The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

[Moonface]

The Queen passing away was problematic for the title reveal because the UK was in a state of national mourning, and so promoting something live there called "Tears of the Kingdom" during that could be taken in bad taste. I don't think there's anything more to it than that; it's like how Advance Wars was pulled from releasing because the Ukraine war started very close to it and it could be bad taste to release a war game alongside an actual war breaking out.

That said, even if Zelda were to die at the start of the game she would probably be revived by the end, given there's a clear mechanic of time reversal in this game to undo things. I'm sure something has to happen to her in order for Link to end up by himself again and whatnot.

[ShiraNoMai]

I just wanna know what happens to his arm and if it'll be a Sekiro like situation

[Moonface]

I just wanna know what happens to his arm and if it'll be a Sekiro like situation

My guess is it isn't malicious and instead might be something to do with the power holding Ganon in the original reveal trailer, which Link comes into possession of as a replacement to the Sheikah slate so that the player gets forced into a clean start without the abilities of BotW.
Although I do wonder what the reason will be for Link losing the powers of the champions. I'd hope it isn't just removed with no explanation.

[Moonface]

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | Official Trailer #2
During today's Nintendo Direct presentation, a new in-game trailer was shown for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, giving us a look at new enemies, weapons, abilities, and more!




Additionally, a Collector's Edition has been announced which will release on May 12, 2023 for $129.99:




A new amiibo figure of Link's design from this game will also release on May 12, 2023, and scanning it will provide you with weapons and materials, as well as special fabric for Link's paraglider:

As the tweet shows, scanning other amiibo's will provide alternate fabrics for the paraglider.

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I didn't know about the paraglider fabrics until I was writing this post, and I wonder if the game will feature any that don't require amiibo. Also the trailer looked pretty smooth and I really hope the game actually runs that smooth, since BotW did have frame drops pretty commonly but I put that down to it also being a Wii U title. Perhaps this one being developed with the Switch in mind will let the developers work with the hardware better.
Can't say I find the CE very interesting. It definitely doesn't feel worth practically double the price of the base game to me.

[Mr EliteL]

Perhaps if the CE included the amiibo, the price would've seemed more reasonable. The rest of the contents of the CE is good, but yeah a bit too much.

[Moonface]

Watching the trailer again, I like that more enemy variety is present and that alternate forms of enemies aren't just different colours with higher stats, such as the one bigger Bokoblin seen in the trailer. I also love that there's more flying enemies because I think BotW only had the bats as flying enemies which got repetitive faster than any other enemy encounters. Not sure how I feel about vehicles overall; on the one hand it makes sense because of the Divine Beasts of BotW but also seeing Link driving a car around looks weird. It might feel better within the context of playing the game though so I'll hold my full judgment until then.

I do hope that Nintendo puts out a trailer that shows some of the real changes to the game though. So far the world doesn't look notably different and except for Sheikah towers we can't see anything else populating the world on the ground to go explore, and although there's caves and sky islands I don't want that to be the extent of new stuff while the areas of Hyrule from BotW ends up feeling like I'm playing a DLC rather than a full sequel. There's too much that feels familiar and most of the new stuff doesn't look like anything to justify a six year development cycle.

[queenzelda]

Idk, I think I've grown out of the Zelda series as it's Nintendo's Skyrim mod and I'm not a Skyrim fan. I actually like Blossom Tales and Oceanhorn more because of how Nintendo changed how Zelda plays now. I hope everyone enjoys the next cycle.

For now, I think this is my goodbye to Zelda and I never thought I'd see it come. :|

[Moonface]

Idk, I think I've grown out of the Zelda series as it's Nintendo's Skyrim mod and I'm not a Skyrim fan. I actually like Blossom Tales and Oceanhorn more because of how Nintendo changed how Zelda plays now. I hope everyone enjoys the next cycle.

I'll state upfront I'm not well versed in Zelda games, but the open-world style of Zelda game just seems like a natural progression from the OoT formula? That game has a very open Hyrule Field and the world of BotW seems to have just taken that open approach to the one area and instead opened up everything, similar to how Pokémon went from having the single open area in Sw/Sh to the fully open worlds of S/V.
I know other aspects like dungeons and such went to the dogs with BotW, but if a Zelda game played like OoT but within an open world instead of a singular open area I'm not seeing what would be lost.

[queenzelda]

It's funny but I was talking with a streamer who said his friends were all Skyrim fans but didn't like BotW because it was too much like Skyrim for their tastes & basically that's where I am with how BotW feels when playing it. If I wanted Skyrim, I'd buy the official Skyrim Switch version not BotW.

