Today Nintendo held a Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom presentation that gave us the most in depth look at gameplay yet.
And it would be an understatement to say it delivered. Our minds were absolutely blown.
Eiji Aonuma, the series producer for Zelda, walked us through almost ten minutes of new gameplay footage for the highly anticipated title.
And one of the details he was sure to mention was that the game is actually complete. Which maybe we all took for granted was done earlier. But now it’s officially official.
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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
It’s almost a joke calling Tears of the Kingdom anything like “highly anticipated” or talking about how much we wanna finally get our hands on it.
There has probably never been such an important video game sequel to be released.
And so far, it’s looking like we are getting the followup we have all hoped for.
Eiji Aonuma referred to the world as an “unfamiliar Hyrule”. And, while there are many things in the world that seem familiar, they really emphasized how much the world has changed.
Today’s Zelda presentation really demonstrates the massive scale of the new Hyrule.
It seems the world has gone through a large physical transformation, and the addition of the new Sky Islands just multiplies the size of area to explore.
If tonight’s new game footage showed us anything, it’s that they certainly took everything from the previous title and upped the ante.
Tears of the Kingdom feels like a true evolution from Breath of the Wild. And Nintendo surely did the right thing taking their time to get it right.
New Abilities
Today’s Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom video presentation had an emphases on many of Link’s new abilities.
These abilities seem to stem from his new arm. And it also seems like he has lost his Sheikah Slate.
The way that the game gives us freedom to experiment with these new abilities are absolutely insane.
Let’s take a look at these new abilities one at a time to see what’s new in Tears of the Kingdom:
Recall
Many had a strong feeling that one of the thematic elements of Tears of the Kingdom would play with time manipulation.
And our first glimpse into Link’s abilities did exactly that.
Link’s new Recall ability allows him to basically rewind the actions of a selected object.
In the video demonstration, this was used to rewind a fallen piece of the new Sky Islands.
Pieces of the Sky Islands can be found falling from the sky.
And if you go locate a fallen piece, you can use Recall to ride the piece back up to its original location.
And like all of the abilities, this will surely be used in many other ways as well.
Fuse
This ability was one of the most exciting and “no waaaaaaaay” moments of the video presentation.
Link now has an ability to combine items found throughout Hyrule to make new weapons and tools for various use.
This is one that can be experimented with a ton.
The examples used were sticking a large rock on the end of a stick to make a hammer-like weapon. Or putting an eye at the end of an arrow to make a tracking arrow.
Surely this will be a very fun ability to find new weird things to combine.
Ultrahand
This was yet another really exciting one that had us saying “oh my god!”.
Ultrahand is kind of similar to Fuse, but it seems to be more focused on larger objects and combining multiple pieces.
The example shown was Link crafting a fan powered raft from logs and fan pieces found on a shore.
And we learned that some of the larger crafts seen in previous trailers were all made using Ultrahand, and none of them existed without making them yourself.
So, much like Fuse, this will be an ability that will allow for a lot of experimentation and creativity.
Ascend
Now this is an ability we have seen in previous trailers for Tears of the Kingdom. But we definitely needed some clarity to understand the extent of Link’s ability to shoot upwards and through the floor.
We now learn that if Link is in any room that has a ceiling… and that ceiling has a ground above it.. you can Ascend.
Link will shoot up like he is swimming through some sort of energy force and sort of morph through the ceiling and appear through the ground above.
They mention that there will be some limits, but most ceilings that have a ground above will allow for this ability.
Again – it’s gonna be an ability with some fun use, and allows for experimenting.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Presentation Impressions
Sure, we’ve seen the trailers. But today was our first official walkthrough of game mechanics for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
And everything was looking exactly as incredible as we were expecting.
The world looks massive and beautiful.
Those new mechanics look fun and offer a ton of creativity from the player.
They even dropped the announcement of the Tears of the Kingdom OLED Switch at the end of today’s video like that was just some small part.
We are glad that it’s just a relatively short 45 day wait until we will finally be able to play the game. Excitement level is a ten out of ten.
It’s finally time to prepare our wallets and our schedules to play the most anticipated video game maybe of all time: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Every piece of my being is ready.
