The Final 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom' Trailer: Oh. My. God.

Bloody hell, they really saved the best for last!

I’ve been on a bit of a journey during this promotional cycle for the sequel to 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That game, one of the greatest ever released on any system, was a key part of my getting back into video games after many years of gradually increasing distance. By its design, Breath of the Wild was such a raw distillation of the sheer joy of play that it was almost singlehandedly responsible for not just snapping my dormant gamer synapses back into life, but having them spread and multiply in response to the brilliance on show.

We all knew that, eventually, another Zelda game would come. As long as video games exist there will be Zelda titles. But as the idea/hope/rumors grew that the follow-up to the wildly successful Breath of the Wild might well be a direct sequel and not, as is most often the case, a brand new title with a different take on the world and characters, the reaction was a mixture of excitement and trepidation. BOTW was a minor miracle of a game, revolutionising open world design by stripping back the busy work that had crept in over the years and instead infusing the genre with a sense of freedom and possibility the likes of which had never really been seen. What could Nintendo possibly add to that recipe that would build on it in a way that felt similarly horizon-expanding? Wouldn’t revisiting the same version of Hyrule be, by its very nature, much less exciting?

The previous trailer for the game finally revealed the extent of some of the new abilities and world features that will be seen in Tears of the Kingdom. And it was exciting! We finally saw the sky islands in some detail. We saw how some of Link’s new powers would work—the ability to rewind time for certain objects looked great; the ability to fuse objects together felt huge! But despite all that, I personally still had some reservations. I couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t enough.

I also had a very strong feeling that Nintendo were holding back a lot.

I was right.

Yesterday, the final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom dropped, and—it. is. a. LOT! To list all the stuff in this thing that makes my gamer brain do cartwheels would be exhausting. Just drink it all in. It’s immense:

Tears of the Kingdom is out 12 May 2023