Despite not winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards last night, which may or may not be controversial depending on which side you were on, The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom remains one of the best games of 2023 by a country mile. The game expanded everything in the previous title and added new gameplay elements that redefined what it meant to be Link. Some people spent hundreds of hours in the games simply wandering around, building things with the Ultrahand, doing side quests, and more. But there’s a little sour note that the game’s producer wishes to note.
Producer Eiji Aonuma has already made it clear that there wouldn’t be a follow-up to the 2023 title, but now, in an interview with Game Informer, he went a little deeper into that. He noted that not only would there not be a sequel, but that future games are unlikely to have a sequel due to what it means for the team. He went on to say:
“Well that would be a sequel to a sequel, which is getting a little bit wild when you think about it! But as I’ve mentioned previously, with Tears of the Kingdom, we were seeking to build on top of the world we created with Breath of the Wild and really exhaust the possibilities of what we could put into that world. I think it is – to use a bit of a term – an apotheosis, or the final form of that version of The Legend of Zelda. In that regard, I don’t think that we’ll be making a direct sequel to a world such as that that we’ve created.”
That’s a little sad to hear because we know that there have been direct sequels in the past, but they were also ones that had potential for sequels in their own ways. Or, in the case of a certain N64 title, they had about nine months to make a follow-up and just reused much of what they had already made before and built upon that.
Another thing Aonuma noted was that the Ultrahand was unlikely to return for future games. Why? That was part of making Tears of the Kingdom as great as it was. Plus, that would mean making it work for a whole new world and all the items within it.
The team is working on the next title now, so we’ll have to trust that they’ll make something just as grand.
