The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Mr. Aonuma Gameplay Demonstration

Get an introduction to Link’s new abilities in this gameplay demonstration of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom presented by series producer, Eiji Aonuma.

[Neonridr]

pretty crazy that you can combine things now and build stuff. I'm sure the community will come up with some wild contraptions.

[stupidusername]

Looks fun! Can’t wait to see how people will speedrun the game in the long run.

[LordoftheCritics]

Smell another GOTY

[NecrumOddBoy]

I cannot lie that the fusion system is super cool but I would have saved that for some other type of game like Animal Crossing. This doesn't look or feel like a Zelda title anymore.

Also, how does this graphically look worse than BOTW? Also what was weird was the game opened up with Link moving through grassland areas with the worst looking marsh puddles I have ever seen, but then they showed crafting the raft, the damn sky lake was some gorgeous 4K photo realistic image. So odd to me.

[lucian229]

Well necrum, the original game ran like garbage. So it's probably to address that..... Meanwhile the original game wasn't even visually striking lmao.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

^That's what impressed me, how good the water looked for a Switch game, I thought "...Why does the water look so good here?".

[phoenixwing]

I've been airing my problems for botw for many years. Many have simply thought of me as anti nintendo. However this game easily fixes my biggest complaint with the game when it comes to weapons and durability. I'm going to buy the game. It looks like good fun. It may even become my favorite Zelda game.

[ZeekQuattro]

People still pull off amazing feats in BOTW to this day. I can only imagine what people will do with this new fusion system. I foresee someone figuring out how to put fans on boulders or logs in such a way and flying it up to one of the islands above.

[thesoftware730]

I cannot wait!!!

[Sonic1881]

GOTY mark my words

[SeTTriP]

I said the same thing and got thumb down to oblivion.

[MrNinosan]

Are you crying?

[Ezio2048]

I doubt that. LoZ has never won maximum GOTYs except for OOT and BoTW. Only twice in such a long series and these 2 entries reinvented the genre. TOTK is just an evolution just like SMG2 was after SMG. That is why SMG2 lost miserably against RDR and ME2 even though it was rated higher with a 97 meta.

[Sonic1881]

You're going to be so disappointed 😂

[Flakegriffin]

@Sonic1881

Shh, don’t tell em’ 🤣

[Tapani]

Agreed. I thought the showing was weak. There was nothing new, just some strange mechanics that take you out of the serene world. I never liked the BOTW magnets etc. powers, but I liked the combat, exploring, and puzzles that were classic (not the gimmicky ones). I liked the music and art style, and most of all the atmosphere.

Always felt that in BOTW the strange magical powers were a bit too much, it used to be physical gadgets mostly in the Zelda world. It made me always think that "okay, so if I can pick up this rock, why can't I pick that rock? Because it is different color? That's it? And why can't I pick up this other thing in the world?" In Tears of the Kingdom, it seems they put even more of those out of context magical powers in your hands so you can suddenly glue things together and teleport yourself (swim in a different dimension???) through rock. It all just feels like the designers first thought of the mechanics, then how much it makes sense in the world next. It should be the other way round!

I hoped they'd do something more interesting with the physics and the world, something that was more grounded in the "reality" of the world. Plus the setting, items, and world looks pretty much exactly the same. No risk here, just rinse and repeat. The original game could have used a bit more linearity here and there as well.

My wife will go nuts on this game for sure, but I wasn't impressed.

[Sonic1881]

The showing was a lot better than Starfield showing. Especially since a lot of gamers think that's going to win GOTY 😂😂

[Jin_Sakai]

The Fuse ability is a game changer. Looks like another masterpiece oncoming.

[GruntboxWizard]

I can't believe people are excited about this. Only cool thing in the trailer was the long ass pitchfork. Shit looks like it runs at 15fps.

[Levii_92]

It looks super rough. BOTW looked better than this, those shadows are horrendous and the image quality seems worse than ever before.

[DankSinatra]

What? It looks like it runs at 30fps.

[chronoforce]

When developers with far more advanced hardware have less imagination it is not surprising people are exited for this.

