I’m slowly beginning to understand that a new Zelda is actually coming up in just three months. A strange feeling that is somehow still special even after almost 40 years of video games. Nintendo is probably a little more aware that this special development journey is also slowly coming to an end and is certainly looking forward to the release with growing relief. In any case, the new trailer came out with many playful and other substantive details.
I have to admit that it started off with a bang for me. If I interpret that correctly, Ganon gets a voice for the first time in the history of the series and I have to say that I don’t really like either the narrator, who acts quite B-movie-like evil, nor his striking lines of random violence. Shouldn’t it be Ganon we hear at the beginning: Free! Forget what I said. If so, it’s a shame to present such an iconic villain in such a generic way.
Ganon’s malevolence has always had a mysterious nature to me that usually accompanies taciturnity. And when he spoke, it was often from the past, which suggested motivations and outlined character traits that gave a blurred but more exciting picture of him than that of a beard-twirling madman. Perhaps I suspected motives behind his actions that I could not understand. Also because he didn’t speak to me verbally, or at least didn’t come through the front door with genocidal intentions. Difficult to judge from 14 seconds of monologue in a two minute trailer. Anyway, I hope they don’t completely disenchant him in the finished game.
But otherwise: Yes, that makes you want to play the actual game. In particular, that Nintendo probably looked very closely when, years after Breath of the Wild went on sale, fans still found new ways to transport Link through Hyrule with adventurous use of the sandbox ruleset. Who doesn’t like to think back to the first video of an improvised flying machine, when players started stacking two mine carts on top of each other and standing on the top one while the bottom one was magically lifted into the air?
It seems such tools now exist as an integral part of Tears of the Kingdom. We see Link driving a car made out of magical elements at one point, and at other points the device became a kind of airplane. At least it looked to me like those were player-combined elements. This reminded me a bit of Rare’s somewhat hapless Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts and might encourage players to come up with even more crazy stuff. It is quite possible that you will find new individual parts and over time more and more machines will become conceivable – if you like.
That makes a lot of sense considering how much Hyrule is stretching in height this time as well. New modes of locomotion also open up new options for the level designers to design their world. When a developer as playful as Nintendo throws fresh tools into their games, it always makes me curious, because these are often things that other studios then chase after for years.
The rest of the trailer? Zelda superfans certainly dissect this in more detail than I do, but the backwards music at the end sent a shiver down my spine. Yes, I could live better with a mute, unreal Ganon, but other than that it was all very inviting and really tickled my anticipation. What do you say?
