The official reveal of a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake was one of the headliners of Sony’s recent PlayStation 5 showcase, but it likely won’t be finished for some time. Fortunately, a collection of Metal Gear classics is coming to modern platforms this fall and it will actually include more games than originally expected.
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Announced alongside Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 will come to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC by way of Steam in just a few months, and the PlayStation store page (via Eurogamer) now shows that the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 will also be a part of the package, both of which laid the groundwork for a sprawling framework of political intrigue, Cold War paranoia, and a super complex family tree of guys named Snake.
That means the entire thing will house the first give games in the espionage stealth series:
Metal Gear
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Metal Gear Solid (Including VR Missions/Special Missions)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (HD Collection version)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (HD Collection version)
The first two games were on the MSX2, Solid was on PS1, and Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater were on PS2. This is essentially the 2012 Metal Gear Solid HD Collection which brought these same games (minus Peace Walker on the PSP) to PS3 and Xbox 360, but which isn’t currently accessible on modern platforms. The only game not included from Metal Gear’s initial 20 year run is Snake’s Revenge, the first follow-up to the original game that wasn’t actually directed by writer and creator Hideo Kojima.
All of these games were previously delisted from older storefronts in 2021 over issues around “licenses for select historical archive footage used in-game.” Konami says the new collection will contain the original versions of the games with “minimal edits to copyrighted contents.”
In either case, it’s a lot of Metal Gear, and if it’s on par with Konami’s other classic collections, will hopefully be a decent tribute to and preservation of the franchise. We don’t have an exact price or a specific release date yet, but it should keep fans occupied until the Snake Eater remake, for better or worse, finally arrives.
Correction 5/26/2023 6:03 p.m. ET: Fixed the original platform for the first and second Metal Gear.
Players have spent the last couple of weeks doing all kinds of wild stuff in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, from stacking weapons to amassing small fortunes off glitched items. And the whole time many wondered if Nintendo would take notice or let it slide. Now we know the answer: The company went berserk in the latest update and patched out all of the most powerful exploits.
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Pushed live on May 25, version 1.1.2 is light on patch notes but heavy on bug fixes. Tears of the Kingdom’s array of duplication glitches were the first to be fixed, but players soon realized the update hadn’t stopped there. Fan-favorite techniques like the “Autobuild Cancel Slide,” “Weapon State Transfer” and “Zuggling” had also been patched. What the heck were these tricks? I’m glad you asked.
“Zuggling” referred to standing next to a wall and continually dropping and picking up bows to stack glitched attack power onto weapons. The incredibly powerful trick made it possible to one-hit Gleeoks, Tears of the Kingdom’s challenging three-headed dragon mini-bosses.
Autobuild Cancel Slide, meanwhile, requires the Autobuild ability. Players simply attached two items together using the Ultrahand ability, separated them again, and then tapped the Y and B buttons back-to-back very quickly to jam up the build menu and let Link fly around on wooden boards like they were magic carpets.
Another very popular glitch was called “Master Sword Smuggling.” It required players to go to a precise location on the map and essentially transfer the Master Sword between save files. It’s an absolutely wild bug that makes the weapon unbreakable. It definitely broke the game but was also not the simplest exploit in the world to pull off. A super Master Sword seemed like an appropriate reward for those who discovered the trick and shared it around.
Many of the glitches centered around dropping items and messing with menus, it’s possible Nintendo was able to patch them all by addressing a few specific ways the underlying game worked. “Darn, sad to see them go, but honestly I can’t blame the devs, they were way too OP,” tweeted one player.
Fortunately, the developers didn’t nuke all of Tears of the Kingdom’s glitches yet. Traversal techniques like the infinite jump and Tulin paraglider speed glitch are still operational. So too is the spear recall trick where players used loose planks of wood and spears to launch Link into orbit. It seems to be the result of the underlying way the game’s objects and physics systems interact, so hopefully it will be harder to patch out.
And even if it does get nuked, Tears of the Kingdom players are an industrious lot. If Breath of the Wild is any indication, glitch hunters will have their hands full for years to come.
As reported at the time, the commercial’s creators were inspired by, of all things, an Amazon review left under the game’s predecessor, Breath of the Wild. Written by a Japanese user, it told the tale of a “working adult” who spends his days “plainly wondering why I’m still alive”.
Rediscover your sense of adventure with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I am a working adult, so-called businessmen.I’m jostled by the commuter rush, bowing down to customers and bosses, being forced to train junior staff and doing many things, and I end up working overtime every day.Even the mountain I see on my way to work, which I don’t even know the name of, irritates me.When I get back home I’m dizzy and have no energy to eat food, so I just drink alcohol and sleep.If I have time to play games I should be going to seminars or looking for a marriage partner, which makes me more impatient than I should be.I spend my days plainly wondering why I’m still alive.
I went to buy alcohol because I ran out and saw the Switch on sale in the shops. Then I remembered the day.When I was a child and really into Mario 64, my friend said, “lame to play Mario nowadays! Now it’s the era of PlayStation!” and I felt embarrassed.At the time, I didn’t want my friend to dislike me, so I also remember that I replied, “Yeah, you’re right. Mario is already old-fashioned!”
The beauty of FF7 at that time and the shock of being able to listen to the CD on TV… the recent kids may not understand these feelings.That’s how attractive and innovative it was for kids back then.
I’m still not sure why I picked up the Switch at the time.I just held a beer in one hand and bought the console and Zelda, thinking I could sell it if it was boring.
Yesterday, my work day, I looked out of the train window at a mountain I didn’t even know the name of and thought, “Looks like I can climb that.” At that moment, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop.The businessmen of the same age who were beside me must have thought, “What the hell is this guy.”
I would recommend it to all my fellow businessmen who are pressed for time and scrambling day after day to maintain the status quo, even if everyone hates you.Don’t say it’s just a game. We were born during the golden age of video games.Have you ever seen your family move their entire body when Mario jumps?Do you remember playing Mario Kart or Smash Bros with your friends bringing their own controllers?Have you ever discussed Chrono Trigger or FF7 strategies with your friends?Now I know. When I was a brat, my parents bought me expensive consoles and software for my birthday, Christmas and something.My parents, who were always nagging me, managed to raise money from their living budget to buy expensive games for me.
I’m touched to belatedly realise many things that I didn’t realise due to the busyness of living my own life.I should have been more filial.
