We’re less than a month away from the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and even though we just got a new trailer jam-packed with details, there’s still so much we don’t know about the game.
Tears of the Kingdom is still shrouded in mystery, and that’s just the way I like it
We’re less than a month away from launch, and really, we know hardly anything about it.
We’re less than a month away from launch, and really, we know hardly anything about it.
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Here are a few concrete things I can point to after watching all of the released footage more times than I care to admit:
- It’s a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
- There are a bunch of islands in the sky.
- Link somehow gets a new, glowy right arm.
- That glowy arm gives him a bunch of (incredible-looking) powers, including the ability to build and fuse things together (like vehicles).
- At some point, Zelda needs Link to find her.
- The Master Sword gets messed up.
- Ganondorf’s back.
- And so are some of Link’s friends.
Yes, there are a bunch more smaller details that we can glean from the footage so far. But the broad strokes of Tears of the Kingdom remain a mystery:
- What is Link’s goal?
- What’s the story of the game?
- What’s the deal with the arm?
- What’s the deal with the islands?
- Are shrines back?
- Where are those cavernous places in the new trailer?
- Why is Ganondorf so mad? (Outside of, you know, villain stuff.)
- Is Hestu back??
With such a short time to go until Tears of the Kingdom actually releases, Nintendo obviously wants players to discover those answers for themselves. Even the official description on the game’s website is quite vague:
In this sequel to the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild game, you’ll decide your own path through the sprawling landscapes of Hyrule and the mysterious islands floating in the vast skies above. Can you harness the power of Link’s new abilities to fight back against the malevolent forces that threaten the kingdom?
But when I think about it, I wouldn’t want things any other way. Instead of Nintendo telling us everything about Tears of the Kingdom, it’s trickled out tiny doses of information that fans are examining in intense detail. That’s actually made the game a lot of fun to follow in the lead-up to launch — it’s a blast to theorize with my friends and read what other fans have discovered. The best part is that we barely know what’s really going on, and at this point, we won’t really understand what Nintendo’s been cooking up until May 12th and beyond.
So much of the magic of Breath of the Wild was discovering something new at seemingly every turn. I can’t wait to feel that again when I take to the skies — and giant caverns — in Tears of the Kingdom.
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