"The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom", which will be released on May 12, is estimated to be the most anticipated game masterpiece of many players this year. Previously, Nintendo officially released a number of related trailers. On March 28, Nintendo officially released fierce news, "The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom Tears" producer Eiji Aonuma demonstrated the game.
The actual demo video is only about 10 minutes, but a lot of game information has been revealed. This content has excited countless players, and it has also made the 40 days before the official release of the game more "like years".
It's almost certain that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be an annual blockbuster full of surprises. Although 2023 is not yet halfway through, many people have already seen the demo video and consider this game the best of the year. Without further ado, let's get down to business now and take a look at the official revelations brought by Nintendo.
New maps, brain-opening new gameplay
There's no doubt that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it will remain an open-world action-adventure game. Breath of the Wild has previously received numerous praises, and the huge open map and rich gameplay are impressive. As a sequel, Kingdom Tears must have both inheritance and continuation and breakthrough innovation for the previous work.
The story of Kingdom Tears still takes place on the continent of Hyrule, and as a map that builds the world view and carries the game's content, the large framework is consistent with the previous game's Breath of the Wild, which is reflected both in the Eiji Aonuma demo video and in the previously announced 4 PVs. Of course, there are many changes to the elements on the same map frame, such as monster type image, some ground facilities have changed, and temples and towers have disappeared.
What's more, Kingdom Tears has a lot of expansion, and the trailer and demo video show the island suspended high in the sky. These empty islands have unique terrain and styles, bringing players more fresh map content and gameplay.
Around heaven and earth, Kingdom Tears has added a large number of novel patterns. In fact, these new mechanisms have been shown a lot in previous trailers, but at that time, everyone could only guess that in the current demonstration video, Eiji Aonuma explained one by one and directly announced the correct answer.
Recall
According to the official introduction and demonstration, players have the ability to "reverse the situation", specifically, they can reverse the original position of the falling stones on the empty island along the trajectory of movement. In the process, the player can control the protagonist Link to step on this stone and fly to the empty island, feeling like he is riding a space elevator.
In Breath of the Wild, one of the skills that players have is time stillness, which is used to make objects absolutely stationary for a certain period of time, during which the player continues to hit stationary objects with weapons, and after the static time is over, the object will fly out because of the accumulated power. In Kingdom Tears, this skill is more like time rewinding, acting on objects that have moved in the opposite direction to achieve some purposes.
The demo video only introduces the "flying sky" scene, but with Nintendo's usual ingenuity, such an important skill will not be limited to this, and there will be more and richer extended gameplay, such as the attack object thrown by the enemy, and it may also be possible to use the reverse skill to make it shoot back at the enemy in the opposite direction. Of course, the specific occasions in which it can be applied will have to wait until the game is officially released.
Rest Material Construction (Fuse)
Simply put, this skill allows the player to get a weapon that can be spliced with other objects or materials to enhance a certain attribute of the weapon. In the demo video, Eiji Aonuma picks up a branch and then mounts a large rock, and his attack and durability become stronger. He also installed a bat eyeball on the bow and arrow arrow, and the arrow shot became a tracking arrow, even if it was aimed accurately, it could hit the prey. In addition, a smoke mushroom is glued to the shield, and when the monster hits, it loses sight in the scattered smoke. Joining sticks and pitchforks allows you to extend the length of your weapon and hit enemies from a distance.
The construction of this mechanism greatly enriches the weapon system of Kingdom Tears, allowing weapons to have more comprehensive attributes, and can use the properties of the material itself to "enchant". What's more interesting is that this enchantment is decoupled, that is, it can be disassembled, combined, and replaced like an accessory.
Compared to Breath of the Wild, the new weapon system enhances the gaming experience on several levels. The construction of surplus materials makes weapons more attributes and more powerful, which reduces the difficulty of fighting monsters to a certain extent and makes the way to fight monsters more diverse. In addition, it also solves the problem of insufficient durability of weapons in Breath of the Wild, and at the same time allows players to collect materials for new purposes, after all, they can basically only be used as medicine or cooking in Breath of the Wild.
Ultrahand
Its role is that the player can put together various objects, a bit like blocks with glue, a bit like the rest of the building, but more complex and varied. In the demo video, Eiji Aonuma uses three logs and two fans to form a simple boat to help the protagonist cross the water. The four-wheeled vehicles, "hot air balloons" and other vehicles in the previous trailer are actually achieved through the skill of the ultimate hand.
It can be found that the ultimate hand should be a very DIY skill, players can open their own brains, use different objects to combine all kinds of strange and different functions, may be vehicles, may also be architecture. It is not difficult to imagine that after the release of the game, there will be a large number of works that players have tinkered out with their ultimate hands on the Internet. If Kingdom Tears can have an online mode, this gameplay can directly turn the new Zelda into a social game.
Ascend
Simply put, this is the skill that allows the protagonist to emerge from the ceiling. Several scenes were revealed in the demo video, including Link climbing out of the house and going straight from the cave to the top of the hill.
