The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom may be 2023’s most anticipated game of the year, especially for those who have an old Nintendo Switch lying around gathering dust.
The adventure RPG is set to release May 12, but before this, some were let in for a sneak preview to see what we can expect from the next title in the series. This looks behind the curtains demonstrates how Tears of the Kingdom expects to make a name for itself while sitting in the shadow of Breath of the Wild.
As Tears of the Kingdom shares many of the exact locations as Breath of the Wild, among other things, it was important for Nintendo to go the extra mile and add details and features that would let this RPG come into its own. This may have been achieved thanks to four new features.
Stand out from a crowd
Recall, Fuse, Ultrahand, and Ascend are the four features that'll hopefully breathe fresh air into Tears of the Kingdom. While we’ve already seen some details as to what each ability will do, the preview gave a more detailed account of what we can expect (NPR).
Ultrahand and Ascend are two of the more simple powers, as Ultrahand simply allows players to pick up and move objects while Ascend lets Link climb through ceilings onto the roof of buildings or even caves and mountains. On the other hand, abilities like Fuse and Recall will be used to make Tears of the Kingdom infinitely more creative.
Recall allows players to explore Hyrule in ways that were never possible before, be it forging a path back up to the sky islands on a piece of debris that fell to the ground or exploring a sunken ravine before the water floods back into it. Fuse also lends itself to the exploration of Hyrule, as with this power, players will be able to reach the heights and lows of every corner of the expansive map.
With Fuse, players will be able to use Zonai devices that can be found scattered throughout the world to build mechanized machines, be they boats or aircraft. While these items are single-use, you can carry multiple with you simultaneously.
All in all, each power, ability, and artefact scattered around Hyrule seems to point to a level of creativity we’ve yet to see in Zelda games, and I, for one, am very excited to see what will be possible.
