Tears of the Kingdom’s Depths are both enthralling and terrifying

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The first time I went down into the Depths in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I figured it would be a fairly straightforward experience. I had seen the glimpses of it in pre-release footage, with some lights staving off ever-present darkness, and figured it would be a neat side venture. A curiosity to explore, when my interest fell away from the overworld of sky islands.

Boy, was I wrong. The Depths aren’t just another location in Tears of the Kingdom. They are a massive addition, a second-half rounding out the world above. And the Depths bring a new, fascinating, terrifying kind of horror to the Zelda series.

Note: Mild location spoilers for the Depths will follow, but I’ll try to avoid any story-related spoilers.

An early side quest directs you to explore the Depths, as part of unlocking the camera function for the Purah Pad. Heading to the designated gloom-hole and leaping in, I felt good as I fell. But then I kept falling, and falling, and falling. It might have been seconds, but it felt so much longer.

This is the first great thing Tears of the Kingdom does to emphasize just how deep the Depths really are. Above ground, you can get a firm sense of height and space. If you’ve been following the main quest, you’ve already blasted Link out through the top of Purah’s Skyview Tower and fallen back down. You might have even encountered a hot air balloon or two, and you certainly have context for how high up the sky islands are.

So when you’re met with a comparable plummet heading down into the Depths, it emphasizes how far down this world is. The vertical scale is brought into stark relief. But where you could see for miles above ground, all that waits below is a deep, inky void.

It’s amazing what the absence