The 5-stars reviews are all good ones, so there’s nothing for me to talk about now.This Zelda gives me the “challenge and reward” I forgot about.I can freely explore the world without maps, it’s an exciting adventure experience.People my age are sick every day to overcome tomorrow. But don’t despair of your life.The adventure I wanted was in such a place.
P. S.I feel like thanking this Zelda and I would like to apologise to the Mario 64 development team and Nintendo.I’d like to apologise for the lies I told that day, saying that Mario 64 was old-fashioned, even though I loved it.I am sincerely looking forward to Mario Odyssey being released this winter.
Postscript, 7 May: after 180 hours of play, I got all “recovered memory” and saw the ending.More than anything, I’d like to thank all the people who read my awful, long, cluttered and embarrassing review written emotionally. I’d also like to thank all the people who gave it a “helpful” rating, not only for reading it. I’ve never been appreciated by so many people even in my job.I really enjoyed my 180 hours spent running around Hyrule. I’d like to thank not only Nintendo but also all the Zelda fans who have continued to support Zelda. Thank you for a great adventure.
For all the similarities between this man’s tale and the commercial, the part where he apologises for abandoning Mario in the face of a PlayStation advertising campaign—I did something similar with Sonic 3 when my friends were playing WipeOut—hit hard.
During Take-Two Interactive’s recent earnings call with investors, CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about other publishers selling AAA games at a discounted price shortly after launch. His company has been one of the many to start charging $70 for games, and at least according to him, he hasn’t seen any “pushback” on the new price point.
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On May 17, Take-Two Interactive—the publisher behind games like NBA 2K, GTA V, Borderlands,and BioShock—released its 2022 earnings report alongside a press release that seemed to hint at GTA VI-levels of success coming in the next year. As part of this process, the company also conducted a call with investors, who asked questions about Take-Two’s plans and past performance. It was here that one person brought up AAA game prices.
“We’re not seeing a pushback on frontline price,” Zelnick said. “What we’re seeing is consumers are seeking to limit their spending by going either to the stuff they really, really care about, blockbusters, or to value, and sometimes it could be both. And the good news is, we have a bunch of blockbusters and we have a wonderful catalog.”
The rise of $70 games
Basically, Zelnick believes that gamers are just buying fewer games and focusing on getting a couple of big, expensive $70 blockbuster titles or are willing to pick up older or smaller games that cost less. As the video game industry continues to struggle with layoffs and big games failing to sell well, it seems odd that Zelnick is fine with people being unable to afford more games and instead having to “limit their spending.” But I’m not a big rich CEO, so what do I know?
The reality is that while gamers are definitely vocally pushing back on $70 games—Zelnick should check out the comments on literally any story about these pricey titles—the reality is that publishers are going to move forward anyway. There’s too much money to be made, and as Tears of the Kingdom’s massive sale numbers have shown, a $70 game can sell like hotcakes if it’s good enough.
While Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are widely beloved, there are some Legend of Zelda fans who miss the more streamlined, non-open-world approach of games like Ocarina of Time. To those of you who fall into that category, I’m sorry to tell you it doesn’t sound like the series is returning to its roots anytime soon.
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In an interview with Game Informer, director Eiji Aonuma admits Ocarina of Time was foundational when it launched on the Nintendo 64, but Nintendo found its closed format “restricting” from a design standpoint. While there were some open areas like Hyrule Field, much of the game was spent in carefully crafted temples that had specific puzzle solutions. Breath of the Wild didn’t have temples, though there were temple-like structures in the Divine Beasts, and the lack of this series staple was, and remains controversial years later. Despite the pushback from some long-time fans,it sounds like Breath of the Wild’s open-world structure and experimental game designis the blueprint moving forward.
“With Ocarina of Time, I think it’s correct to say that it did kind of create a format for a number of titles in the franchise that came after it,” Aonuma tells Game Informer. “But in some ways, that was a little bit restricting for us. While we always aim to give the player freedoms of certain kinds, there were certain things that format didn’t really afford in giving people freedom. Of course, the series continued to evolve after Ocarina of Time, but I think it’s also fair to say now that we’ve arrived at Breath of the Wild and the new type of more open play and freedom that it affords. Yeah, I think it’s correct to say that it has created a new kind of format for the series to proceed from.”
So there you have it, folks. If you were hoping for a Zelda of a smaller scale, it doesn’t sound like that’s in the works. Not to sound too doom and gloom (heh) about it. In all honesty, I’ve actually enjoyed Tears of the Kingdom a lot more than Breath of the Wild. So I’m a bit warmer on the format these days, and if you’ve loved both of these games, then it sounds like you’ve got more to look forward to in the future.
Link, hero of the Legend of Zelda series, has been through many visual changes over the years. We could all rank our favourites there. But have you ever stopped and wondered how the different Links across the timeline smell?
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I’ll be honest here, I have not, so I’m very glad Megan Farokhmanesh, writing for Wired, thought to ask this important question. It’s not often games critics and journalists get interviews with important Japanese developers, so when they do—and having everything go through a translator never helps—interviews tend to end up being about boring, predictable stuff.
Here, though, right off the bat, Tears Of The Kingdom Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and producer Eiji Aonuma are asked “Which version of Link, across the long-running series’ dozens of titles, would smell the worst?”
Aonuma points to Breath of the Wild’s version of the character, who wears a barbarian-style outfit with a bone cap and furs. “That might be kind of smelly,” he says, noting its “wild animal odor aroma.”
Fujibayashi, who says that “across the many decades” he’s given interviews he’s never been asked to consider which hero is most in need of deodorant, cast his vote for Twilight Princess. Although Link spends much of his time digging through dirt and running through dungeons as a wolf, Fujibayashi is thinking of one specific moment. “There are some scenes in Twilight Princess where Link engages in sumo wrestling with the Goron tribe,” he says. “I imagine he’s pretty smelly in that situation.”
Good answers! Now I’m trying to think of which Link would smell the best, and keep coming back to the freshness of early-game Wind Waker: a lovely blend of sun, sea, sand and coconuts, which is exactly how the whole game smells in my mind.
Please don’t think I’m only posting this here because of the stinky discourse, either, because the interview also gets excellent—and surprisingly blooper-filled—answers to “What are the best—and worst—things you’ve created with Ultrahand and Fuse?” as well, which you can check out over on Wired.
It is May 12, 2023, and on this fine day the much-hyped Nintendo sequel The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is finding its way into the eager hands of players around the world. But you: Maybe you stand apart. Maybe you didn’t end up playing the previous game, 2017’s smash hit Breath of the Wild. Or maybe you dabbled in it and fell off for whatever reason. I won’t judge, I’m right there with you.
