Nintendo was back this week with their big Septmber 2022 Nintendo Direct, and that final ‘One more thing…’ was the news we’d all been waiting for, we finally got the title and release date for the game formerly known as Breath of the Wild 2. While the gameplay was short, there was still enough details packed into that trailer to send Legend of Zelda fans wild, and today I’m going to comb through all the details, as we can now pin the date in our calendars. It’s May 12th 2023, and we’re all looking forward to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Before we get into it today let me know in the comments what you think of the name, what do you think it means, and what do you think of the release date?

Without further delay, first of all today, let’s have a look at that trailer from Nintendo.

Tears of the Kingdom trailer Analysis

We open the trailer focusing on a mural, and we’re looking at a large creature of some kind. This creature appears to have large ears, plus it’s etchings look similar to Zonai markings we’ve seen in Breath of the Wild. The scene fades in and out, with that familiar dust in the air shining, then we cut to Bokoblins and Moblins standing over what look to be an ancient people, laying dead on the ground. There are humanoid characters too, one laying on the ground appearing to be dead, others with swords and shields. It looks like there is an assualt taking place.

Another fade in and out and we focus one again on the big chaarcter with the large ears. This looks like a god of somekind, perhaps a Zonai god. Surrounding this character appear to be quote marks, or perhaps in reference to the title, these could be tears. Seven is a big number in the Legend of Zelda series, and this character is srrounded by seven of these tear or quote etchings. While we don’t know the identity of this character yet, we can deduce this is going to be a central character in Tears of a Kingdom. Whether this is our new big bad, an overacrching evil, or a force for good, we don’t know… but I don’t think we’ve seen this figure before.

We cut again, and this time we see a female character. She appears to be unconscious and raised up into the air. The depiction here on the mural reminded me a lot of Princess Zelda, when Demise was trying to steal her energy in Skyward Sword, she was unconcious and raised into the air much like this. It’s likely this is a reference to Princess Zelda, or perhaps the Godess Hylia herself. It’s notable that the female character’s hair is long here, and in the trailers we’ve seen for Tears of a Kingdom, Zelda’s hair has been shorter. Therefore this is likely to be a reference to a past Zelda.

Another fade in and out and we see the same female character holding hands, or joined with another character, but we don’t get to see the identity of this character. Is it Link? It is Ganondorf? Is it the new creature with the long ears, or perhaps a member of the Zonai tribe?

The trailer then moves on from close up shots of a mural, to Link opening two big doors, almost like he’s at the exit of a Dungeon. He’s high up in amongst the sky islands, sun blazing in the background. Link starts to sprint forward. This is long-haired Link we’ve seen before. He’s also wearing the Champion’s Tunic, or a variation of the tunic. We can see his arm is still altered, like we’ve seen in the E3 2021 trailer. He’s got something on his hip, which appears to be a container of some sort, it looks to be a multi-faceted container. This could be a source of energy, or something that replaces the Shiekah Slate. It could be a container for the literal Tears of the Kingdom, or perhaps it’s a magic container with a power source for Link’s new arm and abilities. We don’t know for sure just yet, but we’ll find out in the coming months as we build up to launch.

Link takes a diving leap off the platform in the sky and dives towards Hyrule below. The diving sequence is so similar to Skyward Sword. Link dives head first into the clouds before opening his body like a sky diver. We don’t see how Link lands or manages to fly through the sky as we cut a scene to Link jumping onto a concrete platform. Link holds onto this platform and its going upwards into the sky, rather than falling down. We’ve seen this reversal mechanic used before in the E3 2021 trailer, where Link was sending a spiked ball back from where it came from. Here an entire platform appears to be reversing upwards from where it came, perhaps on Link’s command. This looks like it’s going to be a major new gameplay mechanic in Tears of the Kingdom, with Link having the ability to manipulate objects through time, specifically reversing some items. Whether we are limited to certain items, or how Link initiates this movement is yet unknown, but the potential for this mechanic is huge when it comes to puzzles, traversal and overall gameplay in the latest Zelda game. Out of all the things we’ve seen, this is the one that gets me the most excited.

