Nintendo gave us a nice surprise at the end of its Nintendo Direct. A short trailer introducing us to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the long-awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild therefore has a name, and even a release date.
[Mis à jour le 13 septembre 2022 à 11h28] Nintendo hit hard yesterday during its Nintendo Direct back to school. After more than forty minutes of broadcasting devoted to various releases on Nintendo Switch, such as Bayonetta 3 or Mario and the Rabbids 2: Sparks of Hope, the Japanese firm surprised us all by presenting us with a short and mysterious sequence. A hero adorned with green and pointed ears, a splendid world perched between heaven and earth, no doubt, we are in Hyrule. It is therefore at the very end of its conference that Nintendo offers us news of Breath of The Wild 2, or rather, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the long-awaited sequel to the phenomenal open-world RPG from the launch of the Nintendo Switch. What stir up the excitement of the crowds there is no doubt.
Tears of the Kingdom will therefore be the name of the sequel to Breath of the Wild 2. Nintendo’s next open-world RPG intends to surpass the quality of its elder, by offering to continue the adventures of Link and Zelda in the lands of ‘Hyrules. But that’s not all, it is also in the skies that we will be able to explore the fantastic mysteries of this continent, thanks to new means of locomotion and climbing, allowing our young adventurer to move freely on land and in the air.
For now, not much has been revealed about the exact content of the game. But these few images already allow us to understand some essential aspects of Tears of the Kingdom. In terms of history, we already know that the game will pick up Link’s story where the first game left off. The knight’s mission will be to defeat the scourge “Ganon” once again, and to find his friend Zelda from whom he seems once again separated. On the gameplay side, we could see in the trailer several things that tipped us off.
First, at the level of the world in which the game will be located. The plains and the Hyrule no longer seem to be the only universe to explore. Indeed the kingdoms of heaven will once again be accessible, which reminds us of the universe of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Link will be able to vertically traverse flying platforms, and explore Hyrule using various modes of transportation, including through the skies and in a glider. The Cinetis power is back, except that it will no longer be a question of freezing objects in time, but of sending them back to the past. We can also note the appearance of a flamethrower, and other small novelties that we will discover next May.
We can also note the importance given to verticality in the different (and short) gameplay sequences that we have been able to distill up and down and across since the announcement of the game’s release more than 1000 years ago. days. There are many passages where you can see Link climbing walls, roots, then throwing himself into the void and returning to the terra firma of Hyrule. Because the kingdom of heaven, we can never repeat it enough, are the great novelties of this long-awaited sequel, and just like in Skyward Sword, this involves new means of locomotion like the glider seen at the end of the trailer above.
Fans can rejoice because The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally has a release date. The game is scheduled for May 12, 2023 and promises to be a great success as it was expected by fans since its announcement more than 3 years ago. A release directly and exclusively on Nintendo Switch, of course, and the promise of a huge flag bearer for the Nintendo console which had been in a slight lack of attractive exclusives for a few months.