The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

 The legend of Hyrule is the legend of Calamity Ganon... again... 

Finally it has come. After years of waiting around for anything to come out, rumours upon guesses, suppositions upon assertations, we finally have that one announcement that we've all been waiting for; the name for the Breath of the Wild sequel game. No longer do we need to call her 'Breath of the Wild 2: This time's it's wilder'. We can genuinely put one our calendar the name of 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom'; finally unveiling the naming convention that this new breed of Zelda games is running with. It's 'of the' season, apparently. And for one I can say that is a name I wasn't exactly expecting from a thematic sense, it sounds more poetically tragic than I was feeling with all the trailer snippets we've had of Link soaring through chunks of skyward bound land, but I suppose the poetry-style metaphor language forms an identifiable basis from which to affirm this subseries' identity. Any other titles with a name like this might invite derision at the apparent pretentious allusions of such a interpretive name, but anyone who experienced Breath of the Wild can readily acknowledge that with this franchise, the games are good for cashing marketing's cheques. 

It's just a shame that this title reveal, and the eye-watering belayed release date that's going to have us waiting more than half a year from this point, is all we have to go on because our Zelda Developers don't want us to see a square inch of this game for too long. In a way it makes me excited; because this team have already shown what they can do before and if they don't want to spoil some grand surprise they've had cooking up for the past few years that is absolutely grounds for hype; but I just wish we had some fundamental realties about the game revealed to us. For example; is this really a direct sequel? After 'Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity' unveiled a new timeline where the Guardian menace was stopped before it could destroy the kingdom, the possibility has opened up of this being an alternate timeline version of 'Breath of the Wild'; and the fact I've been asking that question for the past few years is slowly chipping away at my sanity.

The evidence seems confusing. For one the initial reveal trailer for 'Tears of the Kingdom' clearly showed off the corpse of Ganon which was nowhere to be seen during 'Breath of the Wild', presumably because in that Timeline Ganon had transcended the need for a physical form and instead involved into some miasma portent of evil. Calamity Ganon was roundly destroyed at the end of BOTW, so I can't imagine he left behind a corpse to be resurrect in timely fashion. Additionally, the title trailer which revealed the new name showed off a wall-scrawled relief history lesson just like BOTW had; only there was no image depicting the Guardian war at all. (But then that in itself is confusing, as the Guardians did still go out of control in the new timeline, they were just stopped. I'd still call that a historical event worth depicting.) And then just as another curve ball, the official cover art for Tears of the Kingdom just dropped, and we can see the swirling evil of Calamity Ganon wrapped around what appears to be Hyrule castle in the background. Just like what we can see in the background of the 'Breath of the Wild' box art, implying these games are retellings of one another.

In one sense this makes me a little sad because I really wanted to see the next part of the story after the destruction of Ganon and the resurrection of the Kingdom. Also, I wanted to move on from the concept of Calamity Ganon which we already explored throughout Breath of the Wild rather conclusively. We saw what he was, the extent of his abilities and the heavenly manifestation of the Goddess that ultimately destroyed him. What more is there really to cover? I wanted there to be a new threat of some unknowable evil, like the darkness of the 'Usurper King', or the mystery of 'Majora'. With all the similarities that 'Tears of the Kingdom' is going to have to it's predecessor, in terms of setting, visual style and gameplay mechanics, it really feels a step too comfortable to literally retell the story of 'Breath of the Wild' but in a different timeline. It would also totally invalidate the events of 'Age of Calamity' to just say "Yeah, but he resurrected and took over the Kingdom anyway; thanks for fighting though!"

But from a raw sense I am interested to see the ways in which 'Tears of the Kingdom' is going to remix the Hyrule that we know in ways we never would have imagined before. Bringing the action into the sky is building upon an already stellar grasp of verticality that 'Breath of the Wild' had to perhaps make air-combat into a key component of the gameplay. We've also seen a much sturdier looking glider for Link to travel the skies atop of, reinforcing this idea of being just at home exploring the floating islands as we are on the ground.  Speaking of which; the ground is apparently still very much within the game for 'Tears of the Kingdom'; and I'm quite curious to see how the landscape is affected by having giant chunks of earth ripped out of the ground and thrown into the sky. And more importantly- I wonder at what might be awoken from the underground by that disturbance...

This time around I really hope that they'll be more life to the Kingdom of Hyrule, now that (assuming the alternate timeline assumption is correct) the Kingdom hasn't had to endure a century of decay and ruin chipping away at society.  Given the longevity of the species of Hyrule, it's fully plausible that all the Champions would be around in person to assist Link on his journey, even if Zelda isn't because she's locked in yet another metaphysical duel with Ganon for the entirety of the game. (That's another reason I wanted a sequel. Playable Zelda would have been so cool...) The main narrative cutscenes of 'Breath of the Wild' all being memory flashbacks created such a barrier between character motivation and player drive that I often didn't even want to uncover the next memory because the story content within would never adequate contextualise the current events I was embarking on. (There were a few modernly-set cutscenes at each Kingdom, and they were much more engaging. I hope for an entire game full of cutscenes like that this time around.)

There's also a new and so far entirely unexplored angle to 'Tears of the Kingdom' in Link's cursed glowing robotic arm. I suspect that from a very mechanical perspective it's merely supposed to act as a substitute for the Sheikah slate from 'Breath of the Wild'; because that slate was originally Zelda's passed onto Link, and if this is an alternate timeline then she never had the chance to pass it to him before she fell into Ganon's death pit, as we saw in the reveal trailer. But I'm curious about the ways the Shiekah arm will empower Link in ways that the Slate didn't. Much of what that Slate could do was taking advantage of the tools of the Switch, (or the Wii U if you were cursed enough to own that version of the game) and now that we're far enough into the Switch's life cycle for the team to divorce themselves from that gimmicky clutch; there's a real opportunity to get creative this time around. Such that I honestly can't figure out the little snippets of power that we're seeing. I think there's a gravitational shift move in the latest trailer; it's hard to pinpoint.

May 2023 is the definitive release date this time around, and Nintendo have agonised so much over getting this date out that I can only assume they have so much confidence in themselves that no more delays are imminent. Of course, that also leaves little room for an information blow out regarding what 'Tears of the Kingdom' has in store, barring the possibility of a huge Zelda-focused Nintendo direct in the early months of 2023. But who can really say when the next Direct is going to show it's face? Those things are rarer than White Whales and just as tricky to predict. Maybe they'll just cold turkey us all so as to save all secrets until release day; current Zelda is probably big enough that they could safely do that. For my sake all I know is thus; this game is getting in my Switch one way or another, I have my money ready, I just need a Nintendo address to throw it at.