds to climb the object while a timer counts down before the Rewind ability starts.
After the timer expires, the rock ascends back to where it fell from– allowing Link the opportunity to dive off the unfallen rock and paraglide to a sky island.
Even for working on a heavily scrutinized piece of hardware, the vista on the floating island makes you just want to leap forward and find reach the dragon far across the kingdom.
The demonstration cut to a different island full of trees with yellow leaves. Link picked up a tree branch on the ground, similar to the last game, but faced off against a new foe called a Construct that wielded its own tree branch against Link. It might be safe to assume Constructs will wield more than just tree branches off the ground if the environment permits. The battle between Link and the construct confirmed a polarizing mechanic from Breath of the Wild will be returning: weapon durability. However, this was immediately addressed after the battle with the new Fuse ability. This new ability allows Link to use something like a boulder in the environment to fuse the tree branch and boulder to create a hammer.
The game is very open to fusion possibilities that social media is going to find amusing for days. One of the other fusions included fusing a long tree branch, that Link wields like a bo, with a pitchfork to make a very long-range weapon.
Fuse isn't limited to just objects on the ground. You can use items in your inventory and your arrows. Like making an arrow that fires large leaves, or creating ice arrows.
Another creative fusion involved fusing an eyeball into an arrow to create a homing arrow that curves and automatically seeks out enemies and prey.
The combination potentials of different fusions don't end with the Fuse ability. Even for objects that Link can't hold, there are ways to still interact with the objects.
The Ultrahand ability showed off Link merging logs together to create a makeshift raft to use over a body of water– something that was technically possible in the last game but was only due to the robust properties of the physics system and not completely by choice of the developers for the players to need to do. This time, however, making a boat that functions as it should in water is finally realized.
That doesn't mean Link has to make a perfect raft that snaps into place. The player is free to be creative on how the objects snap together. In addition to attaching similar objects like logs, Link was able to attach a gust propeller nearby that presumably can also be used in conjunction with the paraglider for gaining height quickly from the ground. Thanks to the Ultrahand ability, the propeller could also be used to attach to the boat.
It was also revealed that vehicles previously shown in prior trailers were all creations made by the Ultrahand mechanic. The vast amount of creations made by this mechanic will be fascinating, to say the least.
The Ultrahand ability feels more akin to a fully realized Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts.
The final ability shown off was an ability previously seen in older trailers called "Ascend". This allows Link to dive up ceilings above him and phase up to the roof.
While Aonuma said there will be some restrictions, just about any ceiling can be passed through using the Ascend ability.
One example of this was Link entering a cave and passing through to the top by targeting the ceiling from the inside and emerging above into a snowy mountain top. This eliminates the struggle of needing to use a lot of draining stamina to get on top of a cave.
For any object that ascends, that also means a swift descent is also imminent. One final demonstration is what happens when Link falls off a sky island.
In this game, Link falling from a tall structure like a sky island allows him to both skydive or transition into a paraglide to break his fall.
Though the paraglide isn't the only way to save Link from a very brutal fall, as sometimes just a bit of luck is all Link needs to stay alive.
Over six years since its predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has finally finished development. Gamers looking to get their hands on what very well could be Game of the Year for 2023 will only have to wait until May 12th, 2023. From even just a ten-minute glance, it truly shows this old kingdom has a new breath of life.
