THE previous entry in Nintendo Co.’s seminal The Legend of Zelda series was acclaimed largely because of its momentous sense of exploration. The next game adds a new dimension that will undoubtedly turn it into one of the most memeable video games of the year: construction.
Nintendo has mostly kept mum on the details of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which will be released on May 12. But a recent demo of the game in New York City gave journalists more than an hour of hands-on time with the highly anticipated sequel and put a spotlight on one of the key features. Players can combine items they find throughout the world, building their own machines to battle enemies and explore the skies. During the demo, I built airplanes, flying air balloons, and one rocket-powered contraption that took me soaring.
Tears of the Kingdom is a follow-up to 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is widely considered among critics and fans to be one of the best video games ever made. It has sold 29 million copies — twice as many as the next-highest Zelda title. It was released in conjunction with Nintendo’s Switch console, helping catapult it to massive success. With 122.5 million units sold, the Switch is the third-best-selling video-game console of all time.
Expectations are high for the new game, in which you play as a mute but expressive hero named Link who must again save the Kingdom of Hyrule from the evil, monstrous Ganon. The new Zelda may be one of Nintendo’s last big hits for the six-year-old Switch, which is still selling well but is out-classed by its competitors in technical specs. The Japanese publisher is expected to release a successor within the next few years.
While speaking to journalists, Nintendo marketing representative Ethan Stockton described Tears of the Kingdom as a game about “Yes, and…”, a reference to the popular catchphrase describing an experience that is continually additive. Like its predecessor, Tears of the Kingdom is what developers might call “systemic” — rather than creating a linear, guided experience, it gives players a set of tools and asks them to imagine myriad solutions.
After a brief introductory session, the demo placed Link in front of a giant fortress full of enemy Bokoblins who were guarding a giant tower. Mr. Stockton explained that players could attempt to get to the tower in whatever way they chose.
This was where the charms of the game and its Minecraft-evoking capabilities quickly became apparent. Rather than fight through the monsters, I chose to build a flying machine. My first attempt was a failure thanks to two misaligned rockets that sent me spinning off in the wrong direction. My second creation, a makeshift floating platform, launched me right into the Bokoblin camp, where I was promptly slaughtered. It was the third machine, powered by a fire-igniting balloon, that took me high enough that I could soar straight to the top of the tower, skipping all of the monsters and obstacles below.
Breath of the Wild was a revelation because it allowed players to explore every nook and cranny of a seemingly boundless world. Tears of the Kingdom takes that universe and adds several new dimensions, such as floating islands and perhaps, as trailers have hinted, an underground territory.
Link’s other new aptitudes in Tears of the Kingdom should lead to additional creative possibilities. The “fuse” ability, which allows the player to attach objects such as fire plants or mushrooms to weapons and shields, has already been the source of many fantastic social media posts following a gameplay preview that Nintendo posted in late March. One Nintendo representative pointed out that Link can jury-rig a hammer out of a stick and a rock, allowing him to access new areas by smashing apart weak walls or floors. (Sadly, only two items can be fused together at once, dispelling any dreams of making, say, a sword that circumnavigates Hyrule.) The “recall” ability, which rewinds the last few seconds of a given object’s trajectory, can be used either to reverse your mistakes or to send incoming projectiles back into the faces of enemies.
The demo left me with a few lingering questions that won’t be answered until the game is released. Will the Switch’s technical capacities struggle to support a game this ambitious? Will the controls, which seemed unwieldy during my brief session, eventually feel more natural? And will Zelda, who has spent years playing the part of damsel in distress, have a more active role or even be controllable this time around?
It’s difficult to gauge a game as sprawling as Tears of the Kingdom after playing for only an hour, but the potential combination of Breath of the Wild’s wonder with Minecraft’s creativity makes this seem like another potentially big winner for Nintendo. — Bloomberg