The Legend Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Gives Link 4 New Abilities

Nintendo featured a short, but sweet gameplay Showcase for its upcoming game: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The much-awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild finalized development a couple of days ago, and is now in its gold phase. This means that the game will start its distribution process, and subsequent upload to the digital market. The developers can also work on correcting minor issues and solve them through a Day-1 patch.

Also, a beautiful console edition is coming out alongside its matching carrying-case, and Pro Controller to celebrate the game's release.

The game is ready for production, prior to its May 28th release. | Credit: Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, meaning that the game further expands on everything implemented for the prequel. Breath of the Wild has a lot of excellent gameplay mechanics that deepens your Zelda experience, in comparison to other titles.

Having your weapon break, cooking recipes to boost stats, or having a stamina bar are some of the gameplay mechanics that really distinguished Breath of the Wild from the rest of the Zelda games. It finally felt like the Zelda we have all been waiting for. The game even inspired other successful titles like Horizon: Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Genshin Impact, and even Elden Ring.

The bar was set quite high by Breath of the Wild, so, what are some of the things that Tears of the Kingdom can further expand on? Here is a list of 4 new abilities, or gameplay mechanics that make Tears of the Kingdom a deeper experience than Breath of the Wild:

Recall

I don’t know how scripted this new ability will be, or how much actual freedom the player will really have because in the trailer you can see a conveniently falling rock that helped Link reach a Sky Island.

The Recall ability can revert momentum or motion of any object. Take the falling rock, for example; it fell from the 'Sky Island' to a mountain nearby, once there you can activate your new ability and revert its movement, meaning it will go upwards.

Perhaps only during exploration or platforming, the Recall ability will be more scripted. Let’s see how they implement it for live combat situations, if that’s the case.

Fuse

Perhaps the most interesting on the list. Fuse lets you literally combine two things and make a weapon out of it. In the showcase, we saw Link fuse a branch with a boulder to make a rudimentary hammer. The new weapon has an attack, and durability boost, compared to just the branch. Aonuma invites us to experiment with this ability and see what we can come up with.

It feels that the game gives the players the freedom to experiment, like in Breath of the Wild. Our intuition is going to be key in order to craft whacky, yet useful weapons; for instance, Link combined a branch with a long pitchfork to produce a weapon with insane range.

Another thing to point out is that some enemies will be equipped with prefabricated fused weapons, making the battles more interesting. It will be up to you to determine the effects of such weapons in order to strategize before engaging.

The ability won’t be limited to melee weapons. We saw Aonuma-san combine arrows with elements to produce special arrows. For example, we saw him combine it with a White Chuchu Jelly to make ice arrows to freeze enemies from a distance. He even combined it with Keese eyes to make homing arrows!

Another thing he combined was a mushroom with his shield, so when the enemy hits him while blocking the attack with its shield, spores are released to create a smoke screen, providing you with time to flank the enemy while you are concealed.

He even combined scattered logs to make a raft! This ability can be used in a great number of things in the game, not only weapons and shields; it is quite amazing if you ask me.

Ultrahand

With one of the smoothest transitions in the history of YouTube, Aonuma planned to move the raft to a river he intended to cross. He briefly mentioned that wood has buoyancy, so it looks like each material in the game has specific attributes, or properties.

Using Ultrahand, Aonuma moved the raft into the river; since it was not moving on itself, he then picked up, rotated, and attached two conveniently placed fans into the raft, creating an amazing-looking, dual-propeller hovercraft!

He then mentioned that on a previous trailer we saw some amazing vehicles being shown, revealing to us that they are not to be found anywhere in the game because they were created using Ultrahand. How amazing is that.

One of the things that really impressed me about Breath of the Wild was that the game really provides the players with freedom to strategize and create amazing things. It looks like Tears of the Kingdom is taking that to the next level; the possibilities are endless.

Ascend

This ability can make Link climb roofs, and emerge on the other side. In the showcase, we saw Link approach a shrine-like building, and once inside, he just had to look up to the roof in order to be able to use the ability. Once he used it, he teleported to the roof, and emerged on the other side of it.

This ability can help us climb mountains if there is a cave nearby; it will certainly be used as a platforming element on temples or shrines. Perhaps it will be necessary to find hidden treasures.

The gameplay showcase presented by Nintendo really sparks our excitement for the upcoming game. The newly added abilities will provide the game with depth and freedom when we explore Hyrule, or combat its various enemies.

Here is the full video from Nintendo's YouTube channel:

What do you think of the new abilities? What amazing things will you craft? Let me know in the comments below.

Happy gaming.

Source: Nintendo