Tuesday morning started off with a bang as series producer Eiji Aonuma gave fans a glorious 10-minute look at the gameplay of the upcoming Nintendo Switch release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Overall things looked very… well, Breath of the Wild-y, but the familiar visuals quickly gave way to a quartet of cool new gameplay mechanics.
The first, Recall, is used by Link to rewind time for a specific object. In the case of this demo, Aonuma jumped onto a fallen rock from one of the massive sky islands that float above Hyrule and turned it into an express elevator to the heavens. Next, we were shown Link’s Fuse ability, which takes crafting to a whole new level. Simple environmental objects like sticks and rocks can be combined to create a simple hammer, which delivers quite a punch against TotK‘s Construct enemies.
Mr. Aonuma further demonstrated the joys of fusion by combining a monster eye with an arrow to craft a homing arrow before blowing our collective mind by crafting a full-size raft out of fallen logs and machinery! The flipside of Fuse, Ultra Hand, is both a clever allusion to a classic Nintendo toy and a way to deconstruct, reconfigure, and manipulate even complex fused items like vehicles.
Lastly, Link’s mysterious new ability to, y’know, phase through matter, was finally given a name. The Ascend ability sees link “swimming” upward through the roofs of structures and emerging on the topside. A crazy new addition to the arsenal? Indeed, and one I plan to exploit to its fullest.
Ok, so technically the last reveal wasn’t an ability at all but a brand new special edition Switch OLED Model celebrating Tears of the Kingdom. Resplendent with specialty graphics and unique Joy-Cons, it will retail for $359.99 (just like the Splatoon 3 edition) and will be available on April 28.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom itself will hit shelves on May 12, and if you’d like to take a peek at Eiji Aonuma’s full playthrough, you can do so below.
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