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Pre-Release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Pre-Release Discussion Thread

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LukasManak22 said:
February Direct is basically lock and loaded but if Nintendo feels like they need to put out Zelda something in January to slowly start things going running I could see them just tweeting next month: Tune in for a new ToTK trailer tomorrow! Kinda how they did with Bowser's Fury. ToTK lives with marketing for itself so I could see this happening.




Another thing am curious about is how will the premiere the gameplay. Of course media will play the game closer to launch but it would be fitting to have Treehouse Live but with developers themselves since there was no E3 when they could be there.
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The thing about this IMO is this trailer released exactly 1 month before the game came out. Because Nintendo didn't feel the game should have a direct, instead of having a direct a month before, they released that. Could this happen with Zelda? Sure, perhaps on April 12. I honestly think that's plausible, but most in this thread probably hope for a Tears of the Kingdom Direct.

Here are my two premonitions, so to speak:

No New Hardware
This might be disappointing to many, but in this scenario I feel like a TOTK direct will only happen 1 month in advance. It's just how Nintendo has handled their marketing recently. And honestly, given how little they should even show in such a direct in order to avoid spoilers, it'll be short. Sure, we'll still get a decent trailer in a February Direct, but if things continue as normal... things will continue as normal.

YES!!! NEW HARDWARE!!
If there's new hardware, anything can happen. Will they reveal it in January, in the earliest possible moment after the holidays, or will they wait until February? Either way, they might as well go all out, showing live gameplay of TOTK and the new fidelity and features that come with new hardware. Again, after that, I anticipate a trailer in April, but definitely no Direct.
 
I feel like we also have to think about the various reasons why we have seen so little, only curated teases.

From the business side, Nintendo's marketing clearly has shifted to focusing on one game at a time - about a month before all the way to release. Leading up to this time, it's a bit of a drag, but it works well. The wait from the Splatoon 3 direct to release felt long but it was definitely satisfying that I didn't have to wait longer.

From the developer side, Aonuma and the rest clearly care about making this game a unique experience. Why can't they have had a Treehouse gameplay section back in September, akin to the great plateau of BOTW? Well... we have NO idea how this game really starts, but what we do know is something happens with Link, Zelda, and Ganon, at some point at the beginning of the game. We're not sure if the gameplay starts before or after they go underground, although it's probably after. Regardless, it's substantially more plot-heavy than the previous game, and the devs may not want to spoil that experience.

So really, we shouldn't be too surprised if we don't see much of this game. There ARE certainly ways of doing it, I mean, back at the Game Awards 2016 there was a great example of showing a little gameplay isolated from spoilers. You never know with Nintendo, but really, by 'blowout' what do we really want? I want to be spoiled in the sense that I'm so starved for information, but I really do not want any spoilers. I hope that whatever comes will be handled carefully. I want more to theorize over but nothing that takes away from the actual game.
 
I don't expect a Zelda Direct for this game. Nintendo will want players to go in blind as much as possible. I think we get a re-reveal trailer in January, a trailer at the February Direct that reveals a new gameplay mechanic (similar to the Mouthful Mode Kirby trailer), a gameplay overview trailer in April, and previews the week before launch. No Treehouse, no Direct.
 
karmitt said:
On the subject, next year GotY could be a bloodbath.

I’m also not looking forward another year of “Breath of the Wild Tears of the Kingdom is overrated” threads / posts. Maybe not here, but Era and Twitter will be full of em.
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With ToTK being the sequel to BoTW, expectations will be "sky high", but I have no doubt that the Zelda team will deliver. Other than that, it's still too soon to say what other titles will compete with Zelda next year. Anything could go wrong at the last minute for either Final Fantasy and Starfield. While we're at it, here's my bold prediction: Pikmin 4 nominated for the game of the year 2023.
 