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Now here you are, seeing all these cool trailers and…interesting…things popping off in the new Zelda game and you’re wondering, “Do I need to play Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom? Should I?” Well, that’s what I’m here to help you figure out.
A series purist will always say to go back and play the games in proper order (which when you consider how long Zelda’s been around, you might want to be careful with that line of thinking). But here I’ll lay out some pros and cons for each course of action. There are valid reasons for either approach, so let’s get into them.
By the way, this article is a spoiler-free zone. So feel safe to read on even if you haven’t touched 2017’s Breath of the Wild.
Is Breath of the Wild’s storyline worth experiencing before Tears of the Kingdom?
Breath of the Wild tells a very average fantasy story. Hold your farmer’s pitchforks; I don’t say that to put it down. In general the story’s overall beats are very familiar to almost anyone who’s experienced a Lord of the Rings or Star Wars joint. You’ve got your dark lord, your threat to peace, your amnesiac protagoboy, your magical items of power, rinse and repeat. Watching a quick recap video would be plenty to give you a general sense of BotW’s plot, and you won’t be robbing yourself of a grand-epic-of-all-time if you do.
How Breath of the Wild tells its story, however, is something you may wish to consider experiencing in full form, not just via synopsis. Link’s journey to regain his memories has him meet countless charming and memorable characters along the way, which will get you a lot more emotionally interested in the greater story of Hyrule (simple though it is) and the people who live there than if you just breezed through a summary.
Breath of the Wild’s characters make an otherwise typical fantasy tale worth the trip.Image: Nintendo
If you’re just interested in a quick SparkNotes rundown of Hyrulian history, a wiki or video will do it. But if you value the experience of meeting interesting characters and gaining greater emotional investment in a fictional world, jumping into Breath of the Wild first will be time well spent.
Does Tears of the Kingdom make Breath of the Wild’s gameplay obsolete?
We’ve all been there: You play a sequel first, and then the original just feels ancient by comparison. Some sequels so dramatically improve on their predecessor that it’s tough to go back. Mass Effect 2 is one such example. Skyrim may be another.
First of all, no: Tears of the Kingdom certainly has its share of improved quality-of-life features—such as in fast travel and cooking— but nothing so earth-shattering that Breath of the Wild suddenly feels neolithic in comparison.
Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t obsolete Breath of the Wild’s gameplay. Image: Nintendo
As for whether or not they feel too similar, fear not. While very similar in key ways, Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild are distinct enough that going back to the older game after Tears of the Kingdom would still give you plenty of new experiences to enjoy.
As my colleague Kenneth Shepard told me after his first handful of hours in Tears of the Kingdom, the gameplay in the sequel is “less an evolution and more a sidestep.” Link’s new abilities, specifically the crafting and new Ultrahand ability, make it a distinct enough experience that if you play these in reverse order, you won’t feel like your abilities have been drastically dialed back in scope.
Tears of the Kingdom is a looker—and it won’t melt your Switch to plasticky goop.Image: Nintendo
Tears of the Kingdom looks graphically daunting for the old Switch, so should you wait for future hardware?
It’s no secret that the aging Wii U wasn’t too kind to Breath of the Wild. And basically everyone who saw early footage of Tears of the Kingdom got a little nervous thinking about whether the humble Nintendo Switch, released over six years ago, might be able to keep up.
Well, I have good news. Or, rather, Digital Foundry has good news: Tears of the Kingdom will run pretty damn well on that old Switch of yours. You can expect a very close-to-solid 30 frames per second with some drops here and there, particularly when using Link’s new Ultrahand ability. Fast-travel loading times are also rather quick, around 30 percent quicker than in BotW.
Nintendo / Digital Foundry
I hear you thinking, “surely there’s another console from Nintendo on the way, right?” The Switch has been out for a while, true, but as we reported on Tuesday, May 9, Nintendo has no plans for a hardware refresh or followup to the Switch in 2023.
Say you don’t mind holding off on the game everyone’s chatting about right now and are cool jumping into Breath of the Wild first. Can you expect to knock it out in a weekend? Well, no.
Breath of the Wild is a long game, and every moment is worth it.Image: Nintendo
According to Howlongtobeat.com, the main story of Breath of the Wild is around 50 hours. And if you want to do all the side-quests? You’re looking at just under 100 hours. If you’re a completionist fiend, HLtB estimates 189 hours. Our own experiences bear those numbers out.
Breath of the Wild is a game of sweeping proportions. The world is enormous and there’s so much to do. If you haven’t played it yet and Tears of the Kingdom’s release really has you interested in seeing what all this Link business is about, expect to need to set aside some time for BotW should you jump into that first.
Even if you’re not a completionist, taking in the world of Hyrule in the Switch’s first Zelda title is an experience best enjoyed at a gentle pace, and you won’t feel worse for having taken the time to let it all soak in.
So, yes, BotW is long. Which is good, since it’s a great game.
While some franchises are okay to enter at just about any point, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild offers some compelling reasons to give it a shot first. The plot consists of standard fantasy concepts, but is told very memorably and in a vista-rich open world that’s a joy to explore.
But, if you do decide to jump straight into Tears of the Kingdom, a quick synopsis or two of BotW’s story beats will get you up to speed quickly. And with the gameplay differences, playing the two games in reverse order shouldn’t feel too strange.
Order aside, another question is whether you ought to play the older game at all. You may feel differently, but my personal take is that Breath of the Wild is such a genuinely wonderful experience, from the well-told story, to the satisfying gameplay, and a world that is genuinely full of life and beautiful to explore, that you owe it to yourself to play this modern classic if you haven’t, even if you’ve already logged solid hours in Tears of the Kingdom.
It is May 12, 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom release day, and the temperature in New York City is creeping dangerously close to 90 degrees. In Midtown, bankers are sweating through their Brooks Brothers dress shirts and slacks, while tourists have busted out the cargo shorts. As I make my way out of the subway station near Rockefeller Center, I walk smack into a massive line of people. I sneer, assuming it’s the wildly long Nintendo Store line from more than a block away that our managing editor Carolyn Petit saw earlier this morning (I hate the idea of waiting in lines), but nope, the Jonas Brothers are at Rough Trade.
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Hours later, I head out to sit in the blazing sun for a bit to recharge my battery and notice the front of the Nintendo store looks conspicuously spacious. I hustle over, figuring I’ll snag a copy for someone else at Kotaku who wants to play (I do not). But as soon as I approach the front entrance to the building, which is on the corner of Rockefeller Plaza and 48th street, I realize the line is snaking down the adjacent street. It sits directly in the sun, many of the people waiting are visibly sweating.
