Friday, April 14, 2023

Tears of the Kingdom – Trailer #3 Analysis & Reaction

Link gliding through the air next to the game's logo

My hopes and fears about the final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom came true, where this is on the exact same lines as the infamous Nintendo Switch Presentation Trailer from early 2017. It's absolutely epic, offers some fantastic music, features many different scenes in a fast pace, and it really hypes you up for the game. But it also shows quite a lot, maybe more than you want to see in advance. I'm actually wondering if it's now safe to look at the leaked artbook, because the trailer covers all its contents already...

Anyway, I'll go through the trailer bit by bit to share some thoughts and discoveries. I might talk about some topics in more detail later on, but this trailer has simply so many things going on that it won't be feasible to talk about all of them in individual posts. And I personally don't want to overanalyze things when were are just four weeks away from the game (though, I might do just that anyway)... 

Update: since I keep watching the trailer like an obsessed person and keep seeing new things, this post gets regularly updated. Bear with me here...

Ranger Contruct felling a golden tree on a sky island

So, the Constructs are basically just small Links, eh? They destroy the environment and fight off Chuchus. But it's interesting that this Ranger Construct is felling a tree. In the gameplay we could see one of them doing some gardening basically, where they are like the janitors of the sky islands. But what is it cutting down this tree for? Do they need the wood? Or will this be like the villagers in Animal Crossing, where they pretend to do things, but never really get anything done? I'm probably just going to watch them do their work to see what comes out of it...

After Link lands on the ground in the trailer they focus for the first time on what has changed in Hyrule since the last game. It won't put away any thoughts of "this could have been just DLC", but it's interesting nonetheless. Let's start with Hateno:

Hateno with lots of mushrooms... people have mushroom hats, there are mushroom decorations everywhere

Looks like it became an advertisement for the Super Mario Bros. Movie (I've heard it's really good and I'm going to watch it myself soon). Well, not the whole town is affected, but it seems like the shops are going with a serious mushroom theme for some reason. I'm still convinced that Link's house will be gone and maybe there is an opening to some underground mushroom world there, where we've already seen some giant fungi in the previous trailer.

It looks like there is less snow around the cedar tree hills, confirming once more that the game take's place during a warmer season. We could already see this with the Great Plateau, where parts of Mount Hylia aren't covered in snow any longer, maybe the entire mountain.

I also love how they put a tower on top of Mount Lanayru, giving that location a new reason to pay it a visit. Naturally, this will apply to many areas in the game, where it will be important to make old place interesting again. Re-using the same world from the previous game will be without a doubt the biggest point of criticism about Tears of the Kingdom, even more so than "but my weapons still break", where hopefully they will mix things up as much as possible to a point where it all feels completely different and without a doubt wouldn't have worked as DLC.

And putting some tents into Hyrule Castle Town probably won't do the trick. It will be nice that you can now experience the ruins without Malice and Guardians haunting the place, but this is easily something where they could have done more. It doesn't seem like the game takes place all too long after Breath of the Wild.

Curiously, you can spot Mount Lanayru in the distance, but it doesn't have a tower on it. Will these towers be something that you activate one by another? I personally don't even like that they've brought the towers back in the first place, because that's something completely overdone in Breath of the Wild, so I hope that not just their locations will change, but also the functionality.

Kakariko covered in fallen ruins with a giant round building above Lantern Lake

Moving on to Kakariko, where it looks like the Sheikah dodged a giant temple-shaped bullet. This certainly creates a new landmark right there...

I'm currently replaying Breath of the Wild and I've done what Link is doing in this shot just the other day: climbing the hills around Kakariko. And while most of them have something to offer, like a chest or a Korok Seed, the prominent ones behind Impa's house have NOTHING. There is absolutely nothing there, except for an Eightfold Blade on top of the largest hill... It's just so disappointing. So, I love what they've done with the place, because it looks like it will be definitely worth the climb in the sequel. Maybe you can even go up there much more quickly via Ascend, where these ruins might provide an angle.

