There are many things that fans are hyped about with tomorrow’s release of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. But thanks to the Nintendo Direct for the game released last month, gameplay is one of the biggest things. Thanks to his new arm, Link will have several new abilities that will allow him to traverse Hyrule in many ways. Some of them are simple, like going through roofs to reach the top of unclimbable places—or “returning” items to their point of origin so he can reach the Sky Islands. But the “Fuse” ability is what has many people intrigued.
With it, Link can fuse any set of items together to make anything from modified weapons to vehicles he can ride on. It sounds simple, but as the reviews for Tears of the Kingdom note, it provides infinite possibilities and creative ways to get around obstacles, through enemies, and more. In the final part of the interview with the development team, they discussed how Link’s new “Fuse” ability came to be.
As it turns out, it was the game’s director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, who came up with this notion and then used the previous game’s items to prove what could be done with it:
“Back then, I tried creating vehicles using only the mechanisms and parts available in the previous game and presented them. For instance, I used spinning cog wheels as tires and attached four of them to a board to create a car. I also made a paddle steamer by attaching boards to those self-rotating cog wheels. By assembling stone slabs into a gun barrel and using a Remote Bomb, I also created a cannon that shoots Ancient Spheres. I attached it to a car to create a tank. (Laughs) By showing these ideas, I proposed that if Link had the ability to attach things together, we could create this new kind of gameplay using materials we already had available. This was how we came up with the idea of creating vehicles with the Ultrahand ability in this title.”
They noted that the game design team worked very hard to allow for freedom of action with the Ultrahand/Fuse abilities so that gamers could make what they wanted without feeling let down or overwhelmed by how the system works.
Eiji Aonuma noted jokingly that he was a little worried about the vehicle fusion because of the “glue” that “bulges out” when you put them together. But clearly, he got over that worry.
