The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Hands-on with Nintendo's anticipated sequel

To think that six years would pass before the sequel to Nintendo's most important game in recent memory, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, would be finally ready. I vividly remember the early, in retrospect hopelessly optimistic, speculation among fans about the next big Zelda game after Breath of the Wild. How Nintendo was guaranteed to make a "Majora's Mask" - that is, pump out a sequel in a flash, now that they had Breath of the Wild's visual style and extensive physics system ready for reuse. If only we'd known the wait would be the longest between Zelda games ever... And why exactly? Of course, it's pretty safe to assume that Covid had a hand in it, but six years? The game's sparse marketing, consisting mainly of a series of short, vague trailers, hasn't exactly made it easy to answer the question of why The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been so long in the making. But having had the game in my hands at Nintendo's HQ in Frankfurt, I'm finally beginning to understand.

And it's undoubtedly to do with the game's core mechanics and the near-infinite scenarios that can spring from them. Gone is Link's Switch-like Sheikah Slate and its four abilities, Chryonis, Stasis, Magnesis and Bombs, replaced by a poisoned arm and four new mechanics called Ultrahand, Fuse, Recall and Ascend. Nintendo let us play two limited sections of Tears of the Kingdom - one in the sky and one on the ground - both aimed at letting us experiment with these new mechanics and sense their immense potential. Breath of the Wild's design philosophy, which allows almost any creative idea the player might have to work, is clearly at play again. But already after an hour of playing with the new mechanics, I realise that there are so many more possibilities in Tears of the Kingdom that it might be impossible to go back to Breath of the Wild in the future.

The first section took place on a cluster of islands in the sky, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the same area we saw in producer Eiji Aunoma's demonstration of the game a few weeks ago. In this section, which I presume is the game's introductory area, the iconic paraglider is not available (just as it wasn't on the plateau in Breath of the Wild). I found this out the hard way when I threw myself off a cliff and nothing happened when I instinctively pressed Y. The reason, I suspect, is to force the player to thoroughly familiarise themselves with the new mechanics before being unleashed into the colossal world.

When it wasn't possible to just float from one island to another, I had to come up with creative solutions. This is where the Ultrahand and Fuse abilities came in handy. The former works in part like Magnesis from Breath of the Wild, in that you can use it to move all sorts of objects around (not just metallic ones this time), but in conjunction with the Fuse mechanic, it also has the function of gluing objects together and separating them again. It was no coincidence that objects such as minecarts and fans were scattered around the islands. Place a minecart on a pair of rails, put a fan in an upright position on the back of the cart, and voila - you have a self-propelled minecart. Put a couple of logs together and place two or three fans on the back and you have a raft. I even managed to build a hot air balloon using one of the flamethrowers that a Zonai Construct - a dragon-like robot that is the primary type of enemy in this area - tried to roast me with.

Tears of the Kingdoms' marketing might lead you to believe that the game is all about constantly building machines and vehicles to explore the world, and that might discourage those who don't feel creative enough to be constantly inventing. Without giving too much away, I'm allowed to reveal that there are mechanics that make the whole building process more streamlined. But building with Ultrahand and Fuse is not the only way to get from A to B. For example, it's not uncommon for a higher sky island to be slightly overhanging the one you're on, and this is where the new Ascend mechanic comes into play. If Link finds himself directly under a ceiling that's not too high up, he can instantly shoot up into it and pop out onto the surface. For example, at one point I found myself on an island with a small, high-altitude snow area that I wanted to explore. But the track of rails leading up to it was broken in the middle, so how was I to proceed? I found a cave, used Ascend on the ceiling, and the next thing I knew, Link's head was poking out of the snow. Incidentally, you have time to analyse your surroundings before jumping up to the surface - perfect for taking bases.

Speaking of caves, I can't describe the relief and excitement I felt when I found my first one. Whilst Breath of the Wild's Hyrule was a fantastically designed game world, it really lacked some indoor environments to explore, and by that I mean caves in particular, which have been a strong feature of the Zelda series. Now they're back, and not only do they seem to have a high level of detail with tree roots everywhere, bomb flowers and special mushrooms that only grow where there's no sunlight, they also offer unique enemies (welcome back, Like Likes). But most exciting of all, the deep recesses of the caves are pitch black! It's useful to have a torch handy, of course, but even better to have a handful of the new "brightflowers" in your rucksack. Link can throw these with his hand (and not just the flowers, by the way; Link can throw any object with his hand in this game), or he can use Fuse to stick them on arrows. Throw or shoot one of these flowers and it will light up in the darkness where it lands - genius.