damondamon said:
With ToTK being the sequel to BoTW, expectations will be "sky high", but I have no doubt that the Zelda team will deliver. Other than that, it's still too soon to say what other titles will compete with Zelda next year. Anything could go wrong at the last minute for either Final Fantasy and Starfield. While we're at it, here's my bold prediction: Pikmin 4 nominated for the game of the year 2023.
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Nintendo, Square and Bethesda would have to have really screwed their games up in a pretty big way to not get the nomination and I don’t think that will be the case. Personally, I think those three games are a lock for GOTY. The other two could go a number of ways. The likely contenders for next year imo:

All but guaranteed:
-Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
-Starfield
-Final Fantasy 16

The other potential candidates:
-Armored Core 6
-Resident Evil 4
-Forza Motorsport
-Spider-Man 2
-Hollow Knight
-Street Fighter 6

There’s of course unannounced games to potentially account for, but for now I believe that’s the biggest games that just scream GOTY material based on the developers and/or the games in those particular franchises having been nominated in the past.
 
Magic-Man said:
I don't expect a Zelda Direct for this game. Nintendo will want players to go in blind as much as possible. I think we get a re-reveal trailer in January, a trailer at the February Direct that reveals a new gameplay mechanic (similar to the Mouthful Mode Kirby trailer), a gameplay overview trailer in April, and previews the week before launch. No Treehouse, no Direct.
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I also don't believe in Zelda Direct, this post above while ago greatly explained it:

But as for Treehosue, I could see that. Not really much but something like: Tune in tomorrow for a first ever gameplay from Tears of The Kingdom when Mr. Aonuma and his team will take you into the Hyrule and the skies above! Not something spoiler worthy but just the open world gameplay of skies or something like that, to give you general idea how it looks and plays in motion. And I hope that after the release there are again these making of videos from development, that was great.
korok said:
I firmly believe that ToTK will not have a Direct on its own. It's not the type of game that you want to know every tiny detail before buying it, unlike others like Splatoon 2/3, Xenoblade 2/3, Animal Crossing, Mario Maker or Super Smash Bros. If you pay attention, you'll see that the majority of dedicated Directs are about games mainly focused on multiplayer or without a traditional campaign, the only exception being Xenoblade due to the complexity of its sistems.

Nintendo doesn't decide if a game deserves a Direct looking at its importance or scope. Look at games like Mario Oddysey, Luigi's Mansion 3, Metroid Dread, Paper Mario TOK, Bayonetta 3...They clearly weren't any less important than Xenoblade 2 and 3.

The most probably scenario is a full trailer + a Treehouse playing a demo of the early game like what happened with BoTW in E3 2016. But dedicating an entire presentation to the game?I don't see that at all.
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What are people's thoughts on the new Master Sword in the logo/title?

I have 3 ideas:

  • The new malice dissolves metal, so we will have to use the "tears" to make a magic blade that can resist the new malice.
  • The green part of the sword is just a blue-print and we will have to make a new Master Sword that can resist the new malice.
  • We combine some sky world or Zonai Master Sword equivalent with the Master Sword.
 
I think it's gonna be the 2nd scenario.

The Master Sword gets the green part as a "temporary fix", but eventually it will be restored to its full glory.
 
BY2K said:
I think it's gonna be the 2nd scenario.

The Master Sword gets the green part as a "temporary fix", but eventually it will be restored to its full glory.
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Yeah, I'm thinking that the sky islands have magic based weapons. I noticed that the weapons Link wields in the sky are non-metallic, and there doesn't seem to be any metal visible in the sky islands at all.

Notably, there is a green tear symbol on the end of the new Master Sword, so tears might have something to do with the new Master Sword.
 
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Awesomegames23 said:
Notably, there is a green tear symbol on the end of the new Master Sword, so tears might have something to do with the new Master Sword.
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I didn't even notice that ! And I thought I scraped through every inch of the game's media.

It's definitely a cool looking design, there's already a mod to play with it:
 
Additional footage from the E3 2021 trailer
  • Index
    • I made some online digging and found the "new" footage that was present in the E3 2021 trailer. It's basically nothing, just the extended scenes for couple of seconds that Nintendo cut out from the trailer but I feel like it's worth posting so I uploaded them here with the comparison to E3 2021 trailer.