We see Link grab onto this rock and move upwards into the sky. As Link is holding on for dear life, we can see a structure in the background surrounded by dark clouds. It looks like a shrouded sky temple of some kind. I don’t know if this is a dungeon, or perhaps Link going into a Dungeon, but it looks big, and also looks dangerous and very ominous in the background. Earlier in the trailer we saw seven items surrounding the creature with long ears. The seven items could be seven things we have to collect from seven dungeons throughout the game. One major criticism of Breath of the Wild was the lack of Dungeons, and it looks like Tears of the Kingdom is going to rectify that. We don’t have proof just yet, and I’d almost like it if Nintendo didn’t give us those details prior to the game releasing. I’d love to get into the next Zelda game and discover these details.

We move on and we can see Link climbing, this time he’s not in his traditional Champion’s Tunic, this time he’s climbing up a root and he’s dressed in a similar manner to the delay trailer Link. This time he has very long hair, longer it seems than before, his hair is down and he has strappings tied to his arms and legs.

Cut once again and Link is sky diving, although this time he lands on a flying vehicle of some kind. It looks like a wing of some sort, and it appears to be made of wood. It’s different to the glider we’ve used in Breath of the Wild, and the closest thing I can describe it as is the flying machine used by the Green Goblin in Spider-Man comics and movies. Could this be a flying mount we use in the game to fly through the sky? On the ground I assume we’re still going to have horses, but to fly around in the sky, we could be about to get a flying mount in the Legend of Zelda.

Two glowing Dragons then encircle Link, which take on the etching style, and then merge together to form a circle. The text ‘The Legend of Zelda’ fades in, with the Master Sword on the left hand side having a familiar top half, but the bottom half is looking rather strange, almost digital, with a hint ofn Twilight Princess design to it. The title then fades in and we now know the title is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and we’re all going to be able to play it on 12th May 2023.

Major points

There are a few headlines from the trailer, and major things we should take note of.

Mural

Much of the trailer focused on the mural, and it looks like there is a lot of story packed in there. We have this new character with the big ears, surrounded by what could be the Tears of the Kingdom, or something else. They are surrounded by seven items, which look important. From this one scene we could deduce there’s a god-like creature or character who’s going to be central to the story, plus there are seven items which hold equal importance. Perhaps we have to beat seven dungeons to collect the seven items to beat this creature. Or maybe we need these seven items to power up the master sword and make it whole again? I think the most likely scenario is we collect these items or tears, and they are used to either wake up Princess Zelda, or used to defeat this creature.

Action in the Sky

While we knew there would be much more action in the sky for this game, this trailer opened my eyes as to how much action is going to be in the game. The sky islands appear to be plentiful, plus much of the gameplayb we’ve seen of Link has been him skydiving or traversing through the sky on this new sky mount or Green Goblin style glider.

Link

While this trailer was short, we still saw a couple of Link designs. We have one Link in a Champion’s Tunic, and one Link wearing another set of clothes or armour. Whether this is a different Link or the same Link, we don’t yet know. One appears to have longer hair than the other, although whenever we see Champion’s Tunic wearing Link he has his hair up and into a ponytail, so it’s possible this is the same Link throughout the trailers. It’s also possible there are two Links and we have to travel between them in some way.

First impressions of the title

I like it. I’m glad Nintendo didn’t go for Breath of the ‘Something’ and they have a unique title for the game. Tear of the Kingdom uses a similar structure from a sentence point of view, e.g. ‘something’ of the ‘something’. I did discuss the title a few videos ago, but I don’t think anyone got close to tears of the kingdom. There’s a couple of ways this could be taken… Are they literal tears? Tears of the inhabitants of Hyrule? Or are they some item that can be collected in a vile, perhaps used as a magic power source. We’ve seen seven items surrounding this new big character, so perhaps these are the Tears of the Kingdom. Let me know what you think of the title.

Why the trailer wasn’t live-streamed in the UK?

One interesting point of the Nintendo Direct was it wasn’t live-streamed here in the UK. It should have been lived streamed at 3pm, although Nintendo said rather than do that they were going to drop it one hour later as an ondemand video on YouTube. It’s most likely because of the timing of our Queen dying, and the UK being in a state of national mourning at the moment, as we build up to her funeral on Monday 19th September 2022. ‘Tears of the Kingdom’ is such a huge conincidence when it comes to the Queen dying. This is an event that hasn’t happened for 70 years, and the unfortunate timing of this release info combined with a Monarch passing away is about a million-to-one shot, but it happened.

Let me know in the comments what you thought of the trailer, and let me know where your hype levels are for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

That’s it for the Title and Release Date trailer breakdown for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. For more Zelda content like this check out Triforce Times on YouTube and subscribe today.