Nintendo have held a dedicated mini-Direct for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with the highly anticipated Breath of the Wild sequel still set for a 12th May 2023 release date on Nintendo Switch. In fact, Aonuma-san proudly announces that development is complete!
With 10 minutes to spend giving us a good look at the game, we’ve been able to delve a little deeper into what’s new or improved in this game compared to its predecessor with Aonuma-san taking the controls. The world of Hyrule has been ripped apart with some sky islands now floating in the sky after some tumultuous narrative events.
The Sheikah Slate has been imbued with some new abilities, letting players manipulate the world and objects in different ways, such as rewinding time with Recall to, for example, climb onto a rock fallen from a sky island and then paraglide across. This is just one way to reach a sky island.
We also got to see some new enemies called Constructs, little floating baddies similarly styled to the Guardians from breath of the Wild. Intriguingly, a new crafting ability lets Link combine a rock and stick with Fuse to create a hammer-like club on the fly. Great considering that weapons still have set durability. You can even combine two weapons with Fuse to make longer weapons, or attach Chu jelly to an arrow for elemental damage, or Keese eyeballs to home in on targets. Beware because some enemies can also use fused weapons!
Then there’s brand new vehicular antics, leaning into the physics based shenanigans that players were quick to get up to in Breath of the Wild with new cars, hot air balloons, hovercraft and more. In actual fact, these rely on crafting with Ultrahand, attaching logs to a fan to make a boat, for example.
Ascend is another ability that lets you zip up through ceilings and pop out the other side. This could be a manmade structure or even the roof of a cave!
‘Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’ was announced back at E3 2019, as Nintendo decided to expand what was originally planned as a DLC expansion into a full new game. That original trailer focussed on underground elements, but the real adventure expands high above Hyrule, as last seen in Breath of the Wild. While the game had been planned for release in 2022, Nintendo eventually announced that it will be coming to Nintendo Switch on 12th May 2023.
This will be Nintendo’s first Switch game to be priced at $70, which is $10 higher than any Nintendo first party game up until this point. It will feel like a mountain to climb to make that feel reasonable, though Nintendo has said that they will continue pricing games on a case-by-case basis.
But what if you want to spend even more money? Well, there’s the collector’s edition that was revealed back in February, as well as a spiffy looking new amiibo, and what’s this? A fancy pants new limited edition Nintendo Switch OLED? Yes!
