Tears of the Kingdom – Do It Yourself!

Please, lend him your power!

Magnesis, Bombs, Stasis, Cryonis – these were your four main items in Breath of the Wild, which came as runes on your Sheikah Slate, together with a camera, the amiibo app, and the Master Cycle Zero. In the sequel this will be replaced by a golden gauntlet with magic powers, which Link apparently gets from the mysterious hand being, which has been sealing away Ganondorf for ages. And overall it seems to work exactly like the Sheikah Slate, with different abilities that you can select and then use via the L button.

The abilities / runes are slightly different, however. Instead of Stasis we have now something that can reverse the time for moving objects or objects that have moved. The ability to morph through ceilings could potentially be a rune as well, but we don't know that yet... And there is no signs of bombs or anything similar so far.

But in the latest trailer we are introduced to a second ability, which on first glance works like Magnesis, meaning that you can move objects around with it. We are even introduced to it at one of the spots where you first utilize Magnesis in Breath of the Wild: the bog on the Great Plateau.

The difference is that this seemingly works on any object now, not just metallic ones, which will be a big upgrade. Potentially you may even upgrade it, so it lets you move enemies around, like with the wizard in Trine (which is a good comparison to this ability). But there is more to it: the green energy can also be used to put things together, which lets you create entire automata. The wheel you can pick out of the bog then can be used to build a vehicle for example:

This is crazy and you probably already heard the Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts comparisons before, so let's skip right past them and talk about the potential of all this. First of all, the dragon heads on the vehicle all but confirm that all this stuff is truly related to the Zonai, which is a theory that we've been dealing with before and became already more prominent after the trailer in September (see here). The golem enemies in the sky also have this green energy holding their parts together, where this is clearly all related.

Though, in this case it looks more like glue. For this car Link has been collecting a variety of parts and: two of the big wheels, two smaller wheels, two headlights, a handlebar, and presumably the energy core. But it's all held together by wooden planks and the green magic glue. The flying contraptions look very much to be improvised in the same fashion:

It seems like Nintendo was inspired by the methods used by players to get high up into the air in Breath of the Wild, like an overabundance of Octo Balloons, or building a flying machine with two minecarts and Magnesis. It's exactly this type of creativity that went into these creations, only that this is something that you're now meant to do and not some sort of glitch or oversight.

I love the thought that Nintendo was truly studying what people have been doing with their game for fun or to gain speed, and then decided, "let's make this a feature!" And it would have been really annoying to use lots and lots of Octo Balloons to cheese your way onto one of the sky islands...

Anyway, while the usage for the flying machines are very much clear, the car is a different story. It almost looks like it's meant to transport larger objects from A to B and the huge vessel of green energy could even be the cargo, not the energy source, since you don't seem to need it for the flying machine. But before you get PTSD from Spirit Tracks, let's look at one of the concepts that they ditched for Breath of the Wild: the Tarrey Town house building.

This could all go hand in hand. You could use the vehicle to transport the Tarrey Town house containers to wherever you want to create a new settlement. Maybe you will even use your new assembly skills to put the houses together the way you want them, but there needs to be a way to fixate things, because otherwise you would just be able to move houses with people living inside.

Ganon wants to eradicate all of Hyrule? Well, you're going to fight it with cheap housing! Or maybe you won't, so let's not get ahead ourselves here. In any case, the car probably is meant to be more than just an inconvenient replacement for the Master Cycle Zero. It really looks like it's meant for some heavy transport.

And vehicles may not be the only thing that Link is putting together in good, old DIY fashion. There is the possibility that you will be collecting all the Zonai stuff to upgrade your weapons as well, or to craft new ones entirely. If you look at the bottom of the cannon in the screenshot above, you can see a similar symbol as on the wheels and propellers from the improvised vehicles. It's also the same symbol as on the Eyegore sky golem:

It looks a bit like a brush and maybe this is an indicator of things that can be used for assembly. So far I've assumed that this golem is meant to be an enemy, but maybe this is something that you can create yourself as an ally. But we've already seen in the new trailer that you will be facing another golem monster in a battle. Alternatively, it's something that you fight for parts and the piece in the middle can be used for some other device.

If this system also included materials, then this would be a good way of continuing and combining the durability and material systems from Breath of the Wild, which is a common suggestion. I'm personally not a fan of weapon repairing, especially if you have to do it elsewhere, but crafting new stuff out of the collected materials could be a fun idea and complement what we already had in the previous game quite nicely.

It may even be the gameplay reason why the monsters from Breath of the Wild have grown all those weird headpieces now. These might theoretically be materials for crafting new weapons, which also explains why you couldn't do it before in Breath of the Wild.