Just like its physics system, players’ experiences came together naturally.
Aron Garst Twitter: @GarstProduction
on May 12, 2024 at 7:00AM PDT
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is celebrating its one-year anniversary today, May 12, 2024. Below, we look at how its playful sense of experimentation is still leading to new discoveries.
There is no single file for “wagon noise” within The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. At no point in your travels throughout Hyrule will you hear a single track that was meant to replicate the sound of creaking wood moving along a dirt path. That’s because Tears of the Kingdom’s audio system is designed to operate just like its complex physics system. Sounds that happen naturally in the world–wheels turning and hooves stomping, for example–come together just like the wheels and cart themselves. They create a harmonious sound that is made up as you play.
It’s a charming example that showcases the brilliance prevalent throughout Tears of the Kingdom. All prime facets of the game, including exploratory segments and the innovative physics-based crafting system, propel player inventiveness and offer a liberty which is essentially infinite. Players conjure up their strategies on the fly for a majority of their journey.
In the beginning, Tears of the Kingdom might have seemed slightly underwhelming in comparison with its phenomenal predecessor, Breath of the Wild. However, the resourcefulness rooted in Tears of the Kingdom’s mechanics transcended this initial perception, demonstrating a year post-release, the depth of possibilities the game contains. This depth is something even the developers find astonishing.
“On first previewing the prototype, I guessed it was going to be an incredible game, but simultaneously I was aware of the immense challenge it posed,” expressed Tears of the Kingdom’s lead physics engineer, Takahiro Takayama, during a chat at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this year. “I questioned myself: Is this a task we’re seriously undertaking? The development phase is going to be utter mayhem. My concerns amplified the more I contemplated. It dawned on me that sometimes, it’s pivotal to muster the courage to plough through.” This was followed by Takayama unveiling a compilation of uncontrollably bugged snippets from the initial development stages of Tears of the Kingdom. “As predicted, everything disintegrated.”
Gamers have strived to exploit every single aspect of Tears of the Kingdom, in attempts to overcome a challenge, defeat an adversary, or craft something spectacularly beautiful.
Take Link’s customizable home near Tarrey Town, for example. Players have the freedom to place sections of the house, including water features, various rooms, and stairs, in whatever manner they please. People have created symmetrical masterpieces and modern marvels that feel straight out of contemporary Los Angeles. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Attach a few stone slabs together to create makeshift scaffolding and suddenly you have a way to make one of Hyrule’s only floating houses. After a bit of construction and plenty of Ascension use, Link’s house will literally sit in the sky, giving you an unobscured view of everything Tarrey Town has to offer.
It’s such a small segment of Tears of the Kingdom – all you do with your house is store weapons, horses, and take the occasional nap, anyways – but players have experimented with the entire Zonai device catalog in order to see what was possible with Link’s abode.
One of the first methods involved using Zonai rockets and hover stones to shoot Link’s house into the sky and then keep it in place by activating the stones. Players found that ending the construction phase of setting up your home left the house in the air.
Undoubtedly, the exploration of Zonai devices constitutes the backbone of Tears of the Kingdom. The design of the shrine setup prominently features these devices. Even now, the desire for innovation amongst players continues to unveil novel findings. It was only a month back when a player decided to resort to an age-old strategy: when everything fails, destroy it.
Located on an airborne isle near the requisite shrine, they attached a bomb, a rocket and a wish to the jewel before making use of the Ultrahand to set the device straight. Subsequently, they ignited the rocket and lit the bomb’s fuse concurrently. Their intent was to manipulate the flight course of the gem. The result surpassed all expectations.
The jewel ascended in line with the rocket before being hurled in the shrine’s direction by the force of the bomb’s explosion. A brief spell of silence, and the game auto-transported them to the shrine as the gem landed precisely at its intended location- right in front of the shrine’s main entrance. An occurrence, which could only seem plausible in Tears of the Kingdom.
“Honestly, it was my first attempt,” declared Redditor liftingrussian. “I was just keen to check if it would yield any results.”
That curiosity is what Nintendo’s game so expertly engenders. While Tears of the Kingdom has a structured narrative, the meat of the experience is finding out what’s possible. Can you make a massive bridge of ice blocks by combining this longsword with a Frost Gleeok Horn? Absolutely. Can you glue seven gliders together and still fly them across the sky? Hard to say, but it’s worth a try.
Nintendo aimed to create multiplicative gameplay with Tears of the Kingdom, which it boils down to “sticking two things together to make something new.” It doesn’t matter what those two things are–or even if it’s 12 things–you’ll always find something entertaining that will push your experience forward when you’re experimenting with Tears of the Kingdom.
Players were finding new ways to take out Guardians in Breath of the Wild with amazing trickshots years after it initially launched. We will surely see players come up with new contraptions, new discoveries, and, above all, new experiences long past this first year of Tears of the Kingdom.
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