The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was announced in 2019, and we’ve been wondering how it could even justify itself as a direct Breath of the Wild sequel ever since. The original is one of the greatest games of all time, redefining a legendary series in the context of modern open worlds without losing the spirit of Nintendo’s original adventures. Could Tears of the Kingdom live up to the legacy of a game the industry is still trying to catch up with? Such lofty goals are probably impossible to achieve, but Tears of the Kingdom’s current gameplay on Fuse and Ultrahand abilities finally convinced me that this sequel to Breath of the Wild is warranted.
Los vistazos anteriores de Tears of the Kingdom han dejado claro que su versión de Hyrule basa en gran medida en los huesos del mundo que exploramos en Breath of the Wild, con algunos cambios y una gran cantidad de nuevas áreas en el cielo (y potencialmente underground). On one level, it felt like TotK was going to be more of an expansion pack for BotK, and that idea was especially hard to swallow with the new game’s $70 price tag. But Zelda’s open-world brilliance isn’t just in the map itself, it’s in how you interact with it, and the new abilities we just saw are more exciting than anything I could have imagined.
No confusion, I’m pro-Fusion
Fuse lets you combine what appear to be two in-game items. Stick plus rock? It’s a hammer. Stick plus potency? It’s a long-range spear. We have seen such esoteric combinations as adding an eyeball to an arrow to make it a reference arrow. This gives each object new uses and new reasons to import. Amazingly, this all works without adding a bunch of inventory management and crafting menus, letting you create combos with essentially the same interface as the original game.
Even though this Hyrule was exactly the same as the previous one, Fuse would make sure every element took on a new meaning. The most charming tease of the new gameplay footage is what no he seen. If you can stick a stone to any weapon in your inventory, does that mean you can stick to trees? Ice shards? campfire? wheels? Fallen Guardians? What effects will all this have? I don’t know, but I really want to know.
Fuse also affects the dirtiest word in Zelda talk: weapon durability. I never cared much about weapons breaking in BotW, but the problem with the system is that once you’ve been in the game for a few hours most of the weapons you find on the ground become a mess functionally unnecessary inventory. . there was no reason to keep collecting sticks once you started finding swords. Fuse gives each of these elements a new meaning. A club might be useless on its own, but it could give incredible range to a more powerful weapon. Cooking ingredients suffered the same fate as weapons, in that once you started finding the items to make healing and buff recipes more powerful, those early ingredients were useless again. But now a fungus can turn your shield into a smoke grenade and a sudden stealth tool. It’s no longer about an item’s power, but about the uses you can find for it. If an eyeball can create homing weapons, how weird will the combos be?
You need them ultrahand
(Image credit: Nintendo)
“A lot of things made Breath of the Wild great, but one of the most remarkable is how its highly interactive systems invite curiosity about how different elements of the world would interact.”
Then there’s Ultrahand, the long-speculated ability that turns TotK into Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. This ability allows you to grab rocks, tree trunks, sails, wheels, and engines to turn them into usable vehicles. Simply grab an object, place it near where you want to paste it, and press the Attach button. In its simplest form, you can use it to attach logs for a makeshift raft, but if you add a motor to it, you suddenly have an outboard.
That’s good enough on its own, but in previous trailers we’ve seen drive-through cars complete with headlights, independent power sources, and exposed steering controls. Flip one of these speedboat motors over and it can explode on the ground, giving you enough lift to fly away. Getting those kinds of traversal options is good enough on its own, but like with Fuse, it’s what we haven’t seen that’s really exciting.
Can I attach weapons to machines built with Ultrahand? Will I be able to create a tank with a wall of swords sticking out of its forehead to meet Lynels? Can I store an airship full of explosive barrels and rain them down like a bomber? Can I rip out a Guardian’s laser eye and place it on a car to make it a tank? Can I turn a bunch of tree trunks into limbs of a bipedal golem that I can ride like a goddamn Gundam?
The answer to some of these questions will surely be “no”, but the beauty of these abilities is that they invite you to question their limits. A lot of things made Breath of the Wild great, but one of the most remarkable is how its highly interactive systems invite curiosity about how different elements of the world would interact. The first time I realized I could roll a stone down a hill to take out a group of unsuspecting enemies was magic. Now Tears of the Kingdom promises that I can attach this rock to an explosive homing arrow that I can shoot from a magical airship I built from green goo and tree trunks. This is an exponential increase over what was possible in the previous game, and I couldn’t be more excited to start exploring these possibilities on my own.
There’s nothing bigger than Tears of the Kingdom, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty yet next switch games strive.