At random intervals, a huge gap of bodies indicates the presence of a driveway, a few security guys making sure it remains open for cars passing through. Several future Tears of the Kingdom owners are hunched over playing Nintendo Switch. One woman is sitting on the sidewalk in shorts, a New York City no-no.
“Oh, fuck this,” I mumble before heading back to the dry, frigid air of the G/O Media offices. I may not be a big Zelda fan, but I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could make me wait hours on a line in Midtown Manhattan in the midst of a heatwave.
Zelda Tears of the Kingdom lines feel very nostalgic
Despite my beliefs, I’m fascinated to see people waiting in lines like this across the U.S. for the Breath of the Wild sequel. It feels sort of like a bygone era of gaming has returned—the last time I went to the midnight release of a game was November 2012 for Halo 4 at a Best Buy in Long Island, New York. I was 22 years old, and I was incredibly hyped.
The need to wait in long lines for midnight game releases has disappeared over the years, as more and more gamers turn to digital storefronts and downloads in order to get a new game the moment it releases, and the need for physical media wanes. (Though the side effects of a shift to entirely digital have been felt in the loss of access to so many movies—like sci-fi thriller Strange Days, which for some time was nearly impossible to watch without a physical DVD, only just becoming available to stream this year—and will undoubtedly soon affect games.) In 2012, you couldn’t play Halo 4 in any way other than on the two discs that came in the Master Chief-adorned case, but that’s simply not the case now.
What is it about Tears of the Kingdom that’s brought lines back in such a big way? After all, the Nintendo eShop is open 24/7, you can download the game right now without having to stand up for hours at a time, shuffling every 10 or so minutes a few inches closer to the shining glass Nintendo store doors. You can play Tears of the Kingdom right this second, no long-time exposure to stagnant, exhaust-filled NYC air required. Why, people in line, are you not doing this?
For many, the promise of special swag beckons. The Nintendo store has special-edition pins (and other “surprise giveaways”), many of which will undoubtedly end up on eBay for thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, Target has a fanny pack that people are freaking out over. The allure of impossible-to-get swag will always attract gamers, a group known to be completionists and collectors through and through.
But perhaps, despite my decidedly Grinch-y attitude about waiting in long lines for a video game, people are happily queuing for Tears of the Kingdom for the vibes, y’all. They’ve waited six years for a sequel to Breath of the Wild; what’s a few, sweaty hours more, especially in the company of your fellow die-hard fans?
KANSAS CITY, MO—Allowing for a brief, relaxing respite from an otherwise grueling schedule, Friday’s release of The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom reportedly offered local man Nick Powell a much-needed escape from the monotonous grind of playing other video games. “When you spend eight or nine hours a day with a controller in your hand, slogging away at all these video games, it’s nice to relax and unwind with a different video game,” said Nick Powell, adding that he was looking forward to enjoying the new Zelda after a long, arduous week filled with nothing but Overwatch 2, Elden Ring, and Red Dead Redemption. “Day in, day out, I’m occupied with completing all my deliveries in Death Stranding and running an entire town in Animal Crossing. It gets pretty exhausting, so it’s important that I set aside time to reconnect, recharge, and just be myself—or Link, at least—while saving the land of Hyrule from the forces that seek to destroy it.” Twenty minutes into the game, Powell acknowledged that while he was grateful for the opportunity to escape into a virtual world that was separate from the other virtual worlds he spends time in, he was starting to get bored.
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With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom dropping on May 12, Nintendo is looking back and sharing more details about its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. Those details include confirmation that the Wii U console held back the production of and content included in BotW.
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As part of the eighth generation of consoles (alongside the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One), the Wii U was Nintendo’s first attempt at bridging the gap between on-the-go and at-home systems. It wasn’t a success. Yeah, it had some great games, including Bayonetta 2, Splatoon, and Xenoblade Chronicles X, among others. But the confusion around how to actually use the console, coupled with the proximity with which the GamePad had to be to the Wii U itself, made it cumbersome and frustrating. Hell, I remember when it was revealed during E3 2010 and folks (myself included) thought it was some sort of add-on for the Wii.
Despite some heavy-hitter titles like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Maker, the Wii U was not the success Nintendo hoped it would be—or the success it’s used to. And although some of the better Wii U games are now on Nintendo Switch, the company’s home run handheld-console hybrid, Nintendo has admitted in a recent interview that BotW would have benefitted from being a Switch exclusive all along.
Some BotW features wouldn’t work on Wii U
Five Nintendo developers, including Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma, sat down to answer some questions about Tears of the Kingdom in a multi-part interview. In the latest segment, published on the official Nintendo website on May 10, the group was asked about how TotK has expanded in relation to its predecessor. Technical director Takuhiro Dohta explained that certain design elements couldn’t be implemented due to hardware limitations.
“Actually, the previous title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was originally developed for Wii U, so there were restrictions in development,” Dohta said. “There were a lot of ideas we wanted to implement during its development, but we made clear decisions on what we wouldn’t do in that game. For example, we decided that it wouldn’t involve flying. Then Aonuma kept saying, ‘If flying is out of the question, I want to dig underground!’ And we’d respond, ‘Oh no! Please don’t make us develop that too!’”
Now that TotK is a Nintendo Switch exclusive, though, those concepts left on the cutting-room floor—like cliffside caves that should present new exploration opportunities—are making an appearance. This is largely because the team is reusing the BotW map to streamline development.
“For The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we began by compiling and implementing ideas we couldn’t include in the previous title,” Dohta said. “We wouldn’t have been able to do so had we made a completely new world, so developing in the same setting as the previous game was significant in this sense as well.”
Elsewhere in the interview, art director Satoru Takizawa confirmed that “traditional” Zelda dungeons are coming back as well. Although we learned this from the recent TotK leaks, it seems they will be more expansive than you saw in Link’s last outing.
“Making a ‘wide variety’ was pretty challenging,” Takizawa said. “The four Divine Beasts were the dungeons in [BotW], and they shared similar designs. This time, the dungeons are huge and each carry their own regional look and feel, just like traditional The Legend of Zelda games. We think they will provide a satisfying challenge for players. They were certainly a challenge to develop!”
Kotaku reached out to Nintendo for comment.
