Like previous games in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is no stranger to secrets. The game shares a vast open world with Breath of the Wild, but the addition of Sky Islands and The Depths gives The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom even more areas to explore.
Players can spend hundreds of hours enjoying the game’s content, enjoying the main story experience and uncovering the mysteries of Hyrule. Tears of the Kingdom is full of small details for eagle-eyed players to pick up on. Because the game is so full of content, though, there are many things that players could have missed during their playthroughs.
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Tears of the Kingdom Is Home to Some Obscure Details
Link is Canonically Nosy
The Legend of Zelda is full of interesting side characters and stories, making the world seem more real and enhancing the player’s immersion. Tears of the Kingdom is no different, offering players an insight into the day-to-day lives of Hyrule’s inhabitants. The world of Tears of the Kingdom feels lived in, showing how the characters’ lives have moved forward in the years since Breath of the Wild. Fans of The Legend of Zelda’s lore can get a lot out of these mini-stories across both titles, zooming in on the characters of Hyrule who can be easily overlooked. It’s not uncommon for players to want to scan every item they can and hear every line of dialogue, and while this is a fully player-driven choice, Tears of the Kingdom establishes this as part of its canon.
Some players may miss hints that, in-universe, Link is nosy, with many characters calling him out on it. In Breath of the Wild, Purah threatens to delete the runes from Link’s Sheikah Slate if he reads her diary. Tears of the Kingdom follows this up by having Purah split her diary into four volumes to stop “a nosy someone” from reading it fully, which could be referring to Link. Considering that Zelda also keeps a generic diary in Link’s house to keep him away from her personal diary in the well, it’s safe to say that the player’s snooping behavior is canon.
Korok Continuity
To the delight of some and the dismay of others, Koroks are an important part of the open world Zelda titles, giving the players Korok Seeds to expand their inventory space after assisting them. The puzzles they are involved in vary from target practice to reuniting two friends, breaking up the pace of Tears of the Kingdom’s standard puzzles and boss fights.
One of the Korok puzzle types in Breath of the Wild requires players to launch boulders in any way they like to reach a small crater in the ground. Tears of the Kingdom inverts these puzzles, having players take a boulder from a location to place on a nearby tree-like tripod. What players may not know, though, is that the initial locations of these boulders in Tears of the Kingdom are the exact same place as where players left them in Breath of the Wild, offering a sense of continuity and making the player feel like they had an impact on the game’s world.
The Shrine and Lightroot Connection
Shrines have become a major component of the open-world Zelda formula. While the Ancient Sheikah Shrines cannot be found in Tears of the Kingdom as they were confirmed to have turned to dust in a Zelda Notes Voice Memory, they are replaced with the Shrines of Light. These are similar, tasking players with completing puzzles and using the game’s new mechanics to their fullest extent. The Shrines are a great way for players to put their skills to the test between the major Temples.
The Shrines hold a secret relating to The Depths, and it is one that many players may not notice. The Depths are essentially an inverse of Hyrule’s overworld. Directly below the game’s sprawling mountains are valleys and pits in The Depths. Where there are open bodies of water in Hyrule, The Depths present players with walls and Gloom to halt their progress. What makes this connection most clear, though, are the Lightroots, which mark the base of each of the game’s Shrines. The Lightroots are given names which are identical to their respective Shrine of Light’s name read backwards.
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TOTK’s Zonai Devices Have Secrets of Their Own
Increased Firepower
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released late into the original Switch’s lifespan, but was graced with an upgrade for Switch 2, alongside Breath of the Wild. This improved version of the game grants players a wide range of benefits, such as improved resolution and HDR support, as well as the new Voice Memories feature. For Zelda fans, the Switch 2 upgrade is immediately worth it, giving players an improved experience and a reason to step back into Hyrule.
Another improvement made to the Switch 2 Edition of Tears of the Kingdom is its enhanced frame rate, boasting a stable 60 FPS throughout the whole game. This is a great bonus for players, but it also grants another benefit that many may not be aware of. Tears of the Kingdom gives players the freedom to make all kinds of structures with its Zonai Devices, one of these being the Beam Emitter. They can be used to make pulse lasers, with the rate of fire being tied to the game’s frame rate. Since the Switch 2 Edition improves the frame rate, players can take advantage of this to create a rapid-firing Zonai pulse laser in Tears of the Kingdom.
Physics Phenomena
The tools available to Tears of the Kingdom players looking to create their own machines in-game are nearly limitless. The contraptions that some players have engineered show an immense display of creativity. These Zonai structures take a lot of time and effort to design initially, but thanks to the Switch 2 Edition’s Autobuild sharing feature, all players are able to make use of these designs throughout their gameplay. Tears of the Kingdom never requires the player to create elaborate contraptions, but many players take it upon themselves to test the bounds of these mechanics. Some Tears of the Kingdom contraptions are strange, others make the toughest bosses trivial, but all are equally technical thanks to the game’s physics working as a sandbox for experimentation.
One feature that many players may have missed, though, is how Tears of the Kingdom obeys the laws of physics. Particularly, Zonai devices with rotating features conserve their angular momentum, resulting in an increase in rotational velocity as the distribution of mass draws closer to the axis of rotation. Not only does this feature add some elements of realism to Tears of the Kingdom, but it also gives players more opportunities to toy with the game’s systems in new and interesting ways.
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Some TOTK Item Properties Are Easy To Overlook
Meat Shield
The world of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is massive. From its distant mountain peaks to the smallest of lakes, this game’s iteration of Hyrule gives players plenty to explore. The Zelda series has offered players plenty of ways to traverse these vast landscapes, from Link’s trusty steed Epona to boats like the King of Red Lions and the SS Linebeck. Tears of the Kingdom takes this a step further, giving players the option to craft land, sea, and air-based vehicles to explore the open world more efficiently. However, there is one more method of transport that is not as well-known.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild introduced the Shield Surfing mechanic, allowing Link to ride his shield over the game’s rolling hills. In Tears of the Kingdom, players are given the option to fuse items onto their shield, giving it unique properties in combat. Fusing can also make Shield Surfing more effective, however. By using Tears of the Kingdom’s Icy Meat with their shield, players are able to freely glide across the plains of Hyrule without friction, granting high-speed movement and the ability to Shield Surf across flatter surfaces smoothly.
Lowered Hood
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both deviate from Link’s classic look. Each of the past games has given Link a variant of his iconic green tunic, and it has been a staple of his character design since his debut. Similar outfits can be found and equipped as armor sets in Tears of the Kingdom, but the default look for the hero in these open-world titles is unlike any that came before, with him donning a blue tunic as a gift from the royal family.
Tears of the Kingdom tweaks the design of this outfit from the previous game, fitting the tunic with a leather shoulder guard and completing the outfit with a Hylian Hood. In promotional material and the Link Tears of the Kingdom amiibo, his hood is down, but when players acquire the item in game, it is over the protagonist’s head. Some players might not know that this can be altered by Cece, giving players the option to wear the Hylian Hood both ways. Unfortunately, there are no variants of any other armor pieces like this, but this is a nice addition to let players more closely resemble Link’s default look from the game’s box art.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 95 /100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- May 12, 2023
- ESRB
- Rated E for Everyone 10+ for Fantasy Violence and Mild Suggestive Themes
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
- Engine
- Havok
- Cross-Platform Play
- N/A
- Cross Save
- N/A
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Adventure, Action, Open-World