Overall there is a lot of empty space in Breath of the Wild, where Tears of the Kingdom can and hopefully will work with that. There are entire areas, like these hills above the Lantern Lake, with nothing to them, not even a treasure chest...

some ruins with water and red mountains in the background

I love how every well-known Zelda Youtuber immediately shouted "Thyphlo Ruins!" during the above scene (I like watching reactions). I personally was completely dumbfounded at first about where this place is supposed to be, where it looked like a fourth spring to me. But this is definitely the Thyphlo Ruins, where we already saw in the last trailer how they are not shrouded in fake darkness any longer. I don't think that I've talked about this before, but I just like that we get to experience the place normally.

You can also see the giant tornado above the Hebra Mountain in the distance. Previously it seemed like it will move around Hyrule, but in this trailer it seems to be fixed around the Hebra region.

a giant temple structure covered in sand

Now things are getting exciting, where we can see a huge temple come out of the ground in the Gerudo Desert. I've seen some people suggesting that these are the Arbiter's Grounds, but there is one of these green vortexes there now and the massive temple is appearing to the northwest of them.

My theory is that this is supposed to be the Pyramid of Power, because this structure looks a lot like a pyramid to me. Maybe they will bring back the story idea of Four Swords Adventures, where Ganondorf picks up his Trident from this place. He was shown to wield one in the stone carvings, but so far we haven't seen him with it. It would make sense if he were also trying to become even stronger after his long slumber, mirroring Link's position in Breath of the Wild.

Hyrule Castle rising in the distance and some Sheikah watching from a top of a hill

We've already seen Hyrule Castle rise a couple of times, but this isn't what I want to talk about. There is another one of these house building spots to the left! They seem to be everywhere, where this certainly will be an important side quest in the game. Well, you probably won't be able to build houses / villages anywhere you want, which is why there are these fixed spots, but this still might be interesting. It could be a bit like in The Minish Cap, where you build these houses (yourself) and then find people to live in them.

Ganondorf with a mane of red glowing hair in front of a giant red Blood Moon explosion

Now, that looks like Demise! Of course we also see Ganondorf later in the trailer and he might just be in some sort of weird Blood Moon / Malice state, but in the least they are trying to invoke a clear visual reference to his origins. I would love it if he were to turn into Demise over the course of the game, though, going full circle.

Link in Flamebreaker Armor running towards some ruins in a underground lava cave

We have seen very little of the underground so far, where it has the potential to be even more impressive than the sky islands. This shot in particular feels huge, where it seems to take place somewhere in the Death Mountain area. But the volcano is spouting Malice, so it might be someplace else.

I'm not a big fan that they've brought back so many armor sets from Breath of the Wild. He has the Flamebreaker Armor in this shot, but we can also see him wearing the full Snowquill set right after. It feels a bit uninspired and it won't be much fun to collect and upgrade the same armor pieces again (and I'm saying that as someone on his third run through Breath of the Wild, but maybe that's the problem).

some viking ship next to a storm cloud

Okay, the last thing I expected from the giant storm cloud is viking ships flying around it... This is essentially just confirming that the sky islands came straight out of the Great Sea from The Wind Waker, right? But this will be – with all certainty – one of those "I've seen this in the trailer"-moments, where I wish that I could delete it from my short-term memory. It's something very curious, which probably would have blown me away while playing the game, but that surprise is gone.

Right now I'm just wondering who has built this. Of course the first instinct is to scream "Zonai, Zonai!" with everything mysterious that they've shown us, but the design looks like something made by the Rito. It has a bird figurehead and lots of arrow markings, while Link is also wearing the Rito set in this shot... It will be interesting to find out what's the deal here.

But it adds up with what we saw earlier, where the giant storm cloud is at Hebra. There could be a similar change to Rito Village as in Age of Calamity, where everything got covered in snow.

Link entering a water bubble in the sky

A lot of the sky islands seem to feature some Jump 'n' Run style obstacle courses. We can see these water bubbles from another angle in a different scene later, where Link is jumping between some platforms with reduced gravity.