Tears of the Kingdom looks to be a huge expansion to Breath of the Wild, and not just because of the sky island you can explore above The Great Plateau. With Link’s plethora of new abilities, such as the Fuse skill that al mostly directly responds to weapon durability, it’ll be interesting to see what other ideas Nintendo has in store when Link’s latest adventure drops on May 12.
There are, by my count, 1732 indie games coming out every day now, which makes promoting them (for devs) and covering them (for us) almost impossible. One trend I’ve enjoyed lately, though, is an attempt to market a game not just by showing the game, but by showing what went into making the game.
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The Dungeon Experience is a good example of this, but another one popped up over the weekend for Lunark, a “modern take on the 2D cinematic platformer genre”, by which its developers (mostly just creator Johan Vinet) mean its in the same vein as classics like Another World and Flashback.
Those were two games defined not just by their cinematic aspirations, heavy on cutscenes and dramatic framing, but because they achieved a lot of that via rotoscoping, the technology where people act scenes out on film then animators recreate it in a game/show/movie.
Lunark, appropriately, does much the same thing, but what I was so happy to see over the weekend was the footage behind the animation, which reveals that for every scene involved a dramatic sci-fi chase or some complex alien machinery, there was…a dude in his kitchen sitting on a shelf, swinging on some bars at a children’s playground or lovingly touching his floorboards:
If you’re into what you’ve seen here, the official pitch for the game is:
Set in a future where the Moon has been transformed into a vessel for humanity’s survival, LUNARK is a 2D adventure inspired by ‘90s classics. Run, jump, hang, climb, roll, and shoot through gorgeously animated environments while overcoming traps, solving puzzles, battling enemy droids, and more! Uncover the dark origin of humanity’s new home in this epic story of survival, revolution, and mystery.
Lunark was released back in March, and is available on Steam, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox.
Back in 2015, Grand Theft Auto Online players found a way to spawn a car that is usually only available in Grand Theft Auto V’s single-player campaign. While some developers might simply patch the exploit out of the game, Rockstar decided that wasn’t enough, and that these cheaters deserved a punishment fitting of a Grand Theft Auto game. So instead of removing the car, the studio made it so that whenever a player attempted to get inside it, the vehicle would spontaneously explode, leaving the cheaters with a sudden “Wasted” game over and a jump scare for good measure.
Why was this car so significant? It was the Duke O’ Death, given only to players who upgraded from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto V to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ports. Rockstar eventually made the car available to all players in 2021, even in Grand Theft Auto Online, but at one point it was a prized possession that Rockstar went the extra mile to keep out of multiplayer.
Back in the 1990s, Philips tried to break into the video game market with its doomed-to-fail, multimedia set-top box standard called CD-i. Many brands and models of CD-i players were released but all of them were flops and mostly forgotten in 2023. However, Philips did acquire the rights to develop three Zelda games for its unpopular machines. They were terrible. Now, a fan has taken what’s perhaps the worst of those games, a top-down RPG starring Zelda herself, and unofficially ported it to the Game Boy.
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You might be wondering how Philips was able to create Zelda games, and on a non-Nintendo platform. The answer to that involves Sony, weirdly enough. In 1989, Sony and Nintendo signed a deal to create a CD-based add-on for the SNES. However, Nintendo would later back out of the deal and instead work with Philips. Sony was bitter, and decided to develop its own game console, a little device you might have heard of called the PlayStation. Meanwhile, Nintendo saw the poor reaction to the Genesis’ Sega CD add-on and backed out of its planned SNES CD hardware entirely. It’s believed that, as some recompense for dissolving the deal, Nintendo ended up licensing some IP to Philips, allowing the company to make its own Zelda games. They weren’t great, and one of the three, Zelda’s Adventure, is seen by many fans as the worst of the bunch, and is often cited as the worst Zelda game ever released.
Still, even if it’s a bad game with terrible controls and awful live-action FMV cinematics, it’s still a Zelda game, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it has its fans. One of them has spent a few years developing a full port of the CD-i flop for Nintendo’s Game Boy. And now it’s out, and it’s really cool!
John Lay
The story behind the new Game Boy Zelda
Zelda’s Adventure for Game Boy was developed by John Lay, who describes himself as a programmer and graphic designer. According to Lay—a big fan of the 2D Zelda games—out of the three CD-i Zelda games games, Zelda’s Adventure “looked interesting.” And after stumbling across an early version of modern development tool GB Studio, Lay decided to start working on a demake during covid-19 lockdown as the idea of a portable version of the unbeloved game seemed like something he’d want to play. So he started work on a proof of concept that was just the first dungeon and the initial part of the overworld, which he estimates to comprise about 20 percent of the overall game.
“After I finished I took a short break and during that time GB Studio released an update I was eager to try,” Lay told Kotaku. “So I…continued the game where I left off and developed approximately another 40 percent of the overworld and dungeons.”
However, he ran into some GB Studio limitations, so he had to modify the engine with custom-created code to make the full demake feasible.
“I then used this modified engine to develop a third prototype with the remaining 40 percent of the overworld and the final dungeons,” he said. “During this time GB Studio released a third update with a bunch of improvements, so I sat down and planned out how to combine all three prototypes into a single game.”
Lay says from start to end this whole process took about 14 months, since starting work on the game in April 2020.
According to the Itch page for Zelda’s Adventure, it was developed to aesthetically resemble 1992’s Link’s Awakening, but also includes some features from the Game Boy Color duo Oracle of Ages and Seasons. Lay calls his creation a complete port of the full game, and the music was composed by Beatscribe.
How to play Zelda’s Adventure for Game Boy
If you want to play this neat port on a Game Boy emulator, you can download the ROM from Lay’s Itch page. However, you can also play it in your browser without having to download a thing, or just watch a full playthrough of the fan game on Lay’s YouTube channel.
John Lay
Honestly, Lay’s new fan game is probably the best way to experience Zelda’s Adventure, that odd and barely remembered piece of Nintendo ephemera. I mean, unless the upcoming Tears of the Kingdom decides to include some deep-cut references to it, in which case we all might have to go back and reassess the CD-i disaster. Though I very much doubt that’s going to happen.
As for Lay, he doesn’t have plans to demake the other two Zelda CD-i games, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, on Nintendo’s portable or any other console. But he did enjoy working on the project, and wanted to shout out to both his composer Beatscribe and the “incredible developers” behind GB Studio.
“Thanks to everyone who supported the project,” Lay said. “I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback so far, it really makes it worthwhile. I hope you enjoy the game!”
