New Zelda game Tears of the Kingdom is like nothing we've seen before
ANALYSIS: Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series has been on the bleeding edge of gameplay innovation since the 1980s. In 2023, Tears of the Kingdom is probably going to continue that storied history.
I played 70 minutes of the game during a highly curated, in-person preview event held by Nintendo in the Chelsea neighbourhood of Manhattan. Journalists in attendance were the first outside of Nintendo's inner sanctum to have hands-on experience with the year's most anticipated title, which releases May 12.
Those minutes washed away any fear that this is a mere update to 2017's critical and commercial hit Breath of the Wild, which has sold more than 29 million copies and was often bought along with the Nintendo Switch console. Tears will bring many features never seen before in the series.
Zelda games in the past have set the agenda in the industry. Ocarina of Time from 1998 is often referred to as the Citizen Kane of video games, in part because it dictated how games will present fighting in 3D space, an influence that persists today, as in the upcoming big-budget Final Fantasy XVI.
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Breath of the Wild, the prequel to Tears, disrupted open-world game design, relying on player curiosity to determine the game's events rather than any script. This inspiration is felt throughout many games, including the Chinese online game Genshin Impact and last year's blockbuster surprise hit, Elden Ring, by FromSoftware and George R.R. Martin.
The demonstration gave us access to the Ultra Hand feature, which allows hero Link to build machines out of
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