    E3 2021 trailer footage:




    Extended scene:




    E3 2021 trailer footage:




    Extended scene that was cut from the trailer:






    Will try to find the scenes from the newest one, that could be interesting, we could get better look at the thing Link is flying on or when he is going high into the sky with that rock.
     
  • Index
    • LukasManak22 said:
    I made some online digging and found the "new" footage that was present in the E3 2021 trailer. It's basically nothing, just the extended scenes for couple of seconds that Nintendo cut out from the trailer but I feel like it's worth posting so I uploaded them here with the comparison to E3 2021 trailer.

    E3 2021 trailer footage:




    Extended scene:




    E3 2021 trailer footage:




    Extended scene that was cut from the trailer:

    Click to expand...

    Holy cow I forgot about these, thanks for digging these up. I think I shared them like 9 months ago, but someone might have shared before me. I honestly don't think a single Zelda tuber mentioned these extended clips, not that they show anything, buy very few people know about them. I think we should threadmark this post.

    @WestEgg In my opinion, this post should be threadmarked just so we don't have to re-dig through this thread for them.
     
    Awesomegames23 said:
    Holy cow I forgot about these, thanks for digging these up. I think I shared them like 9 months ago, but someone might have shared before me. I honestly don't think a single Zelda tuber mentioned these extended clips, not that they show anything, buy very few people know about them. I think we should threadmark this post.

    @WestEgg In my opinion, this post should be threadmarked just so we don't have to re-dig through this thread for them.
    Click to expand...
    done
     
    Awesomegames23 said:
    Holy cow I forgot about these, thanks for digging these up. I think I shared them like 9 months ago, but someone might have shared before me. I honestly don't think a single Zelda tuber mentioned these extended clips, not that they show anything, buy very few people know about them. I think we should threadmark this post.

    @WestEgg In my opinion, this post should be threadmarked just so we don't have to re-dig through this thread for them.
    Click to expand...
    The funny thing is that I knew about these ever since that trailer dropped last year, I just kinda forgot about these and thought it's a known thing. Not as they are very interesting but as Zelda tubers analyse every single frame and they have not seen this. But god I wished it was in different scenes so it would actually showed something interesting lol.
     
    LukasManak22 said:
    The funny thing is that I knew about these ever since that trailer dropped last year, I just kinda forgot about these and thought it's a known thing. Not as they are very interesting but as Zelda tubers analyse every single frame and they have not seen this. But god I wished it was in different scenes so it would actually showed something interesting lol.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, I doubt there is anything in them that we haven’t seen, I didn’t scrutinized, but a YouTuber lurking could be the first. Just to add context if you didn’t know, and an FYI to anyone reading, I believe these clips were first featured on a now buried OLED marketing page as promotional clips for the OLED screen when the OLED first launched.

    I sincerely doubt there are extended clips from the latest trailer anywhere out there unfortunately.
     
    damondamon said:
    I agree we absolutely don't need a 20-30 minute long dedicated Direct. Just a 3-4 minute long trailer aired during a Jan/Feb Direct is enough.
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    You may have posted in the wrong thread. There was another thread where OP stated he didn't want to watch any more trailers for TotK.
     
    Kind of neat, I'm not sure how "New" these things are, but there are "New" Zelda pieces of merchandise on the Australia Nintendo page: https://store.nintendo.com.au/au/catalogsearch/result/index/?q=Zelda

    NoA added new Majoras Mask merchandise and a couple general things a few days ago: https://www.nintendo.com/en-ca/stor...f&f=franchises&franchises=The+Legend+of+Zelda

    I also remember reading back in April or May that Zelda amiibo are supposedly going to be reprinted very soon and could be available as early as this January.
     