In the wake of a massive hype wave following the latest The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom trailer, Nintendo has seemingly ratched up the number of rogue copyright claims it puts out against content creators on Youtube, and at least one of them is hitting back. In his latest video, Eric “PointCrow” Morino pleaded with Nintendo to leave his channel alone after it recently issued dozens of additional claims against his videos.
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“Please remove these strikes and claims or at least start a dialogue with us so we can all move forward with the excitement I’m sure you would love to see about your future games,” Morino said in a video to Nintendo posted on YouTube on April 14 that he said was vetted by his lawyer. The request comes after the Switch manufacturer apparently doubled down on issuing copyright claims and strikes against Morino’s channel, increasing the total number to 28, including ones against older videos that had nothing to do with Breath of the Wild, like one about Wii Sports.
Nintendo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nintendo first began targeting the Zelda speedrunner’s YouTube channel on April 6 after he uploaded footage of a Breath of the Wild multiplayer mod he commissioned and released to the public. Despite making videos featuring challenge runs and other modded content for years, it appeared to be the first time Nintendo signaled it took any sort of issue with the content. Morino posted about it on Twitter at the time, criticizing the move and calling on the publisher to reverse its decision.
He now says Nintendo has done the opposite, proceeding to copyright claim over 20 additional videos spanning his entire content making career. While most of them included the word “mod” in the title, at least one contained just vanilla gameplay with commentary. “These takedowns may have started with modded content, but they’ve spiraled into something else entirely,” Morino said in his latest video.
On April 23, another Zelda Youtuber, Croton, said 10 of their streams and two of their videos were “nuked” from the platform. “No answers, no context, just a copyright removal,” they tweeted. “And one of these videos has literally nothing to do with mods and was simply a Zelda challenge run.”
In his own video, Morino accuses Nintendo of flouting its content creator guidelines to target him, and defends his modded Breath of the Wild runs, which have collectively garnered tens of millions of views and helped maintain excitement around a game that’s now six years old. “To be clear I have never encouraged piracy of Nintendo’s games,” he said. “The mods I’ve commissioned are not being sold, and all of the code is custom, meaning they are free of Nintendo’s assets.”
At the exact time when many content creators are gearing up for a massive influx of interest from fans and viewers ahead of the release of Tears of the Kingdom next month, Morino’s now weary of making content for the game at all, lest the arbitrary copyright claims continue. “This is a little scary because the precedent that they set with this case may apply heavily for their upcoming release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” he said. “As per their decisions to take down challenge and gameplay videos alongside the modded content it will be difficult for any content creator to post creative concepts without having the fear of Nintendo exercising their copyright over video that is in line with their own policies.”
Morino initially planned to appeal the copyright claims, defending his videos on fair use grounds, but he now says those legal efforts could cost millions and could jeopardize the future of his over 1.6 million subscriber YouTube channel. He recently tweeted, “it’s hard to become excited for Tears of the Kingdom when the Zelda community is being nuked off YouTube.”
The wait is nearly over. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally hits the Switch on May 14, 2023. Three epic trailers plus a look at some gameplay have only made us even more excited to finally dive into the next chapter in Nintendo’s adventure series. This time around, Link has a number of sweet new abilities. One of them is a clever take on crafting, which the game calls “Fuse.”
Link’s new “Fuse” and “Ultrahand” abilities, as teased in trailers and fully explained in a gameplay deep dive on March 28, is actually a pretty sweet crafting system. Instead of just following preset recipes for crafting, players will be able to combine all manner of unique objects they find around Hyrule to forge makeshift weaponry, Mad Max-worthy vehicles, and who knows what else? Footage so far has shown the ability to create custom designs with simulated physics like buoyancy and air propulsion. Other examples show off weapon upgrades that trigger status effects like freezing.
With such a versatile system, the sky’s the limit for what you might be able to craft come May 12. To give you some idea of just how handy Link can get, we’ve cataloged everything we’ve seen our hero Fuse thus far. You’ll see he’s actually very handy.
In March, an employee at a Massachusetts GameStop leaked on Reddit that Nintendo was probably about to reveal its long rumored special edition Zelda Switch at an upcoming mini-Direct for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Special editions such as these are highly coveted collector’s items, and news of one for the sequel to a best-selling game would be huge for fans looking to buy a new system. This week, GameStop fired the employee who leaked the news, and the employee claims he was told Nintendo helped make it happen.
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Back in March, Mike, who requested Kotaku only use his first name, posted a photo of a GameStop computer screen showing the inventory database had been updated with a secret new Switch model on the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit. It was the day before Nintendo’s big extended gameplay reveal for Tears of the Kingdom, and the employee speculated in the post that a special edition Zelda Switch which had already leaked back in December, would be announced during the stream. Mike says he got fired on April 11, about two weeks later.
In a phone interview with Kotaku, Mike said he made the leak because he was a big fan of the franchise and wanted to give others a heads up in case pre-orders went live that day. GameStop in particular has seen issues for buyers when it comes to preorders in the past, though this wasn’t a reason cited by Mike for the leak. On March 28, Nintendo did reveal a special edition Switch, and the following day pre-orders went live at GameStop and other retailers.
At the time, the Reddit post didn’t garner a ton of upvotes, and the now former employee said he didn’t think of it as a big deal since he didn’t technically leak any images or special details about the console itself, and the post itself was mostly speculative. Nintendo also tends to release special consoles such as this one for most of its major releases, such as Pokémon.
Collector’s Editions Are A Big Deal At GameStop
But on April 5, a week later, Mike said the company traced the leak back to them. Coming in for his afternoon shift after watching the new Super Mario Bros. Movie on release day, he said his district manager called him into the backroom for a meeting. Joined by another GameStop supervisor via video conference, the employee said he was asked if he made the post and whether he knew it violated company policy.
Mike said he immediately confessed, but maintained he wasn’t aware it went against the company’s social media policies. The district manager took their keys and placed them on suspension, saying the final punishment could vary between a first-offense write up and termination. It ended up being the latter. And the now former employee thinks Nintendo is to blame.
When their store manager called on April 11 to deliver the bad news, he said the supervisor told them “off the record” that Nintendo had forced the company’s hand, demanding the employee be terminated over the leak. Mike shared the allegation on the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit shortly afterwards writing, “Hopefully all of you were able to get your switch pre-orders in as now I will not be able to get mine.”
GameStop and Nintendo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Image: Nintendo
Another employee at the store corroborated Mike’s account to Kotaku, and said they were told by the same store manager in a separate conversation that Nintendo was the catalyst. “He was an amazing worker,” they said of Mike, adding that he was one of the top performers in the area when it came to achieving GameStop’s aggressive sales goals.
