![Link looks at his arm as the sun sets.](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,q_60,w_645/4cb5dc8b6503f3d3e014b3e1b9a45e09.jpg)
After years of waiting, Nintendo finally pulled back the curtain a little more on what fans can expect from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A snazzy new gameplay trailer revealed a ton, including a world that’s more than just a reskin of the one from Breath of the Wild.
It starts with an unknown voice calling on its minions to destroy the world, followed later on by Zelda warning Link that he might not be table to take on the new threat poised by the strange zombified demon who sure bears a resemblance to Ganondorf from earlier Zelda games. Plus there’s Link riding a hot air balloon, tractor, and more. What it didn’t mention was that Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo’s first $70 game. That detail was buried in Nintendo’s official press release.
Here’s the new trailer:
Previous trailers made it clear that Link will be taking to the skies in much of Tears of the Kingdom, both in terms of teleporting up to floating islands and making use of a new glider to cover long distances. The hero of time also sports a new magic glove this time around which augments some of the physics-based abilities from the first game and even includes a flamethrower mode.
First teased back at E3 2019, Tears of the Kingdom grew out of plans for an expansion to Breath of the Wild. It eventually became a full-fledged sequel with a planned release window of 2022. Last year, however, producer Eiji Aonuma announced that the game wouldn’t come out until 2023, apologizing to fans for the delay. Nintendo also revealed the official title of the game, eliciting millions of headshakes from everyone who had already grown accustomed to calling it BotW 2.
At 29 million lifetime sales, Breath of the Wild is the best-selling Zelda game Nintendo has ever released by far. At just over six years, the gap between its launch and Tears of the Kingdom’s May 13 release date is also the longest in the series’ history. In the recent past, new Zelda games have bridged console generations like the jump from the GameCube to the Wii and the shift from the Wii U to the Switch. So far, however, there’s no “Switch Pro” or “Switch 2” in sight, much to the dismay of many fans eager for a more powerful device.
Hopefully the wait will have been worth it. And hopefully it runs okay on the aging Switch hardware.