Today, we were excited to watch Eiji Aonuma demonstrating Tears of the Kingdom on Nintendo’s YouTube channel. But no sooner than three minutes in, Itzal quipped: “Now we know why the kingdom is crying.”
The twelve-minute video focuses on new skills that Link will, ahem, enjoy in TOTK. There’s Recall, which, by way of example, enables Link to clamber aboard a recently fallen object and rewind its trajectory. With Ascend, our hero is able to pass through ceilings, be they natural or constructed. We can definitely imagine the possibilities. Next, Link can use Fuse to meld together certain items to create new items and uses. And that brings us to Ultrahand, which seems a fancier version of Fuse but not limited to weapons.
In the end, it was Fuse and Ultrahand that caused Itzal’s crying quip. A whine soon followed: “This looks like a game for you, Demelza, all crafting and gathering and thinking. Where’s the flailing and mindless running about and the opportunity for ham-fisting?”
And he’s got a point. In one scene, Link calmly scrolls through a plethora of materials looking for just the right one – in this case, white Chu Chu jelly – to attach to an arrow, making it cold enough to freeze an enemy. That’s all well and good, but what about just finding or buying ice arrows, as we did in BOTW? In another example, Link glues a mushroom to a shield and subsequently confounds his would-be attacker. In our experience, we rarely have the time or the presence of mind, and certainly neither together, to scroll through anything, la di da, while an enemy waits patiently for us to make our decision and get on with things.
Then there’s the Ultrahand so-called skill. In the demo, Link slaps together three logs and attaches fans to construct a boat and cross a river. How fortuitous that these fans happened to be lying about. We, in contrast, never seem to have a fan at the ready.
The kingdom is our oyster. . .
Aonuma enthuses about the world of possibilities bound only by one’s creativity. Weapons need not be earned by defeating enemies, one can make them! Right. We have visions of accidentally fusing a Zapshroom to Link’s foot and electrocuting ourselves. At this point in the video, Demelza, too, began to whine, and suggested we might want to use Amiibos to get special weapons rather than playing at Hyrulean Caveman, cobbling together sticks and stones. And speaking of weapons: Aonuma can crow all he likes about the ability to create them, but they appear to still break.
…and the sky’s not the limit
As expected, the sky will be a big part of TOTK. We’ll get two, two worlds in one! The sky islands vary in size, from expansive ones with trees and mountains and rivers to tiny ones that we are destined to teeter on magnificently before falling off. But! says Aonuma, worry not! If you fall, you simply glide down to the world below. Indeed, he offers excitedly, you can use the skies to scan for a likely destination on the surface and then deploy your paraglider to land precisely there.
Here, Itzal’s eyes finally lit up; he does so like to explore. Enemies? Run away! Quests? Ignore them! Gathering materials? Boring! But give him an unopened area, and he’s laser-focused on planting his flag. After that, he may have little interest in, you know, defending Hyrule, but by gum, we have a map. Satisfied and now bored, he hands the controller over to Demelza to do the cooking.[1]
In a few short weeks, we anticipate many tears to come, for us at least, if not for the kingdom. We have visions of falling off sky islands. Dying spectacularly while we putter about trying to Fuse a weapon together. Coming to a bad end after confusing Ascend with Recall.
But we’re oh-so-ready to shed those tears and cry into our martini glasses once more!
[1] As noted in a blog post long, long ago, our gameplay roles are not defined by outdated gender stereotypes but rather on temperament. Demelza has patience. Itzal does not.