Whoever ultimately made the decision to fire them, the leaker would have been easy to discover. Their social media accounts, including Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch, were linked in various ways to their Reddit account, and included several references to their general geographic location, as well as selfies. “I wasn’t really trying to cover my tracks because I didn’t know it would lead to this,” Mike told Kotaku.
As a large-scale retailer staffed mostly by entry-level workers paid terrible hourly rates, GameStop has historically been a hotbed for big gaming leaks, from Assassin’s Creed to Call of Duty. But it’s rare to hear that someone was actually fired in connection with one of the leaks. It’s perhaps less surprising that this one happens to have been in connection with a big Nintendo reveal, however. The Mario maker has been on the warpath against leaks for years, most recently attempting to subpoena Discord for the private data of someone who shared images from the Tears of the Kingdom collector’s edition artbook.
When asked if the former GameStop employee ultimately managed to secure a Zelda Switch pre-order, Mike confirmed he had. “But sadly I won’t be able to afford it anymore due to lack of a job,” he said. Mike added that when his manager had to deliver the bad news over the phone they pointed out what a shame it was: “This is your favorite company and now they hate you.”
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is almost here, and from the looks of it, the enigmatic faction called the Zonai may play a big role in the sequel after mostly existing in the background of Breath of the Wild. If you’re feeling like you’re walking in on something or like you missed a big plot beat in the last game, don’t worry. Despite a lot of theory crafting over the years, even the biggest Zelda fans don’t have a lot of concrete details as to who or what the Zonai were. But let’s break down what we do know and why fans think the Zonai are being primed as a key player in Tears of the Kingdom.
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What do we already know about the Zonai?
In Breath of the Wild, the Zonai are described as a tribe that no longer exists within Hyrule, but their nature is seemingly up for debate within the game’s world. They’re described both as a savage tribe of barbarians, as well as powerful magic users who worship animals, specifically Farosh, a water dragon that can be found in places like the Gerudo Highlands. Traces of their existence are visible in places like the Zonai Ruins in the southern area of the map, with long-abandoned architecture hinting at their reverence for Hyrule’s wildlife. In the lore and art book The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion, it’s revealed the animals prominently featured in what’s left of the Zonai’s home reference the three pieces of the Triforce: a dragon for Courage, an owl for Wisdom, and a boar for Power. Beyond the animals, the Zonai also have their own crest resembling a spiral, which is seen on architecture associated with the tribe.
Beyond that, Link can acquire a Barbarian armor set in Breath of the Wild believed to be worn by members of the Zonai long ago after navigating specific labyrinths implied to have been built by the tribe. While it all fits together, much of what we know about the tribe is speculation fostered by the game’s ambient storytelling. It’s a very minimalistic, FromSoftware-style approach to world-building and largely rewards those who want to explore the game’s big world. However, it might be paying off for all of us in Tears of the Kingdom.
Nintendo of America
Why do fans think Tears of the Kingdom will involve the Zonai?
Theories that the Zonai would be a major player in Tears of the Kingdom have been prevalent since the game’s reveal in 2019 because of the focus on the spiral motif central to Zonai architecture. However, the connection is much more concrete now thanks to the most recent gameplay showcase. During this stream, Nintendo revealed the Zonai are tied to the events of Tears of the Kingdom through a piece of loot. In the 10-minute gameplay trailer, Link defeats an enemy in the floating sky islands, and it drops an item called a Zonai Charge. The video doesn’t linger on the item, but it clearly has the same green energy seen to power the machine-like enemies Link is fighting, the (broken) seal around Ganondorf seen in the original trailer, and Link’s corrupted, glowing arm.
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Will we meet the Zonai in Tears of the Kingdom?
Given how quiet Nintendo has been regarding Tears of the Kingdom’s story, it’s hard to say whether or not Link will actually come across a member of the Zonai tribe. Given the group seems to have been entirely gone from Hyrule in Breath of the Wild, with the only information we have on them coming from theories and their remaining architecture, it seems most logical that the Zonai have been wiped out or have gone into hiding. But even so, their technology and magic are still present and causing trouble for our hero in Tears of the Kingdom. All that being said, it’s not entirely out of the question that some may have survived and have been waiting for the events of this game to reveal themselves. The series is also no stranger to time travel, with it being a key pillar to games like Ocarina of Time and Oracle of Ages. So there’s a chance Link could come face-to-face with the Zonai during their prime, but that’s not confirmed.
Wait, how does Twilight Princess play into all this?
Like most of the possibilities discussed here, the connection between The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Tears of the Kingdom is still speculation, but fans believe they’ve found connections between the Zonai and the Twili, who were introduced in Twilight Princess. Breath of the Wild incorporates several tribes and species from the series’ lifetime from the Sheikah to the Zora. The Twili, however, are notably absent, but given the similarities to architecture and magic seen in Tears of the Kingdom and that of the Twili, fans speculate that the Zonai could be the original race that was turned into monsters by Zant in Twilight Princess. There are even some breakdowns of iconography and sigils throughout Breath of the Wildthat do closely resemble imagery in Twilight Princess. It’s all theory crafting at this point, and Breath of the Wild itself doesn’t do much on its own to directly make this possible tie-in apparent. So don’t feel like you completely missed out on a potential connection. This is all fan interpretation, for now.
Whatever the Zonai are, it does seem like they will be at least part of Tears of the Kingdom’s larger setup. Whether we actually meet one remains to be seen, but we’ll find out when the game comes to Switch on May 12.
YouTuber and speedrunner Eric “PointCrow” Morino released a brand new multiplayer mod for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on April 4. It basically transforms the hit 2017 Switch game into a modern open-world version of the beloved co-op Zelda spin-off Four Swords Adventures. A couple of days later, Morino says Nintendo hit him with copyright infringement claims that led some of his biggest YouTube videos to be demonetized.
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“Incredibly disappointed that Nintendo of America has decided to block my videos on Breath of the Wild,” he tweeted on April 6. “It’s the love for the community and the innovation that we bring to it that has kept it alive & brought new people to love the Zelda series. I hope you reverse your decision soon.” Morino also shared a screencap of several of his YouTube videos, including ones featuring gameplay footage from the multiplayer mod, showing they’d been flagged for copyright issues.