[cthulhucultist]

@chonoforce: exactly this! Just because a game runs at 30fps on 720p resolution, it does not mean that it cant be a masterpiece.

BOTW was certainly a highly enjoyable, complex, full of secrets and amazing physics engine game with a breathtaking open world.

Better graphics does not equate a better game. So many open world games on more powerful hardware failed to match Zelda's quality (Just Cause 4, Assassin Creed games, Watchdogs, Far Cry, Forspoken, Days Gone etc)

[Jin_Sakai]

The game itself will be a masterpiece. Blame outdated Switch hardware for the visual impact and 30fps.

[GotGame818]

Wow! Looks like Nintendo mixed things up brilliantly, once again! Already pre-ordered! I bought game vouchers and this was offered. I picked this up, along with Origami King for $100.

Origami King is surprisingly very different than other RPGs I have played, on any platform.

[cthulhucultist]

Origami King was a pleasant surprise. My daughter insisted of me buying it for her and it turned out that it was a good decision.

We had a blast.

The world was masterfully crafted with cute characters, story and great graphics.

It requires lots of time mind you to actually finish the game

[Levii_92]

I guess it’s just me but this looks extraordinarely unremarkable, everytime i see TOTK my hype dies down more and more.

[Number1TailzFan]

Maybe you're just tired of open world games. I prefer Mario 3D World/Land for example because it's more linear, but still a little open for exploration.

[Levii_92]

No man far from it, Elden Ring is currently my fav game ever. I’ll still buy the game becase i loved BOTW so much but my hype has died and they failed to impress me with these trailers. It just seems to me by looking at this new game maybe they should have moved on from the BOTW formula. But BOTW was mega successful so …

[Neonridr]

clearly this was a cheesy video just meant to showcase one of the new features in the game. I would hardly base anything gameplay wise off of this, just that you can create your own things.

[senorfartcushion]

BOTW is in my top 5 games of all time but I’m quite deflated on it. It’s set in Hyrule once again and, though that’s fair enough, I wouldn’t expect a Spider-Man game outside of New York, I would have preferred a new timeline, not a direct sequel to BOTW.

The things I liked about BOTW: the natural chaos of the world and the traversal

Things I didn’t like: weapon damage and crafting

What they have looked into expanding: literally just the crafting and weapon damage systems. They’ve limited the traversal now somewhat with the Nuts and Bolts-style vehicle slog and the ability to burrow through a mountain.

Also, does Link have his items anymore? Are there any bombs or the Sheika slate?

Like I said, I loved BOTW, but not everything needs a direct sequel. It’s the one annoyance about these last few generations.

The new Tekken 8 trailer basically retcons a story point from Tekken 2 for no reason but to keep the zombie shuffling away. “Jun Kazama has apparently been alive this whole time.”

[andy85]

It's very rough looking and the framerate doesn't look great but you know it'll still score 95+ because of Nintendo points. If this was a Playstation game it'd get slaughtered. I don't wanna be too negative though because it does look fun and innovative and that's what it should be mostly about I guess

[Imalwaysright]

Don't you PS fanboys ever get tired of playing the "sony is a poor victim" game and parroting the same bullshit over and over again?

[andy85]

PS fanboys? I own a PS5, a Series S and a Switch 😂😂. Also, what part of it is bullshit? It's completely true.

[Imalwaysright]

True? What exactly is true about the pathetic conspiracy theories that you useless PS fanboys are constantly parroting about Nintendo games?

Also, Sony creates many games that review extremely well and some of them win hundreds of GOTY awards so what exactly is up with you lot constantly making it sound as if Sony was some of poor victim whose games are unfairly reviewed by critics? If this was a Sony game https://www.hooksounds.com/...

[andy85]

Now who is sounding like a fanboy 😂

[andy85]

Doesn't change the fact that it's widely known that points are bumped for Nintendo titles. BOTW was massively flawed...but yet it's around the highest rated game ever. If that was on PS or Xbox it'd score far lower and those flaws would be taken into account

[Imalwaysright]

You are.

BoTW is "massively flawed" according to whom? You? How narcissistic do you have to be in order to think that your opinion is a fact? Get over yourself.

