New Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom details emerge from leaked ad, website

Tears of the Kingdom – The Legend of Zelda got a big, boisterous new trailer on Thursday, revealing all-new gameplay, story, and character details about Nintendo’s sequel to Breath Of The Wild. Nintendo is still hiding some of its secrets, but a leaked commercial for Tears Of The Kingdom and the game’s official website have revealed. The latter includes a small but enticing detail: Link’s journey will begin in the skies of Hyrule.

According to the official Zelda website, the mysterious floating islands “that have suddenly appeared in the skies above Hyrule” are where players will first get control of Link. “It’s there our hero will have to gain new abilities before returning to the surface world to begin his epic adventure,” Nintendo says on the game’s website.

Makes sense. Some of the earliest artwork — showing Link overlooking Hyrule from high above — teased that, and trailers show the game’s hero doing a lot of diving down to the land below.

On the surface of Hyrule, much has changed, Nintendo says: “Familiar locations have been dramatically transformed, with new towns, dank caves, and mysterious gaping chasms springing up across the world.” Exploring the underground areas of Hyrule has also been teased from the beginning, with Link and Zelda apparently exploring caves where the seemingly mummified corpse of Ganondorf resides.

The depths of Hyrule may be deeper than players expected. The video for Tears Of The KingdomBased on the coordinates found at the bottom his minimap, this shows Link at a minus 470 unit depth. Sky Islands has a height around 1,500 units. This means that Link will be going deep underground.

Link shoots an arrow into a deep-underground area to illuminate the surrounding environment. It appears that this is a characteristic of Tears Of The Kingdom’s Fuse mechanic, with Link seemingly attaching a flower — perhaps a nightshade — to an arrow to create makeshift light sources.

The video confirms the Gleeok dragon Link is going to face. The video shows the name Fire Gleeok, so it’s possible there are other elemental types of the dragon in Tears Of The Kingdom. Whether that’s in relation to the elements fire, earth, wind, and water, or simply the elemental weapon types of Breath Of The WildIt remains to be observed (fire, ice and lightning).

All will soon be revealed Tears of the Kingdom – The Legend of ZeldaArrives on Nintendo Switch May 12.