The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay analysis

Nintendo showcased ten minutes gameplay Tuesday from its highly-anticipated sequel Tears of the Kingdom: Zelda’s Legend. While we were only able to see 10 minutes worth of gameplay, the game showed a lot of potential in the world. It’s looking like Link’s new powers will make The Legend of Zelda into even more of an immersive sim experience than Take a deep breath of the wild did.

Link is able to use a number of cool new abilities. Not only are they useful for fighting but also allow players to create new items and play with different physics systems. Recall, Ascend and Fuse are the three new powers. Polygon has a full breakdown of Link’s powers, but for the sake of this post, we will focus on two notable ones: Fuse and Ultrahand.

Like the title suggests, Link can fuse two things using the Fuse power. Eiji Aonuma (The Legend of Zelda Producer) begins the video by attacking an opponent with a stick. Take a deep breath and breathe in the wild. As you might expect, the stick does not break very quickly. However, afterward, Aonuma fuses the stick with a rock to build a hammer-like weapon that’s stronger and more durable. This interaction suggests an almost endless amount of permutations and combinations you can fuse — other examples included fusing a mushroom to a shield in order to make a smoke bomb, and an eyeball to an arrow, resulting in a heat-seeking projectile.

Image: Nintendo

OIt’s the best!We also have an immersive sim-like ability: Ultrahand. This ability allows Link to essentially “glue” items together. Aonuma creates an entire boat for Link that he can use to cross a lake. This will enable Link, unlike Fuse (which we mostly saw as combining two powers), to create any number of contraptions from the materials available. It’s possible to imagine the players building massive fortresses or flying machines out of it.

Ultrahand and Fuse are already able to significantly expand the Zelda Sandbox. Tears for the Kingdom. It’s all part of the “made” Take a deep breath of the wild a lasting classic is This there are just so many opportunities to tinker with the world’s items and physics. By combining Link’s powers and various objects in the game, players learned how to pull off ridiculous trick shots, complete jaw-dropping speedruns, and basically just break the game. Now, it looks like we’re in for even more of that.

This excitement is perhaps best encapsulated in Eiji Aonuma’s concluding thought. “If you could do thatIf so, you might be able to do it. This too. In this game, you can do a lot of things just by thinking about what’s even possible.”