Don’t you love it when something simple causes confusion because context matters and two different contexts could apply? This extremely specific question is regarding The Legend of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, a game that was finally announced in full at the Nintendo Direct last Tuesday. For a long time now, the title was just known as Breath of the Wild 2, even though Nintendo technically never called it that. The team said the title was a bit of a spoiler, and as such, they couldn’t reveal it until the time was right. But now that they have, there are some people who are a bit confused about what it means and what it could be intended to mean given the game’s lore.
Confused? Well, look at the word ‘tears’–you can pronounce it two different ways and it means two different things. It can be “tears,” as in “tears rolling down your cheek” or “tears,” as in “can you believe how easily this machine tears up paper?” For The Legend of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, both pronunciations work because it could reference the kingdom itself crying, or it could be referencing how the kingdom is torn up in reference to the islands that we’ve seen floating above the world in multiple trailers, including the one we got at the Direct.
So, what is the answer? Well, Eurogamer actually reached out to Nintendo about this and confirmed that it is the teardrop version, which potentially reveals a new element of the story. In the new trailer, there was a wall painting that showed a figure being surrounded by seven items that honestly look like tears. The title of the game may be more literal than many expected. Will the Tears of the Kingdom have to be found to both stop evil and bring the realm of Hyrule back together? It’s very possible based on all we’ve seen, which is remarkably little given how long we’ve known about the game. (Remember, the title was first confirmed all the way back at E3 2019!) It was there that we saw the rise of a dark being, possibly Ganondorf, and the first sign of the islands being torn up from the ground.
Later reveals showed shots of the Master Sword being broken, Zelda falling into a void, and Link jumping off of islands and in various new outfits.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about this game, and that’s part of the reason that people wanted to get that clarification about the names. While it may sound like a small detail in the bigger picture, it was actually somewhat important.
At least we can say the name correctly as we patiently await the game’s arrival on the Nintendo Switch on May 12, 2023.
Source: Eurogamer
