Tears Of The Kingdom’ Trailer Is Simply Breathtaking

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom’s third and final trailer dropped this morning and it’s quite something—a stunning, gorgeous, cinematic glimpse of a game that feels a little bit darker and more dramatic than its predecessor, Breath Of The Wild. Not the darkest of the Zelda games, but certainly there’s a mournfulness about it.

Here’s the trailer:

When the horns come in and we hear that original Zelda theme blaring, I admit to goosebumps. Few melodies hold as dear a place in my heart as that one.

Breath of the Wild was a somewhat controversial game in the Zelda fandom. I loved it, but I understand why so many people didn’t, and I certainly agree that the lack of any major dungeons was a problem. The smaller shrines were fun little puzzles but it wasn’t quite the same.

On the other hand, I loved the openness of the world Nintendo built. Climbing mountains. Cooking food on the ground in hot regions (while it would freeze in the cold regions). Lightning strikes electrifying metal. There was just so much to love about Nintendo’s approach to an open world. I think it inspired bolder open world design, which we saw in later games like Ghost Of Tsushima and Elden Ring.

The sequel adds aerial exploration to the mix and looks bigger and more ambitious in every way. My chief concern is that the Nintendo Switch itself is so dated now. It was already struggling to run the last game properly when it launched. I really do wish that Nintendo had released this game for a brand new console.

I suppose that’s partly that the Switch has simply grown a bit stale for me, not just because it’s so behind in the graphics department, but because of the ongoing issues with Joy-Con drift which only made me dislike those controllers more. I’ll be playing this game docked on my TV with a Pro controller for sure. I wish we simply had a much more powerful home console (that didn’t have to be handheld also!) to play it on.

The Super Mario Bros Movie—which I thought was delightful—actually made me think about the Nintendo Switch’s shortcomings even more. I wish we had Nintendo games that looked anywhere close to as incredible as that film. I know that graphics have never been a top priority for Nintendo, but just once I’d love to see that change and see a truly Super Nintendo that could rival the Xbox Series X and PS5’s graphical capabilities. Mario and Link and Donkey Kong and Metroid like you’ve never seen them before.

Still, there’s no denying that Tears of the Kingdom looks gorgeous and my god that music is just delicious, isn’t it? I hope it runs well!

The game releases exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on May 12th, 2023.