Eiji Aonuma gave us just a little taste of what to expect in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
As shared by GoNintendo, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom actually won the Most Anticipated Game award at the Famitsu Game Awards. Eiji Aonuma, The Legend of Zelda franchise’s producer, was on hand to receive the award.
In his speech, Aonuma shared just a little bit about what to expect in the game:
“In the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, furthermore, the players free imagination will be filled with new gameplay that will bring about changes to the game world.”
So, to get straight to the point, Aonuma is hinting at some form of terraforming to be an element in the game. It may not necessarily be connected to building mechanics, but terraforming is well trod game design, so it would be very interesting to see how they apply it.
As a brief overview, perhaps the first thing a gamer thinks of in relation to terraforming in video games in Minecraft. You can literally mine the ground you are stepping on, and sometimes that’s precisely what you need to do.
In survival games like Minecraft, as well as Valheim and Sons of the Forest, terraforming is definitely related to building, and of course, resource collection and management. In these games you do have to build yourself a shelter to protect yourself from enemies, and the game really does change from when you are rushing to build that shelter, to when you are safely absconded in it.
However, that isn’t the only application to terraforming mechanics. In games like Criterion Games’ Black and Red Faction, destructibility is the name of the game. Rather than building, this mechanic is all about destroying. It feels good to destroy things, of course (of course!), but also, in first and third person shooters it’s useful to change the terrain you’re on to remove the cover your enemies have, to find enemies, or just to progress through the game.
Considering that Link helped build Tarrey Town in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I would not put it beyond the Zelda team to move forward to having you build your own town from scratch in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It would also certainly be an evolution of their idea of physics ‘engines’ in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild¸ that encouraged players to experiment and find their own ways to play and engage with the world. It certainly is amazing how much there is to think about from a short sentence about this game, isn’t it?
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releases exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on May 12, 2023.
