It’s been four months since we last saw The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but with less than a hundred days to go until we get the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo couldn’t help but give us another look at the game.
Despite two new trailers within months, we’re still not any closer to learning more about what is happening in Hyrule during the events of Tears of the Kingdom. We do, however, get a better glimpse of some of the new gameplay mechanics we’re sure to see when we dive back in.
Here are the biggest surprises we saw in the new Tears of the Kingdom trailer.
Vehicular Fun
Do you remember how weeks after Breath of the Wild released players began sharing videos of themselves creating homebrewed airplanes and cars made from barrels and baskets? It seems like Nintendo thought those were pretty good ideas and decided to integrate vehicles directly into the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom.
The ancient Master Cycle Zero was obviously added to Breath of the Wild as part of the Champions’ Ballad expansion, but the trailer highlights many more new vehicles players can ride, including some kind of hovercraft, a land rover, and a hot air balloon.
However, these vehicles might not just be items you come across fully built in the world. At the 1-minute 39-second mark, you can see Link pull out what looks like a wheel from a swamp. Moments later, he’s riding a vehicle that uses that exact same wheel. Furthermore, the hovercraft looks to be held together by some kind of green glue substance, which might be a crafting item found in the world. One thing’s for sure, the DIY ethos from the first game is returning and with even more toys to play around with, it’s exciting to imagine what else players can create in Nintendo’s sandbox.
Darker World, Darker Story?
The trailer for Tears of the Kingdom has all been quite grim, and now we know that the Kingdom of Hyrule is in an especially bad place right now. There’s a menacing red moon hovering in the sky, the Bokoblins have free rein over the land, and everything is shrouded in dark, miserable gloom.
The darker tone follows a not-rare trend of Nintendo following up one of their Zelda games with a darker sequel. Think Majora’s Mask versus Ocarina of Time, or Twilight Princess after Wind Waker. The main imagery of the game so far — Link’s corrupted arm and the mummified Ganon — all paint a much darker sequel
There’s Gotta Be Two Worlds
I’ve seen Link jump from some sky plateau enough times that I’m fully convinced we’re going to get two worlds to explore, a sky world and a land world just like Skyward Sword. There’s just no way Link is shooting off into the sky, especially now that he can build himself a hover plane, just for a one-off dungeon.
Having dual worlds, especially one layered on top of each other, could effectively double the size of Hyrule, assuming that the base map stays the same (although Tears of the Kingdom’s version of Hyrule certainly has differences compared to Breath of the Wild).
There is reason to believe this might not be the case, however. The various areas shown so far appear to be broken in some ways, and the final scene of the new trailer shows some kind of terrible fracture happening across Hyrule, which could hint at cavernous areas underground (A third area? In this economy?). So whether Hyrule is intact during the events of Tears of the Kingdom remains to be seen.
Everything’s Bigger in Hyrule
The primary takeaway from the new Tears of the Kingdom trailer for me is “more.” There’s just more of everything players loved from Breath of the Wild in Tears of the Kingdom based on the two trailers we’ve received so far. From more kinds of enemies (from flying lizards that carry Bokoblins to fire-breathing dragons to what I’m pretty sure was a ReDead), more tools like heat-seeking arrows and some kind of bomb-thrower, and more ground (sky?) to cover thanks to the new hovercraft and hot air balloon technology.
While we’ll have to wait until May to see what Tears of the Kingdom truly has in store, the driving ethos behind the sequel appears to be give players more of what they want, and that’s exactly what the trailer promised.
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