Let me also say that I feel that all of the loz games could've been open world from the very beginning. They weren't limited by hardware. Nintendo sold Zelda out to Western media style for more $$$. No more no less.

[ShiraNoMai]

I mean, arguably, Zelda's been open world since day one with Zelda 1. It's virtually the same game: go out in the world and find and kill Ganon.

[Moonface]

I hope we finally get to see something substantial about this game that makes it feel like an actual sequel and not just a DLC expansion. I feel like the marketing for this game has been rather lackluster overall so far and done little to justify the $70 price tag.

[Mr EliteL]

Tears of the Kingdom | Gameplay Demonstration



I've not watched it yet, but here's that video that played live an hour ago. According to Aonuma at the beginning, the development for Tears of the Kingdom is completed, and he plays a short portion showing off the open world and just travelling around. 

Release Date is 5.12.2023
Moonface: Release date was already known and isn't new information, so I edited this post slightly.

[Moonface]

Notable takeaways from the video:

• Co-ordinates are shown on the bottom of the mini-map.
  
• Players can reach the sky islands by using the new ability, Rewind, on pieces of rock that fall from them. There are also other ways players can reach the islands that were not explained in the video.
  
• A new enemy, called a Construct, can be found on the sky islands.
  
• Weapon durability is still present.
  
• Another new ability, called Fuse, allows Link to combine items together to create new weapons. Examples shown is fusing a tree branch and a boulder together to create a makeshift hammer, a long stick and a pitchfork for increased range, and a tree branch and a log. Large items like boulders and logs will scale down when fused to create weapons; Link doesn't walk around with a full-sized boulder on a stick in his hand.
  
• Arrows can also be Fused. An example shown is fusing White Chuchu Jelly to create your own ice arrows, or a Keese Eyeball to create a homing arrow.
  
• Items can also be fused onto shields. An example shown is a Puffshroom attached to a shield that bursts into a cloud of smoke when blocking an enemy attack with it. Enemies caught in smoke lose sight of Link and allow the player to get behind them stealthily for a Sneak Strike.
  
• Ultrahand is another new ability that lets Link craft things in the world, such as sticking logs and battery-powered fans together to make a boat. It can also detach items stuck together too, in case you make a mistake or want to change anything. Ultrahand is the ability that can be used to create the contraptions seen in the previous trailer.
  
• Ascend is an ability that lets you phase through the ceiling to the floor above you, and will generally work in most instances where there is a ceiling and something above it to stand on. Ceilings do not need to be thin; Link is shown entering a cave and using Ascend to phase through the terrain above his head and pop out of the ground a fair distance above. Ascend can be very useful to climb mountains without having to do it manually like you had to in BotW, so long as there's somewhere on that mountain you can stand beneath to have a ceiling to phase through.
  
• Falling from sky islands provides the ability to accelerate your fall to make it faster to reach land again.
  
• The gameplay segment closes with Aonuma stating this is an "unfamiliar Hyrule", so take that how you please for now.
  

Overall, a pretty decent gameplay showcase that actually piqued my interest in the game. I think Fuse and Ultrahand are going to be the two biggest abilities that get used by players, and I bet the things people come up with for speedrunning this game using that stuff is going to be crazy. I'm curious if Ascend can let you phase through the ceiling when you're underground to quickly get back to the surface or not, and if the co-ordinates on the mini-map serve a function in the game.

I'd still like to know beforehand if dungeons are more like how they used to be rather than how they were in BotW, but I doubt that's going to be shared at this point.

Weapon durability still being in is definitely going to be a downer for a lot of people I think, but at least now we can make weapons from practically anything so getting weapons is easier than it was before.

[Monocle]

I was honestly underwhelmed. Yeah it's got a few new things but it's basically botw in the sky. I am not impressed at all. and yes I do love botw, but each game changed things in bigger ways than this.

OoT to MM brought time constraints and masks with individual uses
going to WW brought water water wateeeer
TP had wolf and twilight realm

this doesn't feel varying enough to have needed a whole new game at a higher price

[Moonface]

@Monocle: Yeah, besides the abilities nothing else shown is really anything notable for a sequel. New enemies was a given, and what we've seen of the sky islands doesn't seem to really offer a huge difference to things on ground level. If it's just some new enemies and ingredients to collect on most of them that's really not enough to justify their existence. The lack of notable changes to the overworld seems to be the key complaint I've seen consistently every time we get a new look at this game, and Doug Bowser's claim that this is worth a $70 price tag needs to be backed up with some actual evidence for me to not just take that as PR bullshit.