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    Awesomegames23 said:
    Yeah, I doubt there is anything in them that we haven’t seen, I didn’t scrutinized, but a YouTuber lurking could be the first. Just to add context if you didn’t know, and an FYI to anyone reading, I believe these clips were first featured on a now buried OLED marketing page as promotional clips for the OLED screen when the OLED first launched.

    I sincerely doubt there are extended clips from the latest trailer anywhere out there unfortunately.
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    Yes, it's from the deleted OLED page, NOA page is gone but the UK and JP still shows it after all.
     
    Just realized that pax east will be in the gap between this game (hopefully) finally getting a blowout reveal and release…. Oooooooh
     
    LukasManak22 said:
    The last few months will feel like forever. To me it feels more unreal that it's really been 3 months since the title and release date reveal, like seriously what's going on with the time.
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    The last few months will be filled with craziness if it launches with the new Switch. Also, tons of Zelda merch will be coming out like, probably 1 or 2 trailers will be released in the final couple months, new gameplay, soundtrack, limited and special editions, etc...

    I think the hardest waiting is well behind us though. That 2 years between the 1st and 2nd trailers, and 14 months between the 2nd and 3rd trailer really sucked. I mean, we are at least 60% of the way to the next trailer from the last trailer, if the next trailer is in February. I think they'll show us something in January to be honest though, a big Zelda trailer can get its own presentation.
     
    Awesomegames23 said:
    The last few months will be filled with craziness if it launches with the new Switch. Also, tons of Zelda merch will be coming out like, probably 1 or 2 trailers will be released in the final couple months, new gameplay, soundtrack, limited and special editions, etc...

    I think the hardest waiting is well behind us though. That 2 years between the 1st and 2nd trailers, and 14 months between the 2nd and 3rd trailer really sucked. I mean, we are at least 60% of the way to the next trailer from the last trailer, if the next trailer is in February. I think they'll show us something in January to be honest though, a big Zelda trailer can get its own presentation.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah those waiting periods were really tough. I mean, I'm glad I didn't actively wait for news on the game, but still, going dark for 2 full years was really something. Thankfully that's behind us now. Onward!
     
    takriel said:
    Yeah those waiting periods were really tough. I mean, I'm glad I didn't actively wait for news on the game, but still, going dark for 2 full years was really something. Thankfully that's behind us now. Onward!
    Click to expand...
    The period overlaps with COVID of course, but with these past years having been rough in general Zelda's absence was missed (as it's the single most inspiring game series to me bar none). Skyward Sword was a very welcome diversion though, that game unexpectedly rocks.

    I appreciate the positivity in the last few posts BTW - after the rigamarole since 2019's "in development" trailer I have a tendency to not get too hyped until the game actually ships, but that might be overly cautious of me.
     
    manfromthedam said:
    The period overlaps with COVID of course, but with these past years having been rough in general Zelda's absence was missed (as it's the single most inspiring game series to me bar none). Skyward Sword was a very welcome diversion though, that game unexpectedly rocks.

    I appreciate the positivity in the last few posts BTW - after the rigamarole since 2019's "in development" trailer I have a tendency to not get too hyped until the game actually ships, but that might be overly cautious of me.
    Click to expand...
    I think it reasonable to choose not to get hyped too early for Zelda games. There's still some months to go.
     
    BY2K said:
    Really curious to know who will voice him.
    Click to expand...
    Voice actors have range, it’s possible someone from the existing (English) cast voices him. There could also be 2 voice actors if he is voiced, 1 for his mummy form, and if he regenerates, 1 for his normal form.
     
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    It’s crazy how we’re almost in the endgame

    Probably about a couple months or less away from things really ramping up. More gameplay, more details, key arts… I’m ready to get back on the ride
     
    We are only 5 months away and it's the biggest question mark for me it's the world of Hyrule. I am still like, what the hell it can't be using the same map (with obvious differences) but it would not feel as fresh as BOTW, but you know gameplay shows it. I can't be exploring the ground with the places I have already explored. But at the same time am like this is Zelda team, they know what they are doing, and Nintendo would not greenlit a game when the map would not feel as new or fresh or whatever and of course 6 years of development. Anyway, very excited can't wait how will they blow us all away!
     
    i wonder how the map is going to be for this game. is there going to be a toggle button for the sky islands and then the regular map and then another toggle if there is in fact an underground?
     
