The phrase “What is in a name?” is a far more profound thing than people realize. No matter whether it applies to a person, place, or thing, having the “right now” for something or someone is paramount to getting them thought of in a certain way. For video games, it often can give people certain thoughts, feelings, or impressions about what the game is about, or what they can expect from it. In the case of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, the title for the then-anticipated Switch game made people curious. “Why was the kingdom crying?”
As we would find out, the title was more nuanced than expected. However, as Nintendo Everything found out in the new art book that was released for the game, the title was almost a bit more on the nose. Specifically, they were initially going to name the game “Tears of the Dragon.” Yet, as producer Eiji Aonuma noted in the book, that would’ve been a bit of a spoiler:
“Letting it slip that the Light Dragon is Zelda would have been a problem, and this had an effect on the title too. One of the candidates for the title that made it to end was ‘Tears of the Dragon’. But it would be a bad idea to have the keyword ‘Dragon’ in the title, and we wanted to have dragon patterns in the logo, but decided otherwise. It’d emphasize the Light Dragon, after all (laughs).”
Aonuma noted that they were running out of time to come up with the true name of the game when a suggestion was put out:
“We went through many words, and then one time a staff member suggested, ‘What about Kingdom?’. With ‘Tears of the Kingdom’, it felt like the phrase could connect to the Light Dragon to us, and we could use dragons in the logo.”
As gamers would find out later, Princess Zelda turned into a dragon at the cost of her own mind to ensure that the Master Sword got healed and could defeat Ganondorf once and for all. Her “tears” in the dragon form she took were her memories, allowing Link to understand what happened in the past and the decisions she made to try and save both him and the world.
This was a shocking twist in the tale, and as we gamers would see via special wall carvings, it was the true “Legend of Zelda” that the people never forgot. So, yeah, it was good that it wasn’t spoiled.