"If that was on PS or Xbox it'd score far lower and those flaws would be taken into account" https://www.hooksounds.com/...

Every game has flaws and yet reviewers give some of them 10/10 scores and I understand why because I played games that had glaring issues and I would still give them 10/10 scores. What? You think that if a game from Sony gets a 10/10 it means that it is a flawless game? What am I saying? Of course you do.

[andy85]

I spent a few minutes typing out my faults with it because I'm one of the morons who actually spent hours and hours collecting the 900 korok seeds so I spent a lot of time with the game. But rather than post an essay here I knew there would be an article so read this, and if you think the scores are warranted after that I don't even need to reply

https://www.destructoid.com...

I don't think any game should get a 10/10. That's my point because nothing is perfect. But the way you're going on you'd think BOTW is, it isn't. If it was a PS/Xbox game with all these flaws it would be an 8/10 game.

[DankSinatra]

Hm

“I don't think any game should get a 10/10. That's my point because nothing is perfect. But the way you're going on you'd think BOTW is, it isn't. If it was a PS/Xbox game with all these flaws it would be an 8/10 game.“

Yet PlayStation and Xbox games have received perfect scores. You’re making it sound like Nintendo received all this unnecessary praise but Sony and Microsoft get shit on for no reason when that’s not true.

[Imalwaysright]

Read the 1st few paragraphs and I stopped because all that person was talking about was story as if a bad story or not focusing on telling story ever stopped a game from getting 10/10 scores. I for one am glad that story/storytelling wasn't one of the main goals Nintendo had while developing BoTW because not having that focus is exactly why the game felt like a breath of fresh in the open world genre and why I became obssessed with playing it.

That lack of focus on telling a story meant that we weren't constantly told where to go, what to do, what we could or couldn't do etc wich is the basic open world design formula that we see in the vast majority of open world games. Go to point A, cutscene, do mission as intended by the developers or else you will fail it, complete mission, another cutscene because story needs to be told.... rinse and repeat until the credits start rolling.

This is a formula that destroys any sense of exploration, player agency, adventure and freedom wich are all things that BoTW does masterfully. There is another recent open world game that didn't focus on telling a story and it too offered a sense of actual freedom, a level of player agency that we rarely see in any other games, true exploration and a true sense of adventure and that game is called Elden Ring. Another game that I was obssessed with and ironically or not, another game that was widely praised by critics .

What the person that wrote that article considers to be a negative, I consider to be positive.

"I don't think any game should get a 10/10"

Yeah especially not Nintendo games because conspiracies and shit like that.

[__SteakDeck__]

@Imalwaysright. Xbox fanboys play the victim much more than PS fanboys, what are you talking about? Lol

[MehmetAlperTR]

not a breakable weapon again.. shit..

[Sonic1881]

There's breakable weapons in a lot of games now. Mostly RPGs. Wasn't there breakable weapons in Dark Soul's and Oblivion 🤔

[DankSinatra]

People choose to ignore that because of the rose glasses they wear when playing those games.

[repsahj]

I don't have any problem with breakable weapons, more realistic that way and adds difficulty to the game.

[NecrumOddBoy]

I agreed but the fusion feature seems to help make this task less of a chore. I wish we could just have regular unbreakable weapons as a constant. Like a bow that lasts but uses new features to try out weird arrow abilities.

[cthulhucultist]

I think Nintendo carefully stroke a balance here by preserving the mechanics of the previous games but subtly giving you the option to alleviate the frustration with the new abilities that it introduces.

In case in point, ascend helps you avoid in some instances the stamina based climbing, whereas the fuse ability on the one hand allows you to strengthen durability and power of weapon by using simple materials and on the other hand to have easy access to weapons at any given time.

Besides it certainly seems fun to experiment with the fuse mechanic - far better than simply finding a unique sword as it allows to strategise during battle by combining the appropriate materials for the situation

[BandarHub]

I dunno man...6 Years to develop a game to add features like that. I hope that they have spent that time creating dungeons and better strory

[DefaultComment]

Didn't you see the video? Didn't you see it has islands in the sky??