    LukasManak22 said:
    We are only 5 months away and it's the biggest question mark for me it's the world of Hyrule. I am still like, what the hell it can't be using the same map (with obvious differences) but it would not feel as fresh as BOTW, but you know gameplay shows it. I can't be exploring the ground with the places I have already explored. But at the same time am like this is Zelda team, they know what they are doing, and Nintendo would not greenlit a game when the map would not feel as new or fresh or whatever and of course 6 years of development. Anyway, very excited can't wait how will they blow us all away!
    Click to expand...

    There's definitely something more going on, going off by Death Mountain now erupting with goddamn MALICE and that massive vortex/tornado over what seems to be the Hebra region. Who knows, maybe all the major region of the previous game all have troubles again now that Ganondorf has returned. Maybe Zora Domain is frozen once more like it was in Ocarina of Time. Maybe the Gerudo Desert is experiencing unusually cold or hot temperatures, even for the region.

    What happened to the Deku Tree and the Lost Woods? It's clearly missing in spots we should be otherwise able to see it. Did Ganondorf burn it to the ground, knowing the Master Sword rested there? The map might feel familiar, but I don't think in the end that it will take away anything from the game.
     
    BY2K said:
    There's definitely something more going on, going off by Death Mountain now erupting with goddamn MALICE and that massive vortex/tornado over what seems to be the Hebra region. Who knows, maybe all the major region of the previous game all have troubles again now that Ganondorf has returned. Maybe Zora Domain is frozen once more like it was in Ocarina of Time. Maybe the Gerudo Desert is experiencing unusually cold or hot temperatures, even for the region.

    What happened to the Deku Tree and the Lost Woods? It's clearly missing in spots we should be otherwise able to see it. Did Ganondorf burn it to the ground, knowing the Master Sword rested there? The map might feel familiar, but I don't think in the end that it will take away anything from the game.
    Click to expand...
    My thoughts exactly. I think the whole gimmick of this game will be returning to previously featured areas to discover they're completely different. Sorta a game-wide uncanny valley. Some places will have new weather conditions, some will have a lot more monsters and enemy encampments (including entire towns taken over), some will be forward or backward in time. There will be new dungeons and entrances to entirely new sections. It would still feel fresh even if it's technically the same world.
     
    takriel said:
    Yeah those waiting periods were really tough. I mean, I'm glad I didn't actively wait for news on the game, but still, going dark for 2 full years was really something. Thankfully that's behind us now. Onward!
    Click to expand...
    lol i was a gullible idiot. I've been waiting since 2019.
     
    It’s crazy how long fanart of “Short Haired BOTW Zelda” has existed (since day one of initial reveal) - if that makes sense. I’m not calling for them to hurry/rush or anything but it just hit me like “dang….I feel like I’ve known short haired Zelda for a while now” haha
     
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    What if, hear me out, what if the sky islands are not the only thing inspired by Skyward Sword?

    What if... they reuse the motherfucking timeshift stones mechanic? What if the way the world is different, is by activating timeshift stones so you can explore the past or future of certain areas?

    I guess sort of like how Ocarina of Time had masks, but it wasn't until Majora's Mask that they made it an integral part of the game.
     
    ReyVGM said:
    What if, hear me out, what if the sky islands are not the only thing inspired by Skyward Sword?

    What if... they reuse the motherfucking timeshift stones mechanic? What if the way the world is different, is by activating timeshift stones so you can explore the past or future of certain areas?

    I guess sort of like how Ocarina of Time had masks, but it wasn't until Majora's Mask that they made it an integral part of the game.
    Click to expand...
    They're 100% bringing time manipulation back. It's already a focus of the early trailers (the reversing mechanic and the ancient looking outfits).
     
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