I've seen some speculations that this game will do more with underwater gameplay, but I wouldn't expect too much. There will definitely be something, since you can seemingly use Ascend while submerged, probably in order to resurface, but so far nothing suggests that the swimming controls will be on the same level as the sky diving. Speaking of...

Link in a wingsuit diving through a tunnel full of red lasers

[Insert Mission Impossible reference here.] This shaft is long... very long. Of course this could be inside an equally long sky island, but I'm guessing that this is something that leads deep down into the earth. But how deep will we be going? This is crazy. It reminds me a bit of the near-endless falling sequence with Ridley in Metroid Prime 3, only deadlier. The rings with the lasers have Zonai markings on them, suggesting that this might be one of their defensive mechanisms.

The wingsuit is something that I already have seen before with the few glimpses that I took into the leaked artbook. Makes me wonder if some people in the development team used these things in real life to get a feel for it, like they did with horses. But it completely makes sense as a new type of armor in the sky setting, where this probably will give you better control while sky diving.

Link pushing a lever inside a giant sphere

This seems to take place inside the "Death Star" that we can see later on and which was also visible in the distance previously. But why is there a ball dispenser? What are they for? You could spot one of these during Aonuma's gameplay presentation, after he was using Ascend to get on top of the hill, so it's definitely not just in this spherical island.

I swear... if they bring back the figurine collecting from The Minish Cap, I'm going to cry. Collect 900 more Koroks? Count me in! Grind for some Gacha machine? No, thank you!

But we can see similar balls used for the water bubbles, so they simply might have some utility to them and you can get them from these ball dispensers for some Ultrahand usage. On the other hand, we know that these things get marked on your map as a shop icon, so that's probably not it.

Now we're flying through a Lomei Labyrinth, which have taken off into the sky in this game. Going through this footage makes me realize how little I've talked about the previous trailers, really, because it's another thing that was already shown there. And this is a clever way of adding some novelty to these giant mazes, where they also appear to be much larger this time.

The Island Lomei Labyrinth had this huge hidden room deep down, which already showed that there is more to these structures than what you already could explore in Breath of the Wild... But these were fantastic 3D mazes, where I can't wait to see how they've changed after becoming sky islands.

Link riding towards Fort Hateno, where people are fighting against monsters

Things get more and more interesting as the trailer progresses, where we're not even half-way through yet... In Breath of the Wild NPCs could fight against monsters, but this was very limited, where you only got the occasional travelers fighting some Bokoblins here and there. It looks like Tears of the Kingdom will heavily expand upon that, where we might get some actual battles. And every combatant looks fully unique, where this will give the next Hyrule Warriors a run for its money.

Anyway, we basically have another battle at Fort Hateno at our hands here, where Link is charging in with some Zonai spear. They again use Epona for all the horse scenes, which lets me hope that she will have an active role in the game and not just be some amiibo extra.

Link riding a round elevator with blue lights

Suddenly we're back to Sheikah technology, which has been a rare sight before. In fact, we only saw it once during the previous trailer, where this seems to be the follow-up. Someone (maybe Robbie) has build an elevator out of Guardian parts, which Link is now riding with very high speed. We're going up here, but this could be after already going down somewhere.

Come to think of it, there were all the Sheikah Shrines hidden deep underground as well. It would be cool if there was like an underground area where you can find their remains.

Update: I didn't see this the first time, but Link is holding a Sheikah Slate during this sequence, connected to a spool, which was handed to you by a Guardian arm. According to Zeltik's analysis the runes on the walls translate to "tower", where he speculates that this could take place inside the new Sheikah Towers.

a lizardman staring you down

Zonai, Zonai! No, for real, this is probably our very first look at a Zonai in person. I suspect that this is the same character who later talks to Zelda in the trailer. Their dark skin color is also the same tone as Link's restored arm, which could mean that he is part Zonai now.

