Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom – it’s looking pretty impressive (pic: Nintendo)



Nintendo has given the best look yet at Zelda : Tears Of The Kingdom, with new abilities that let you build your own weapons and vehicles.



Nobody that’s played and enjoyed Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is going to need much convincing that follow-up Tears Of The Kingdom is worth taking an interest in. But despite being in development for years we still knew very little about the game… until the 10 minute gameplay demo on Tuesday afternoon.



It was a very straightforward video, with producer Eiji Aonuma showing you how you get to the ‘sky islands’ seen in previous trailers and how Link’s new abilities work.



According to Aonuma, there are multiple ways to reach the islands but the one he used involved waiting for a chunk of rock to fall off one and then using a new ability called Recall to rewind its movement – so as long as you stand on the rock it’ll take you back to where it came from.



He then starts having a fight with a new robotic looking enemy called a construct, hitting it with a stick (the Master Sword is never seen). This obviously isn’t very effective, so he demonstrates the new Fuse ability to combine a stick with a rock.



This allows you to wield the rock (and later a tree trunk) like a cudgel and it seems you can combine almost any two small or medium sized object together, including different weapons – he makes an ultra long pitchfork at one point.



You can also customise arrows using Fuse, creating ice arrows and using a Keese eyeball to make homing arrows. Even a shield can be customised, with a mushroom that creates a smokescreen if hit.









A different but similar ability is called Ultrahand (a reference to a toy made by Nintendo before they got into video games), which allows you to attach and reattach objects in more complex ways.



This is used to make a raft powered by fans and is apparently how the car and flying vehicles from the previous trailer were made, which really does make it all seem surprisingly similar to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts .



The final ability is called Ascend and allows you to travel vertically through any ceiling. That seems a bit vague but it seems to work at any distance, with Aonuma entering a cave and levitating to the top of the hill above. According to him that trick will work with a whole mountain.







What the video doesn’t offer is any indication of what the story is about. We still don’t know what the subtitle refers to, what’s going on with Link’s weird hand, or anything about the bad guy plot.



Not that Zelda games are ever very story heavy but it’s clear that there’s an awful lot that’s being kept secret about the game right up until its launch. Which is probably the best for everyone involved.



As expected, Nintendo also unveiled a Zelda branded Switch OLED console. We’ll update our original story about that in a moment.



The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom will be released on Nintendo Switch on May 12.









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