Development on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is complete, and a new video shows off its gameplay and abilities.
Nintendo has officially finished development on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is just as well given that the game is due for release in May.
Producer Eiji Aonuma broke the morsel of news in a new 10-minute gameplay video, which gives us a proper glimpse of the game in action for the first time.
The video shows off a new mechanic, Recall, which can be used to rewind an object’s history – this means we can use falling rocks as makeshift elevators to reach the game’s ‘sky islands’, as Aonuma refers to them.
We also get to see a brand new enemy: a floating, mechanical critter called the Construct, which appears to be a fairly rank-and-file type of antagonist that we’ll fight a fair bit through the Tears of the Kingdom campaign.
There’s also an ingenious Fuse ability, which allows Link to fuse objects and weapons together. In this way, he can connect a rock to a stick to create a hammer, or connect an eyeball to an arrow, thus creating a kind of heat-seeking projectile.
It’s pleasing to see that, although Tears of the Kingdom uses Breath of the Wild as a base, Nintendo is still coming up with new systems and ways for players to interact with the world. The Fuse ability alone is a potentially huge inclusion, and can be used with a second ability, Ultrahand, to create rafts and other makeshift vehicles.
It’ll be fascinating to see what else we can do with these new abilities – there are bound to be all kinds of ways of using it to make stuff, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts style. The ability to quickly stick objects together to make new weapons should also help sidestep the widespread complaint that swords broke too easily in Breath of the Wild.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releases on 12 May 2023 for Nintendo Switch. Oh, and if you’re after a Zelda-themed Switch to play it on, the Big N has you covered:
Prepare for the epic quest ahead with this #NintendoSwitch – OLED Model The Legend of #Zelda: #TearsOfTheKingdom Edition, launching 28/04. pic.twitter.com/F80HP0MuOE
— Nintendo UK (@NintendoUK) March 28, 2023