The role of this skill, Xiao Lei can imagine that there may be puzzle solving, fast running map and other occasions. As mentioned earlier, the temple in Breath of the Wilderness should have been removed in Kingdom Tears, and the puzzle gameplay needs to find new scenes and new ways to play, and Babel allows players to quickly shuttle in the vertical three-dimensional space, which is very suitable for application in the maze-like area.
In the breath of the wilderness, running maps is a more tiring job, especially climbing mountains, and the way to improve efficiency at that time is nothing more than temple tower teleportation, wind skill soaring, etc. In the Tears of the Kingdom, the previous method can no longer be used, naturally new skills are needed to replace it, and the Tongtian Technique can achieve "the shortest straight line between two points", which naturally also has this effect.
In addition to the joy, the new work may be worried
It has always been believed that Nintendo's way to success is to win with good content and great gameplay. The Switch, which has been released for six years, has been a huge success, and both the sales of consoles and games are enough to make friends envious and jealous. Breath of the Wilderness, as the escort masterpiece of the year, continued to be a god, selling more than 30 million copies, while the best-selling Dusk Princess in the previous Zelda series only sold more than 8 million copies.
There is no doubt that Breath of the Wild is a game with a significant circle-breaking effect, which not only makes Nintendo's core players praise, but also attracts a large number of passers-by players. Xiaolei still remembers the first few years of the Switch, which was dubbed the "Zelda Launcher" by some people, and many new players bought the Switch and often only played the game Breath of the Wild.
The success of Breath of the Wilderness naturally gave Kingdom Tears some pressure. It's a sequel to Breath of the Wild, the game genre is the same, and inevitably the two will be compared, and Kingdom Tears can neither completely reinvent the wheel, but also make a lot of different things.
Most of the content announced in the demo video is differentiated new gameplay, especially the four skills introduced earlier. However, for the new gameplay, Xiaolei still has some worries in his heart, mainly worried about the "bells and whistles" of the new skill, which is not practical enough. For example, in the aforementioned ultimate hand skill, one of the scenes demonstrated by Eiji Aonuma is to splice a boat to cross the river. But this operation took about 1 and a half minutes. In Breath of the Wilderness, the protagonist has to cross the same water, and as long as he uses ice skills to build ice on the surface of the water, he can quickly pass, and the efficiency is obviously higher.
As for the demo video and the quad that appeared in the previous trailer, it looks cool at first glance, but if you think about it, purely from the point of view of running efficiency, it is still more practical to be a horse and motorcycle in the wilderness.
Obviously, Nintendo does not want to turn Kingdom Tears into a large-scale DLC for Breath of the Wild, but a masterpiece that has no repetition in the plot and is full of novelty in gameplay. However, Xiao Lei personally believes that after the mature and recognized skills in Breath of the Wild are canceled in the new work, the new scheme must be practical enough to support the experience of the entire game.
Of course, Kingdom Tears is a game that took at least 6 years to polish, and the problem we worry about Nintendo should have studied and constantly tried to solve for such a long time. Moreover, with Nintendo's achievements in the game industry, it is unlikely that it will leave too many regrets for such a much-anticipated masterpiece. Xiao Lei's concern for the Tears of the Kingdom stemmed more from the fact that the Breath of the Wilderness stood at too high a height.
The "dying" Switch has been renewed again
From its release in 2017 to now, the Switch has been 6 years old. Although the life cycle of game consoles is usually much longer than that of mobile phones and PCs, the time limit for replacement is generally six or seven years. There was a gap of about 7 years between Sony's PS4 and PS5, and the Switch's predecessor, the Wii U, was sold for just over 4 years before being discontinued, and the previous generation Wii had a life cycle of less than 7 years. From this point of view, Switch has reached the end of its life cycle.
However, although the relevant revelations of the next generation Switch have not stopped, players are also looking forward to Nintendo's new Switch, but the official has never revealed the exact news of the new product. As a game console that has been released for many years, the Switch's function has lagged behind competitors by a large margin, and its weak performance has led to its performance on the screen has always been "antique-level".
However, at present, the performance of Kingdom Tears is still very strong, and its initial strength has made countless players moved. If nothing else, even if it can't go beyond the breath of the wilderness, it can reach close heights, and through the advantage of gameplay, it will once again attract fans. It is foreseeable that if the tears of the kingdom can still form a circle-breaking effect, then the Switch will be renewed again, and in everyone's surprise, another wave of sales growth. After all, Xiaolei has witnessed the two games "Macho Picking Branches" and Fitness Ring allowing many non-core players to order Switch during the epidemic.
Finally, by the way, many people have watched a series of official videos saying that the light and shadow effects of Kingdom Tears have improved. There are two possibilities, either Nintendo further squeezed out the Switch's functions and achieved better lighting and shadow effects through better software optimization; Either the new Switch with stronger functions is already being developed, and Kingdom Tears, which can bring better picture quality, will become a major selling point.
But in any case, when a large number of game manufacturers face gameplay bottlenecks after eating the picture dividends brought by the large upgrade of hardware, Nintendo can still continue to break through in gameplay and release more ideas, which is enough to make people forgive the hardware of Switch crotch again.
(The pictures in this article are from Nintendo official)
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