Finally a look at what this game is! (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay recap!)

     Alright, friends, it's time for a big deal. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out about 6 years ago now, and we finally only have just over a month remaining until The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This week is big because we're finally getting to see actual footage of the game after they released 3 or 4 trailers full to the brim with hints of what we'll be seeing in this game. What all did they show off this week? Let's take a little look. The video is just over 10 minutes long, so I definitely suggest you check it out if you are interested in this game, and if not, hopefully I'll be able to sum it up in a meaningful and interesting way. Let's activate one of Link's new powers and "Recall" the presentation, shall we?

Link can even make a hovercraft apparently!

 Similar World, but new powers!

    Going into this game, we knew that this game would follow the same Link and Zelda that were in Breath of the Wild, and they would be exploring a slightly different world from the one they inhabited. It is the same world that Link explored in the previous game, but it has been changed significantly due to some dark magic sending areas of Hyrule into the sky. We still don't understand the context of this magic, but we do know that Link has a magical arm of some kind now, and along with it, he has special powers. The first one we see in this new trailer is Recall, which allows you to rewind time for certain objects. We don't know the full impact of this ability, of course, but the way it was used in this video was with a piece of rock that was falling from the sky. Link used Recall on it and rode it up to one of the "Sky Islands" as they're being called, where he sailed onto the island with his sailcloth. We see a new enemy type here, known as a Construct, which runs on "Zonai" energy if the item that Link picks up is any indication. I'm not really sure what that means, but I'm sure it has something to do with the plot. Link defeats one by using two tree branches, the first one breaking after a few hits, and the second one being able to defeat the foe, but it's about to break after the battle. We then see Link go over to a boulder and use another new ability, called Fuse. Fuse allows Link to combine his tree branch with a rock to make a sort of hammer that is not only more durable, but also hits a lot harder. We see a few more examples of this ability here as well, with a long stick fusing with a pitchfork to make a much longer weapon, as well as the ability to fuse different items with arrows to make different types. The few that we see here are fused with a Korok Frond to give it a wind effect, fused with White Chuchu Jelly to give it an ice effect, and my personal favorite was the Keese Eyeball, which gave the arrow the ability to home in on enemies! We saw a shield fused with a Puff Shroom, which released a cloud of smoke when attacked, allowing Link to sneak behind the enemy and take it out with a stealth attack. We're even shown that constructs will wield some of these fused weapons to potentially much more deadly effect. In the gameplay, they showed a construct that fused a pole with a door, which allowed it to attack with a fan-type weapon, which pushed Link off of the Sky-Island that he was on. There was another form of fusion they showed that had a different name, and I believe that will be a potentially even more interesting mechanic than this one.

The Legend of Zelda: Nuts and Bolts!

    If anyone played Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts back on Xbox 360, you know something like what to expect here. The team working on Tears of the Kingdom put in this new power called Ultrahand, which allows Link to stick together (or link) different objects, and in the example given in this footage, they made a boat out of three logs, and two fans that turn on when hit, though it seems like they only run for a limited time since there's a battery icon that depletes whole they are on. Honestly, I'm a little nervous about this mechanic, since I don't really consider myself to be a big "creative player" in games, I'm perfectly happy just trying to do things in the most simple way that they're able to be done, but I am really excited to see what the community can create with this idea in mind. There certainly doesn't seem to be a limit on what you can do, so maybe people will be able to make bases or their own towns by moving things and building things with this new ability. I've seen a lot of people making comparisons to Minecraft after this footage came out, and that honestly makes sense. I hope the mechanics will work well for people to make whatever creations that they want, especially when people were able to even make some cool simple machines in the previous game, which didn't have mechanics specifically to do that.

    The final skill that they showed off was called Ascend, which allows Link to phase through whatever ceiling he is under (as long as he is under one) The best example here was showing Link phasing through a whole mountain by using this ability in a cave. This seems like such a cool idea, and again, I can't wait to see the kinds of puzzles that the team has been putting in with this power in mind, especially since it will take much less time to use Ascend than it would to climb all the way up a mountain like you would typically do in the previous game. There's not much that we see here of this power in particular, but I do think they can use it in pretty cool ways, which we'll probably just have to see once the game actually comes out. I am curious to see the story implications of this, since it seems like Link is a much more interesting character with these powers and abilities at his disposal, and this game's hero may have more elements of self-discovery to him than other versions of the character have had to deal with, following along with how Breath of the Wild had so much content about restoring Link's memory.

    The story is still very much up in the air, but I'm happy to say that the mechanics shown off here are laying the foundation for something very different than what many expected from this game. There is clearly a lot of darkness in Hyrule, and Link himself appears to have been affected (from his robot arm) as well as the Master Sword, which has decayed significantly from when we last saw it. There was a lot of speculation a while ago that Zelda could actually be a playable character this time around, but I'm not sure how likely that is, considering all of the footage has been of Link, but I would love to be wrong. I feel like Zelda has so much potential as a central character, and I would love to see that potential capitalized on. Either way, I'm so excited for this game, and after seeing these mechanics put in place, it completely makes sense how it has taken this team six years since Breath of the Wild to make changes like these. It undoubtably took a crazy amount of time to give all of these different objects the ability to fuse with one another, though it's hard to say so far since we've still seen so little. It seems pretty clear to me that we're all in for something special when it comes out on May 12. 

    Thanks so much for reading this short recap of what was shown the other day, The Legend of Zelda has always been one of my favorite series, and I'm definitely excited for what is coming next. I hope you're all having a great week, and I'll talk to you again soon! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Hylian Hero, and I hope you're doing well!