[DankSinatra]

He said there’s more to show.

[Duke19]

I like the fuse feature a lot. Cool addition

[Rainbowcookie]

I dunno about the ascend ability. I the challenge of find a way up there. The build mechanic is nice though...just don't like it when you take this huge rock and when you combine it it gets tiny.

[Inverno]

All I wanna know is if there's an actual story. The open world bs gets boring fast and a good story usually keeps me hooked. The "Fuse" feature might fix the problem with breakable weapons. I think it gets the point across better than in the first game that you're supposed to pick up weapons and move on. I would remove the stamina for climbing and leave it for special attacks/abilities, especially since ascend makes climbing somewhat pointless. I do hope there's battery upgrades, seems those things won't fly for long before falling.

Idk bout it being 70 but I do wanna play it either way. Zelda is one of the few things I can say I love so it's hard for me not to be excited even think was disappointed with the previous game.

[leahcim]

I didn't expect this to get me excited as I knew it was basically the same graphics engine and the same Hyrule.. but this this is ....
cannot wait

[SimpleSlave]

While the new creation looks fun, it kinda seem gimmicky rather than a natural thing that's in the game. Still, if it's fun, whatever I guess. But hopefully the attention to the creation gameplay does not end up undermining some of the stuff they needed to fix from the first one. Like that godawful melee combat.

And hopefully they do something with the Weapon Breaking waaaaaaaaaaaaay too fast. And no, I didn't experiment with other weapons in the first game much. For one, why would I? There's no way of fixing them so I hoard the best weapon for the hardest fight. Also, each weapon move set was lolerific. So that didn't help much.

Another thing, this graphics ain't no Fenix Rising that's for sure. Worst is that this looks actually uglier than the first game...like wtf? It looks so bland and flat. I don't know, maybe it's just a bad compression job or something. Here's hoping that's what it is.

At the end of the day it's the gameplay that matter most and this one seems to be at least on par with the first one. So Climbing Gear Pacifist Link should be ready to go.

[jznrpg]

The fusing stuff is cool in a way but tedious in another .the enemies seem so basic AI wise

[nmbr1esq]

Still with destructible weapons argh...only hope is a power or option to fix/repair...other than that looks good, not great. Really hoping that when switch 2 or whtvr comes out the game adjusts/takes advantage of the new hardware or they release a botw and tears remake/refresh with updated graphics etc. One can hope...lol.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

Looks great but Zelda really needs new hardware.

[Chryzz23]

Nice im definitely playing this

[bleedsoe9mm]

this game looks so terrible but that fuse mechanic looks so good

[ufo8mycat]

Fuse mechanic looks nice, but the game is definitely an expansion rather then a full new game. Same Map (outside of the floating islands) ? Wow, no effort put into creating a whole new open world.

The graphics look worse then GTA V on PS3/360.

May have to wait until this becomes available for emulation on PC. There is no excuse for these graphics or frame rates in 2023. Get better hardware Nintendo.

[badz149]

this graphic is a generation BEHIND GTAV on the PS3/360

[badz149]

it's like looking back to games released more than 10 years ago

[Knushwood Butt]

That's so Nintendo can release a re-master at full price on Switch 2 a couple of years from now.

[lucian229]

Exactly what I will be waiting for lol

[repsahj]

Wow impressive! I'm ready for TOTK in May and FF16 in June!

[Stanjara]

Graphics are shimmering all over... I guess 540p upscaled to 720p. Al they did is add floating islands on the old map... and added new gameplay mechanics.

It's cool I guess.

[antikbaka]

oh my....crafting.. never happened before

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I don't know if the fusion thing is my jam, but I really enjoyed BOTW, so I'll probably enjoy this too. I can just imagine some of the bizarre BS players are going to be able to pull with the fusion system (probably with equally hilarious results).

[lucian229]

This looks bad visually. I will be waiting for the switch 2 version

[darklaw]

Its actually really great to see fresh new innovative ideas. Something that hasn't been done before and works as a great mechanic in a game.

[masterfox]

40 dlls Aunuma! take it or leave it :D