So, they are essentially dragon people? On first glance it looked like lizardmen to me, where it would be another humanoid tribe based on an animal, after getting fishmen with the Zora and bird people with the Rito. Though, we already had the Tokay as humanoid lizards in the Oracle games, so this can't be it... (They should bring the Tokay back.)

Given how important the Zonai are to the whole game, it's likely that these are humanoid dragons and it makes sense for the sky setting. The Aeralfos in the City of the Sky come immediately to mind, where these enemies probably won't make a return to not be confused here...

Overall I hope that they will make something more lasting out of the Zonai, because I personally was never a fan of the one-time tribes, who are only important to one game's story, only to never appear again, like the Minish, the Twili, or the Lokomo. But this would also debunk all the theories that the Twili and the Zonai are one and the same, because the Twili clearly weren't dragons.

Anyway, it looks like this is a flashback to a battle. Maybe the Zonai have fought Ganondorf in the past and it didn't go so well for them.

a giant Construct coming out of the wall

Now that's just Gohdan all over again. It's a giant Construct, where this potentially could be a boss fight. Moving on...

the Sanctum, fully restored

I guess this will be a subtle scene to most people, but Link standing inside the sparkly Sanctum was probably the one of the biggest "wtf"-moment for me in the trailer. Link has a Zonai shield here and his Zonai arm, so this isn't a flashback. But this is the place that got completely wrecked at the end of Breath of the Wild.

It could be an illusion, but maybe Ganondorf just wants to make the people of Hyrule look bad. All they could do after months is set up some tents in Hyrule Castle Town. Let him be king for a couple of days and Hyrule Castle is restored to its former glory... It might be floating in the sky on a cloud of Malice, but let's not be nitpicky here.

This has me worried that the trailer is showing us very late game stuff, however. Bad Nintendo! Bad!

some large figure placing his dark green hand on Zelda's shoulder

Zelda has received a Zonai princess makeover and she is talking to what resembles the large figure from the stone carvings. It's not the exact same one, obviously, where it's also not the same Zelda, since she has short hair now. But her company is likely a Zonai and maybe also the same one that we have seen a bit earlier.

They both have these tear-like objects on them, which clearly will have some big importance to the story. And they are not the only characters in the trailer with these tears.

Link has fused a Royal Shield to a Royal Claymore. Now this is getting imbalanced, because you can shield with a two-handed weapon now.

Link flying above a sky island that looks like the Death Star

I just liked this shot of the spherical island, where this is probably the same place with the ball dispenser from earlier, only from the outside. But if you look at the background you can see Zora's Domain, which looks like it's sunken in mud...

I could be wrong here, but from the looks of it there is a catastrophe happening to all the different tribes: the snow storm for the Rito, the rising pyramid in the Gerudo Desert, the Malice at Death Mountain, the disappeared Deku Tree, and the mud in Zora's Domain.

Link dodging a rotating orb of fire

When Link dodges the round fireball thingy in the underground, it just looks like some enemy on first glance, but you can actually spot some Gorons at the entrance. So, this is possibly one of their tests again, though Link should not be in a position to prove himself worthy to them any longer.

The one who is doing the attack might be a Goron, but after the flames are gone it looks more alien, like something surrounded by a web, almost like a leopard pattern. And it does have a symbol on it that resembles the Fire Medallion a bit. But it's hexagonal and looks more like a bird's claw.

Link and Tulin flying upwards through a stormy area

Speaking of birds, we're back to the snowy storm cloud with the flying ships, but this time Link gets accompanied by Teba's son, Tulin, who will seemingly take on the mantle of the Champion descendant this time. This makes you wonder what happened to Teba... Probably nothing good.

The Expansion Pass for Age of Calamity had this little chapter where Tulin followed Teba into the past, which seemed really weird and out of place at the time. But they probably knew already at the time that Tulin is going to be more important going forward, which is why they wanted to feature him somehow next to his dad. Sucks for Teba, of course, but I personally always thought that he was the most boring out of the "Champion descendants" or whatever you might want to call them, where Tulin could be more fun.

