Image: Nintendo
Link fuses eyeballs to arrows and floats through mountains in Nintendo’s new gameplay showcase for Tears of the Kingdom.
Nintendo has finally shown off a deep-dive gameplay trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the upcoming sequel to Breath of the Wild that launches in less than two months. Series producer Eiji Aonuma took up a controller to show off roughly 10 minutes of gameplay from the new Zelda game, mostly focusing on the Sky Islands floating above Hyrule and all the new abilities Link has at his disposal.
Watch the presentation below:
The most striking of Link’s new abilities is Fuse, which allows players to combine a variety of different objects in multiple ways, expanding the first game’s sandbox-like gameplay massively. Aonuma revealed that simple weapons like tree branches can now be useful well after the early game, thanks to Link’s ability to fuse random objects like rocks and rods to tree branches, either extending their range or adding to their durability.
This hands the player a crafting system with limitless possibilities, even outside of melee weaponry. Mushrooms fused to shields explode like smoke grenades when they’re hit, giving Link immediate stealth during an encounter. Attaching Keese Eyeballs to Link’s arrows allows him to create homing arrows that zero in on enemies, and attaching icy items to arrows allows him to freeze them instead.
Aonuma teased that these were just a few combinations players can try using Fuse, and we’re already wondering what else we could try putting together. What happens when you fuse meat with an arrow? Or a sword with a bow? Or an axe with an axe? I need answers! This isn’t even the only crafting system in the game, either.
The gameplay showcase also revealed an ability called Ultrahand, which lets players combine random items in the open world to create makeshift vehicles in all shapes and sizes. We saw Aonuma put together a raft, but previous trailers for the game have already revealed that we’ll be able to build hot air balloons and cars out of random gear scattered around Hyrule.
As for the Sky Islands we’ve seen so much of in previous trailers, Nintendo is still keeping mum on their impact on the story - but we saw Link defeat new enemies on the floating items and collect items clearly named after the Zonai, an enigmatic race of people who occupied Hyrule long before any of The Legend of Zelda games take place. The trailer also lets slip that Link has a new ability called ‘Zonai Charge’, further confirming their involvement in the story.
The gameplay showcase also shows Link using an ability called Recall, which rewinds an object’s movement. Aonuma uses this to create a sky elevator that goes all the way up to one of the islands floating above Hyrule. We also see another ability called Ascend, which allows Link to become intangible and float through ceilings no matter where they may be, even if that takes him all the way up a mountain to its very peak. This means that as long as there’s a cave inside a mountain, you won’t have to waste stamina climbing to the top anymore.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launches on May 12, 2023. Nintendo has confirmed that development on the sequel is complete. Judging by the fact that Hyrule seems mostly unchanged from the previous game and this trailer mostly showed off new gameplay mechanics, this sequel is probably hiding a lot more under its surface than we’ve seen so far.
