One of the best features of Breath of the Wild is that it comes back significantly. In a new preview of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, producer Eiji Aonuma shows off his ten minutes of gameplay for the long-awaited (to say the least) sequel to the 2017 hit.
The videos do dip into low-level combat a bit and include running around, but mostly designed to promote new gameplay that made Breath of the Wild a joy to discover for so many people. It describes the new system that was introduced.
In the first game, you can sail high above updrafts created by burning grass, get hit by lightning if you’re wearing metal armor, or throw meat on the ground near a volcano to cook steak. I was able to Many of the game’s environmental features were interactive, and the shrine puzzles in particular encouraged players to test potential combinations of abilities, objects, and their properties to come up with clever solutions.
Fortunately, all of that is back, and it looks like some are back in the new game. introduced stasis and magnesis. In Tears of the Kingdom you get at least two brand new tricks. One is called Fuse and the other is called Ultra Hand.
First, some bad news. A new gameplay video confirms that Tears of the Kingdom once again gives Link a fragile, destructible weapon that explodes after hitting an enemy a few times. The good news is that players can create their own weapons from items in the game world. Hopefully at least some of those combinations are more durable than last time.
With the new fuse feature, Link can use branches and rocks to joint a giant makeshift hammer, or grab a long stick and combine it with a pitchfork to make a really, really long pitchfork. (If this is Zelda humor, we’re here for it). Other combos are less obvious. Fusing a monster’s eyeball with an arrow creates a guided arrow that can track quarries and shoot from the sky.
A similar ability called Ultra Hand allows Link to pick up heavy items and arrange them into new ones. The same ability allows players to create all kinds of vehicles, including cars and flying machines.
This time, Link doesn’t have to spend that much time climbing mountains, aside from two new core abilities. Aonuma demonstrated a new locomotion trick that allowed Link to swim up any space with a ceiling, including buildings and giant caverns on many of the game’s peaks. The verticality emphasis tracks the islands in the sky and the very high environments we’ve seen before in previous previews.
The new Tears of the Kingdom video packs a lot of promise into a short ten minutes. If you love the environmental puzzle-solving and clever interactions in Breath of the Wild, the upcoming game, set to release on May 12th, looks to offer even greater possibilities.