Anyway, we can also see how the flying ships get utilized as trampolines. They have horizontal sails, and Link and Tulin launch up from one of them.

Epona pulling a self-made carriage with four people sitting on it

After the introduction to the vehicle crafting, this was to be expected: you will have to transport people and probably also goods from A to B. This is going to be Spirit Tracks all over again! Now, at least you won't have to abide by some traffic rules and maybe people won't get made at you this time, just because some Bokoblins hit them once or twice...

Link holding on to a rocket...

Well, if someone complains, maybe you can just attach them to a rocket and shoot them up in the sky, together with the fans who have complained about building cars, because Nintendo apparently couldn't care less about them. You're getting space ships in Zelda now! To the moon!

But you gotta love video game physics in any case. Link can just dive into some river from hundreds of meters up in the air. Or he can just hold on to a rocket, which normally would just rip his arm off. And that's not even his cool new dragon dude arm! But it seems like you can simply attach handles to things via the Ultrahand and then grab it. This should be useful. (Update: it might actually be a shield fused to a rocket.)

This scene takes place on Eventide Island, by the way, where the Bokoblins certain were busy with upgrading their fortifications. Link would not be able to climb these towers in Breath of the Wild, since he can't hang on to ceilings, and maybe this is exactly what the Bokoblins were hoping for. Too bad that he got an upgrade in the form of Ascend. Poor, little Bokoblins...

Link fighting against a Construct in a minecart from a minecart of his own on tracks going in parallel

Here is something to put you in the mood for the next shot. We're getting the minecart battles back from Tri Force Heroes, baby! It seems like there is something from every Zelda game in this trailer, doesn't it? But this is fun, where both carts have a propeller attached to them. Did the Construct place it there itself? Can they do this? I mean, they seemingly can fell trees and maybe even fuse weapons from what we've seen. It feels like the Construct were made to be as versatile as Link himself.

In the background to the left there is one of these weird green and red organic cocoons from the previous trailer, where this was at Death Mountain, also near a rail track. It might even be all connected, where you will be creating a self-propelled mine-cart and then go into the depths of Death Mountain.

And to the right it seems like it's going towards a different underground area, looking more similar to the mushroom world from the last trailer. This could mean that there is indeed one giant underworld in this game, where everything is connected, kind of like the underworld in the original The Legend of Zelda, except that there are no walls between the dungeons.

Link riding a giant rock with wheels and robot arms against a fortified Talus

This scene had me laughing out loud when I first saw the trailer. It's just so absolutely ridiculous, as much as it is fun. I can already see how this came to be, with Miyamoto charging into the office and shouting, "let's put Project Giant Robot in there!"

Well, why not? Let's just throw everything into this game, no matter how ludicrous it might be. If this doesn't give me the Super Hookshot, because "it would have broken the game", I'm going to be mad. We're beyond breaking Breath of the Wild. It's rockets and giant robots now! And I'm not complaining. I can't wait to steamroll Bokoblins with my self-made Mother Brain. Which very likely will be possible with this laser thing:

an apparatus shooting lots of light green laser beams all over a Bokoblin camp

This looks like it's going to hurt and I'm not sure how you will be able to effectively utilize this without killing yourself. But I'm going to find out. Oh, there is another Bokoblin with a mining backpack, seemingly filled with Amber. Speaking of the minerals...

Link firing a self-made fire arrow from horseback

This scene confirms something that we could already hope after the gameplay demonstration. The different minerals all had elemental properties in Breath of the Wild, but the game didn't make much use of it, except for the jewelry. The Ruby Circlet for example kept you warm. But now you can make fire arrows out of Rubies, which is certainly something... I'd probably opt for Red Chuchu Jelly, however, which should be a lot cheaper.

