Nintendo recently revealed some early test footage showing how the company prototypedThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Ultrahand ability. The power allows Link to build and control structures and vehicles and is one ofThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s most prominent new features.
Tears of the Kingdomis the upcoming sequel to 2017’sBreath of the Wild. MostZeldagames don’t directly pick up where the previous game left off. However,Tears of the Kingdomis one ofThe Legend of Zelda’s relatively few direct sequels, alongside games likeLink’s AwakeningandMajora’s Mask. The new game picks up a few years after the events ofBreath of the Wildand sees Ganondorf return to Hyrule once more.The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomalso features multiple new mechanics for players to try out once the game launches on May 12.
RELATED:The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Has ‘Huge’ Traditional Dungeons
Nintendo’s promotion ofTears of the Kingdomincludes releasing several developer Q&As in the lead-up to the game’s release. However, it appears that someone on the development team accidentally put one out early, showing a clip of Nintendo’s prototyping of the system. The video was spotted by an eagle-eyed Reddit user called Emotional-Ad-1188, who shared a link to the video on theTears of the Kingdomsubreddit.
The video shows Link using Ultrahand to power a pair of player-crafted vehicles. The first is essentially a car consisting of four large gear wheels attached to a stone slab. The video soon cuts to the same car, now fitted with a magical cannon. As it trundles down along the bridge, Link fires the cannon with his Ultrahand, launching a projectile some distance ahead. A second cut takes viewers to the final scene showing Link standing on a crafted boat with two paddle wheels. The clip thus offers a great preview of thevehicle crafting inThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
As Emotional-Ad-1188 pointed out, Nintendo appears to have prototypedTears of the Kingdom’s crafting usingBreath of the Wild’s Sheikahassets rather than the Zonai technology from the trailers. Viewers can also make out a Sheikah Tower off in the distance of the second scene, and the video still shows the old Wii U interface fromThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
This led one commenter to wonder if this footage was a holdover from whenTears of the Kingdomwas going to be aBreath of the WildDLC. However, there’s no evidence to support that theory, and it’s normal for developers to reuse old assets during prototyping. Either way, it’s an exciting look at one of the earlier stages ofTears of the Kingdom’s development.
The Legends of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomlaunches for Nintendo Switch on May 12.