In the second section we got to play, Link starts down on the sun-baked grasslands of Hyrule in front of a heavily fortified tower. I had a Nintendo representative to guide me, but he was also tasked with preventing me from straying from the target - the tower. This section focussed on combat, and we were again encouraged to experiment with the new mechanics to see how they can help Link defeat enemies. There was only one way into the base, up a long ramp, at the end of which two familiar bokoblins stood ready to roll a giant spiked ball down towards me. Just as the ball was about to crush me, I was told to pause the game, select the new Recall mechanic and use it on the ball. The next moment, the orb rolled back up the ramp and crushed the two bokoblins instead! It felt like Stasis, but with the crucial difference that you are sure where the object is going. Recall can be used to send any moving object back to its starting position. For example, I did this at one point with one of the stone birds we've seen Link fly on in various trailers when it started to plummet.

Inside the base I was welcomed by an army of bokoblins (one of them in full armour) and their leader - a new enemy called "Boss Bokoblin", who is a big, fat bokoblin with a gigantic club in his hands. I myself had nothing but a couple of wooden sticks for weapons. "Try using Fuse to glue a powder keg to your shield," says a Nintendo representative who is watching. I ask him sceptically if I'm not just going to blow myself up, to which he smiles and replies, "You think I'd suggest something that could hurt yourself?" Next thing I know, I'm blocking with my wooden shield, which has a powder keg glued to the centre. The bokoblins are throwing themselves at me, the barrel explodes, bokoblins are flying in all directions, and Link is still blocking with his shield - without taking any damage.

Let me give you a few more examples of the genius of the new Fuse mechanics. If you stick a metal box on your shield, you have an extremely durable shield that will simultaneously shock enemies if they hit you with electric weapons. If you stick two spears together, you have an extra long spear. Stick a metal ball on a stick and you have a hammer. And then there's a bow and arrow. The types of arrows you can make are only limited by your imagination, but the most useful in battle are probably the bomb flowers, which replace the bomb arrows from Breath of the Wild, or the blue, red and yellow Chuchu jellys, which replace the ice, fire and electric arrows respectively. The rare and precious minerals, sapphires, rubies and topazes serve the same purpose, but become much more powerful versions of the same arrows. I made an electric arrow with a topaz and it caused an electrical chain reaction so powerful that it bounced right back at me, even though I was standing many metres away, killing me instantly with 10 hearts in the tank!

I also found a fungus in my backpack that produced a poisonous vapour that made enemies attack each other. It was this, among other things, that allowed me to defeat the strong but slow Boss Bokoblin, who also did damage in the region of 10 hearts with a single blow of his club. Finally, enemies now drop special horns when they die, which are specifically designed to combine with other weapons via Fuse. For example, the fat Boss Bokoblin gave me a "Blue Boss Bokoblin Horn", which when combined with my wooden stick became a small, evil dagger with a high attack power. Obviously, the Fuse mechanic is meant to alleviate the frustration of constantly breaking weapons, which was not addressed in its predecessor.

I have a feeling that with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom we have the wildest "sandbox" of a game in store. Still, I'm not without my concerns. For example, I found it a bit uninspiring that the game's UI is virtually identical to its predecessor, and I couldn't help but be disappointed when I confirmed that Korok seeds will return - even with the very same "puzzles", such as completing a stone circle. And then, of course, there's the technical aspect. Tears of the Kingdom is undoubtedly a beautiful game with a significantly improved draw distance compared to its predecessor, but there were moments when objects in the background looked very angular and grainy, and I fear for the game's resolution in general. With its towering ambition, is the game flying a little closer to the sun than the Switch's wings can handle?

Even after getting my hands on the game and finally getting a feel for what kind of experience we're in for, there are still so many unanswered questions that tantalise me. Are there dungeons in the game, and in what form? Have we already glimpsed them in the trailers? Does the game, like Elden Ring, have an extensive underground, as the inclusion of dark caverns seems to imply? What is the story even about, and does it involve some kind of time-related twist? And what are these tears that give the game its title? Luckily, we'll soon find out. And I don't know about you, but I can hardly wait.