Link has some cool new Zonai(?) armor here, from what it seems, which might be the replacement for the Barbarian set. It makes him look a bit like Loki with his helmet. It also could be based on one of the dragons, Dinraal in this case, which would make sense given the Zonai's obvious connections to the dragons

Back to Tulin, he and Link are facing a giant ice monster inside the tornado... They both have glowing elements on their gear, something based on Zonai tech probably. And this going to be interesting, where we didn't have many combat situations in the middle of the air in a Zelda game. Well, there was Levias in Skyward Sword and Vah Medoh in Breath of the Wild, but with the more intricate sky diving mechanics they are certainly going to give us more interesting monsters to fight while in the air.

Zelda holding a tear

"I know why I am here, it's something only I can do!" What's that, sealing powers? Well, I also know why I'm here and that is to analyze this way-too-long trailer. You would think that the trailer ends at this point, but no... Ganondorf chimes in right afterwards and the action keeps going.

Some parts may give you the impression that certain characters are going to playable, like Zelda here. But after the final trailer for Breath of the Wild I wouldn't want to jump to such conclusions again. It still makes you wonder how these scenes came to be. Will we be able to collect visions left by Zelda somehow?

In the Champions' Ballad we could obtain some of Zelda's memories, essentially, maybe this is going to be similar here. But it's clear that Zelda will have her own journey in Tears of the Kingdom, very similar to Skyward Sword. Only that this time she hopefully won't actively run away from you... Though, with Skyward Sword the team wanted to make a 2nd Quest, where Zelda is playable, and maybe they will follow up on the idea. But in the least we shouldn't have to wait until the credits to see her journey this time.

If you study the backgrounds during these scenes with her, you will notice that she is at the Great Plateau here, only on some new (floating?) temple structure.

Ganondorf shouting

Ganondorf is angry for sure. The glowing thing on his forehead is another tear. I believe that this scene is connected to the one from much earlier, where he looks like Demise. It's like he's absorbing the red Blood Moon energy (or whatever that is) to make himself even fiercer. I'm a bit worried that this is some scene from the late game, maybe even before your final confrontation. You can't be sure with Nintendo, they love to spoil things and it wouldn't be the first time that they show us the final boss of the game in advance.

Anyway, it could also simply be the scene where he summons all the new monsters to Hyrule, with the monologue that we've heard in the previous trailers. We also get to see Lynels for the first time here, who have antlers now, which makes them appear less threatening somehow. But all of these new horns are likely to be usable with the Fuse ability to create even more powerful weapons. 

It's also of note how this trailer mirrors the final trailer for Breath of the Wild in multiple ways, where Ganondorf's reveal is part of that. Back then they've showed us Zelda for the first time, now it was Ganondorf. And both times the music changed to the series main theme afterwards.

Now things are getting really interesting... This beautiful goddess is wearing the same Zonai garments as Zelda, but she doesn't appear to be Zonai, instead she appears to be Hylian with some powerful light magic. In the next scene we can see how some Moldugas are getting obliterated by a large beam of light, where this was seemingly done by the same person.

She is wearing the same yellow tear around her neck that Zelda has been holding in her hands a few scenes prior. My best guess is that is Zelda, who has transformed into the Goddess Hylia. That would make for an awesome 2nd Quest, though, where you just run around and light beam everything to death.

But if Ganondorf were to transform into Demise, Zelda could mirror his development in this game to re-enact the battle from the backstory to Skyward Sword. Some fans even believe that this game will effectively create a full circle for the timeline, which is what the double Ouoroborus in the logo represents. But if that's truly the case, the game needs to break out of that circle, because no one wants to end things in Skyward Sword.

Alternatively, this could be the princess from the stone carvings, so simply a Zelda from long ago. Since we might be getting flashbacks to this era, it's entirely possible that we're going to see various characters from that time.

Riju dual wielding Gerudo Scimitars

Riju is back and she is doing her best impression of Urbosa's Fury. She's also dual-wielding Gerudo Scimitars now, like the Gerudo in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. She also has grown quite a bit since the last game. On first glance I even thought this was meant to be Urbosa... And here it might be that it has been a couple of years since Breath of the Wild, not just a couple of months.