Nintendo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Publishers maintain they have full ownership and control over any footage produced from their games, but they rarely seek to penalize YouTubers and other content creators for sharing it online and potentially profiting off of it. In fact most companies go out of their way to promote the sharing of footage and screenshots from their games to help spread awareness, increase sales, and cultivate a community of passionate fans.
When it comes to social media content around fan projects and mods, however, Nintendo is one company that’s often aggressively pushed back. Late last year, the Switch manufacturer went after a YouTube documentary about an abandoned pitch for a Zelda tactics spin-off, seeking to get it removed from Google’s platform. The creators eventually managed to appeal the decision and get it reversed.
In response to Morino’s post, several other big content creators chimed in. “Not good for them considering they’re releasing a new game soon and many content creators will popularize it even more and may choose not to create videos around it,” wrote Kittyplays. “Nintendo detected fans having fun and they can’t have that,” wrote LostPause. “This is sad given how much love and effort you given them and botw.”
Breath of the Wild is the fourth best-selling game on Switch, and has remained relevant years after its release in part due to the discoveries, tricks, and new stunts pulled off by people like Morino. Outside of the recent multiplayer mod, he’s drawn millions of additional eyeballs to the game with weird runs like Link growing bigger every time the A button is pressed, or trying to beat the game while both the hardest randomizer mode and the very difficult, map-changing Relics of the Past mod are active.
Morino didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment but tweeted that he’s currently appealing the decision with YouTube. “As of now, [the videos are still visible for you to watch—however, they are not monetized,” he wrote. “Hopefully Nintendo releases these claims, as I significantly transform their work and my videos are under fair use.”
Most video game studios, or at least the bigger ones, will have experience with Foley, a long-standing craft that revolves around creating cinematic sound effects using everyday objects.
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It’s nothing new. Many of Star Wars’ most iconic sounds were made using stuff like TV tubes and vacuum cleaners, and there are loads of excellent features on the internet showing how everyone from Bungie to Naughty Dog have used Foley to bring their own games to life. Even Unpacking, a cute little pixel game about putting things on shelves, featured over 14,000 different sound effects.
Today it’s God of War Ragnarok’s turn, in this excellent video put together by Wired, and this is already one of my all-time favourites, mostly because of the sheer volume of effects it shows.
Meeting PlayStation Studios’ Joanna Fang, we get to see how loads of the game’s crunchiest, squelchiest sound effects were made. A galloping horse’s hooves are actually just a pair of toilet plungers. Kratos smashing an enemy’s skull in is actually Fang crushing a melon with a crowbar. One of the most interesting is that you can get a perfect replica of snow crunching underfoot by…walking on coal instead.
How This Woman Creates God of War’s Sound Effects | Obsessed | WIRED
I love that the sound of floorboards is made by just slapping a shipping pallet. That twisting some leather sounds like someone being strangled. And that to get the sound of someone punching a dude wearing armour they…OK, used a boxing glove to punch some armour.
Like I’ve said, there’s nothing particularly new or relevatory here, Foley is a relatively ancient craft in modern show business, but this video is a fantastic example of showing the depth and variety of sounds that can be produced in a single room, and how a Foley artist’s passion for the job can be one of the most important—if also unsung—parts of our experience with a game.
Zelda fans have been starving for anything they can get, any crumb they can catch, and it seems like Nintendo is finally taking pity, rewarding them with a 10-minute gameplay trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
During the gameplay snippet, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma says through a translator that Tears has changed the world “in many ways,” including pieces of Hyrule that float high in the sky, or “sky islands.”
Tears of the Kingdom new abilities means less climbing
Link can reach these sky islands through his new “recall” powers, which alters an object’s movement, or “ascend,” which allows Link to pass through ceilings in a path of twisting turquoise light. The recall power lets Link take a giant boulder that fell from a floating island back up to said island like a cool rock elevator. And ascend means you no longer have to always scale the sides of mountains, keeping an eye on Link’s stamina meter while you do it.
Another new power “fuse,” lets Link combine two objects, like a branch with a boulder, and use it as a unique weapon—a hammer, in this case. “Ultrahand” is what Link will use to construct those vehicles we’ve seen in previous trailers.
Tears of the Kingdom weapon fusing
Fuse seems to be one of the game’s most versatile new powers, letting Link attach almost anything to anything to improve and alter its qualities. At one point, for example, Link attaches two fans to a raft to turn it into a sort of rustic speedboat. You can also attach objects to your arrows to increase their utility, including a hunk of meat. The term “meat arrow” is currently all over our Twitter timeline, as Zelda fans rushed to wonder what they can do with such an arrow in Tears of the Kingdom.
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Other surprising reveals include breaking weapons (in the trailer, it’s a branch that breaks, for realism) and a fresh enemy, the Construct, which looks like a stony robot.
The Zonai in Tears of the Kingdom
The lengthy gameplay trailer also appeared to accidentally confirm the presence of the Zonai, a prehistoric tribe in the Zelda universe whose ruins dot Hyrule. During the gameplay, we see Link collect something called a Zonai charge from a fallen Construct. It’s unclear what they do just yet, but it certainly has fans excited to see how much Tears of the Kingdom will explore their lore.
This is what I would call a big meal. Before today, we had a very narrow idea of what the highly anticipated Breath of the Wild sequel would contain. Existing trailers revealed that the game—Nintendo’s first $70 game (pro tip: it will be cheaper if you use a Nintendo Switch Game Voucher to purchase it)—looks even more fantastic than BoTW.
“Hopefully it runs okay on the aging Switch hardware,” Kotaku senior reporter Ethan Gach wrote at the time of the reveal.
Good graphics are a nice thing to have, and a nice thing to see demonstrated before you in a Nintendo trailer, but it isn’t something you can run with. Past trailers have provided a general sense of what the hell is going on: Zelda isn’t sure that Link will be able to handle the latest threat, but he also gets to fly through the sky on a hulking hoverboard and what appears to be a hot air balloon, so who’s really winning?
But it wasn’t enough for fans to sink their teeth in. They’ve been subbing facts for wild dreams, theorizing that Tears will feature the first speaking Ganon, some sort of lost soul mechanic. They also surmised that the game would have homing arrows, which today’s trailer confirmed…you just need to fuse your arrows with squishy yellow Keese Eyeballs to make it happen.
Today’s trailer, which continues to show Link and his verdant world at its best and adds even more gameplay mechanics to the ones previous trailers revealed, is hopefully only the start to Nintendo preparing to open up the flood gates of cold, hard Zelda information. It doesn’t have much time, anyway—the game releases for Switch on May 12.
