Nintendo of America has released the first official glimpse of gameplay footage for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releases on May 12, 2023.
Tears of the Kingdom: New Abilities, Sky Islands, and More!
Series producer Eiji Aonuma officially confirmed that development on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is officially complete, and played some of the game during an official Nintendo presentation.
During the presentation, Aonuma providing information on some of the new abilities, enemies and features that players will encounter in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom through gameplay footage.
The Tears of the Kingdom gameplay footage showed that most of Hyrule and the basic gameplay is the same, but there are a few key and apparent differences. The biggest among these is the sky islands, floating land masses above Hyrule that Link can get to in various ways, one of which was shown in the gameplay footage.
The Recall or Rewind ability allows Link to rewind or reverse an object’s movement, and with this, he can potentially reverse objects that fall from the sky islands to then ascend up to them.
Once there, players can discover a new enemy called a Construct, with appears to be a robotic entity that lives in the sky islands and has some strong connection to the Zonai tribe.
Various new abilities were shown during the Tears of the Kingdom gameplay footage as well aside from just Recall. These include Fuse, which allows players to merge two weapons or objects together to create new items or weapons. This can potentially be used to reserve or replace damaged weapons.
A similar ability, Ultrahand, allows players to stick objects together to create makeshift tools, vehicles, or other items to traverse Hyrule and the sky islands.
Finally, the Ascend ability allows players to pass through any ceiling to either climb high areas or escape from confined areas.
Aonuma claims that there were may other things abut the new Hyrule that he could not show players in the gameplay footage, but hoped they would discover for themselves once the The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released on May 12, 2023.
Pre-orders are available for the game now.