She must have accidentally cut her hair with those scimitars while training, however... In general I'm not a big fan of shorter haircuts for women, where Riju's long hair was pretty amazing, but at least the short hair for Zelda has grown on me after this trailer. Meanwhile, Ganondorf's evil scheme in this game is seemingly to get all the hair in the world for himself.

I can already see the next Hyrule Warriors game coming up, where Riju has a new moveset in addition to the one from Age of Calamity. It looks like Sidon has downgraded from that game, however, where now is only fighting with one Ceremonial / Lightscale Trident:

Link and Sidon fighting a Construct together

Fighting side by side with the Champion descendants is certainly going to be a thing, where Breath of the Wild left me off quite disappointed on that aspect. The game has focused on the Champions from 100 years ago quite a lot, especially with the DLC, but their potential successors never really had any chance to truly become their successors. Like, I completely expected them to accompany me into the Divine Beasts and pilot them at the end. But they didn't. They only helped you to get into the titans and then called it a day. It was super disappointing, but Tears of the Kingdom will hopefully make up for it.

Weirdly enough, Sidon seems to have the same "strings" around him as Tulin earlier. So, there is definitely some special mechanic going on here and more to it than just Link receiving help. The area also looks different from the usual sky islands, it looks more like Zora architecture, where this is probably meant to be a "sky dungeon" above Zora's Realm, similar to the tornado with the flying Rito ships above Hebra Mountains.

This is probably connected to the platforming passages that we can see earlier in the trailer, where there was also black goo flowing down. And maybe this is the cause of what has happened to Zora's Domain. The big "Splatoon" shark, which you also can see right after Ganondorf's reveal, may even be the source of the goo and the boss of the dungeon.

Riju and Sidon running side by side

Later we can even see Riju, Sidon, and Tulin fighting together. And in this scene they all seem to have a tear on them, where Sidon has a light blue tear on his left gauntlet and Riju has a tear for an earring. There is probably a number of characters in possession of these tears, maybe like the Sages in past Zelda games. That's most likely even it, where they are needed to seal Ganondorf once more and there could be seven in total, maybe even eight. But this means that we haven't seen all of them yet.

Well, another one is the Zonai guy who speaks to Zelda. And you can also spot the Boulder Breaker during the above part, which is most likely used by Yunobo or some other Goron. There will probably be also a Sheikah with a tear, hopefully Paya, and maybe also a Korok, like Hestu. And this would already be all of them.

Sidon wears the crown of a Zora king in the second scene, by the way, which doesn't bode well for King Dorephan. He doesn't have the tear, nor the crown in the first footage, so there is definitely some character development in place.

Okay, this is probably my favorite shot in the whole trailer. It just feels so wholesome. This ties back to the battle we saw earlier, where Link will join the people of Hyrule in a fight against hordes of monsters. This could be to defend villages and such, we don't know, but it certainly looks improvised.

Breath of the Wild had a random character generator and these guys came all straight out of this thing. I could imagine that the game will make use of "dispensable" NPCs, where it's just random characters that appear for these battles, so the player won't feel pressured to save everyone.

Link facing a three-headed dragon

Gleeok! We've already seen this boss during the last trailer, wandering the Bridge of Hylia, but this is awesome. If there's one thing that Breath of the Wild didn't really have, then it's boss variety. Of course it's too early to judge from the two or three bosses seen in this trailer, but it already beat the Blights by a mile.

I'm still hoping that we might get some other classic bosses back here, like Aquamentus, King Dodongo, Manhandla, and Gohma, but Gleeok is a boss that we haven't seen in 3D so far, unless you count Phantom Hourglass. And this debut is pretty fantastic.

After all the whacky stuff this scene is even something that could be described as classic fantasy, where a hero is facing some evil dragon monster. Note how Link uses some weird ice crystal sword. I wonder if this was made via Fuse or if it's some special weapon that you can find.


Conclusion

This post has gotten as long as some of my reviews, which just shows how much they've put into this trailer. It will certainly set the mood for the weeks to come and create the amount of hype that Nintendo was looking for.

No comments: