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MagyarTears of the Kingdom gameplay video shows off Link's new abilities, including crafting
A new gameplay video of the upcoming Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) shows off some new changes, courtesy of The Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma. The video focused primarily on Link's new abilities, and these abilities will reshape the world of Hyrule and how player's navigate the massive landscape.
The most notable part of the sequel is the world's design. While Breath of the Wild (BotW) featured multiple mountains to scale, it was a largely horizontally-focused land, encouraging players to climb peaks to better scope out distant areas to explore. Tears of the Kingdom introduces a lot of verticality to the land of Hyrule with "floating islands," small areas suspended in the sky that hold treasures and new enemies.
These new enemies are robots called "Constructs." They appear to behave similar to the Bokoblins of Breath of the Wild, including crying out in alert once Link is spotted and holding similar weapons, like swords, spears, and shields.
Link can jump (or fall) off the sky islands to skydive down to the earth below. This can give players a chance to scope out new areas and paraglide across the map from a great height. Link can also fast dive to get to the ground more quickly.
To help players travers the new land, Link has a lot of new abilities. The gameplay video showed off four of these: Recall, Fuse, Ultrahand, and Ascend.
Recall can reverse the motion of compatible objects. In the video, Aonuma demonstrated this ability by Recalling a rock that had fallen from a sky island, allowing Link to use it like an elevator to ascend into the sky. From here, Aonuma paraglided to a sky island. It will be interesting to see what other objects can be recalled and what effects they will have.
The video put a lot of focus on Link's new Fuse ability, which allows players to combine objects in the world into new weapons or shields. In the video, Aonuma fused a tree branch with a boulder, which (while looking like a rock glued to the end of a stick) greatly improved the branch's damage output and durability. Enemies can also wield fused weapons, which could grant new effects like blowing wind (in the vein of Breath of the Wild's Korok Leaves), homing in on enemies, and more. Arrows can also be fused with materials in the player's inventory, allowing players to create ice arrows or new items like homing arrows (via an arrow and a Keese eyeball) or smokescreen shields (via a Poofshroom and a shield).
Link's Ultrahand ability opens up a rudimentary crafting mechanic. Link can not only manipulate objects in the world, but he can fused them together. Aonuma was able to fuse three logs together to create a makeshift raft. There are also motorized objects in the world, such as fans, that run off battery power. These batteries drain when the object is on and recharge when it's turned off. In the video, two fans were rotated and attached to the back of the raft to give the vessel a propulsion system. Other videos have shown Link driving a ramshackle car, a helicopter, and a hot air balloon. This mechanic should allow players to creatively invent new ways of getting across Hyrule and is sure to be a highlight of the game.
The last ability featured in the video is Ascend, which allows Link to quickly warp up to and pass through compatible ceilings. Link can then phase through the ceiling and climb onto the floor above him, allowing him to rapidly get to the tops of mountains or other areas without having to exert stamina in a long climb. Aonuma said this ability has "some limitation," though he didn't elaborate on what those might be.
While the gameplay video didn't go into detail on much more, it appears a lot will remain the same from Breath of the Wild. The player HUD looks largely unchanged, and combat also appears to be carried over. Horses are still a part of the game, as the video started with Link on horseback; that interface, too, is the same. Other changes, such as the world map, dungeon structure, and overall quest, will have to be discovered by players when Tears of the Kingdom launches on May 12, 2023.
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