At long last, we finally know the name of the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Revealed as the closer for yesterday’s Nintendo Direct, the highly anticipated sequel is now known as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and will release on May 12, 2023. Curiously though, after three years and a couple teasers, we still know very little about the game and I’m not quite sure why that is.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Tears of the Kingdom was first announced in 2019 (barring a title) during Nintendo’s E3 Direct with a teaser showing Zelda and Link exploring an underground cavern where they happen upon the long dead body of Ganon, before we see Hyrule Castle start to lift into the sky. Then last year we got another short, cryptic teaser that continued to tease this underground expedition and gave us our first quick glimpses at gameplay. Earlier this year we got an even shorter glimpse of new footage revealing a broken Master Sword, but no new gameplay. Somehow, each of these teasers gave us new information to pore over, yet, at the same, not much of it.
Up until yesterday, the biggest mystery was the title. According to Nintendo, the reason for this was due to the fact that the title could give away what Tears of the Kingdom is about. Now that the title’s public I’ve seen people theorizing about what it could mean, but, from what I’ve seen, a giant revelation hasn’t been made so I don’t think it was as big a clue or spoiler as Nintendo made it out to be.
The title reveal isn’t what sparked my curiosity for this blog though. Rather, it’s the fact that we still have no real idea what Tears of the Kingdom is about on a basic level, nor do we know much about the gameplay. We know that we’ll still be on the map from Breath of the Wild, but now we’ll have the skies above Hyrule and potentially even more beyond that to explore (with the leading theory being the underground). We’ve had rewinding time, intriguing water abilities, and sky travel teased, but we have no context for any of these individual elements or any idea about other gameplay additions or changes that Tears of the Kingdom will bring.
Let me be clear and say that I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we’re still in the dark about a lot regarding Tears of the Kingdom. I’m not concerned or worried about its development and have confidence that it’ll be a great game. As a sequel to Breath of the Wild, a game that many would argue is the greatest game of all time, Nintendo can afford to be as secretive as they have been with the marketing because people are going to buy the game anyway. In fact I’m sure many would prefer that Nintendo maintain this level of mystique around Tears of the Kingdom so that they can go into it knowing as little as possible and discover everything for themselves.
It’s just that after three years of knowing its existence, I would’ve imagined we’d have a better idea about what our next journey through Hyrule would be like. The pandemic certainly had an effect on development, so that can explain why we’ve gone through such large gaps of time without new information from Nintendo. But that aside, I’m left wondering what it is about Tears of the Kingdom that has the team holding all their cards so close to their chest. Are they afraid that showing certain gameplay elements will give away big plot points? Is the basic premise for the story a huge spoiler? Is Zelda secretly a playable character that they’re hiding?
As someone who’s never really followed marketing strategies for previous Zelda games, this could all just be par for the course, but I don’t think it is. From what I can recall, the marketing campaign for Breath of the Wild was much more transparent than it has been for Tears of the Kingdom. There are a lot of questions to be asked and I’m sure we’ll get the answers in due time. I’m a patient person and don’t want to rush the team to put out information that they aren’t ready to give. I imagine the plan is to give Tears of the Kingdom a big blowout in its own Nintendo Direct at some point in the future, or maybe even a big trailer at The Game Awards that lays things out more clearly. Whatever the plan is, Nintendo has us all in the palm of their hands, eagerly anticipating any information they have for us.
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