The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: release date, trailers, preorder, and more
Breath of the Wild #BreathoftheWild
When Nintendo released the teaser trailer for Breath of the Wild 2 several years ago, it unleashed a whirlwind of rumors and speculation about a sequel to one of the best Zelda games. Thankfully, Nintendo has given us a few new glimpses into what we now know will be called The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is finally nearing its release in 2023. As anticipation reaches a new high, we’ve dug up all the information there is about our next adventure in Hyrule.
Further reading
Release date 
After a long development time and years of waiting, we now know that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is set to launch on May 12, 2023.
Platforms 
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will only be available on Nintendo Switch. Nintendo isn’t keen on porting its high-performing first-party titles to other consoles, and we don’t expect that trend to change when Tears is eventually released.
And despite the launch of the Switch OLED model, rumors continue to swirl about a potential Switch Pro Console — and it’ll be interesting to see if The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom coincides with the launch of a “next-gen” Switch. With Hyrule Warriors pushing the system to its limits, there’s no doubt The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom could benefit from some upgraded hardware.
Trailers
Nintendo has released a number of trailers for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom , including a brief reveal trailer, a short gameplay trailer announced during E3, and the one each from Nintendo Directs in 2022 and 2023.
Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – First Look Trailer – Nintendo E3 2019
The gameplay trailer is particularly interesting, as it shows a variety of new mechanics, including some that look to be borrowed from Skyward Sword.
Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – E3 2021 Teaser – Nintendo Direct
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Coming May 12th, 2023 – Nintendo Switch
The 2022 Nintendo Direct trailer was still very brief, but starts off showing some ancient carvings before revealing Link opening a massive door, rushing out onto a floating platform, and fearlessly diving off. He lands on some sort of flying device before the title is revealed. Originally, Nintendo withheld revealing the official title for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom due to it potentially spoiling aspects of the story. This has led to tons of fan speculation and theory-crafting, including Ganon’s corpse rising from Hyrule Castle, the return of Malice, and even connections to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
While there’s no consensus on hard details, most agree this will be a much darker game than the first.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
The February 2023 Nintendo Direct gave us the second official trailer for the game, with much more gameplay shown off. Aside from more story clips, including our first time hearing Ganon’s voice, the main new feature on display was what looked like buildable vehicles Link could ride. We see him driving a large wheeled vehicle, as well as a hovering glider.
The final gameplay trailer we’re likely to get came on March 28, 2023. It begins by stating that the game’s development is complete, so what we see is indeed the final version. The gameplay begins with Link riding a horse through the open world, which has “many changes,” however, we do see what are called Sky Islands floating on the horizon, as well as details on how Link’s new abilities work.
Rating
After the initial trailer, there were many fans who speculated that Tears of the Kingdom would take a far darker tone than any prior Zelda game had. However, the game has since been rated by the ESRB, which gives us a good idea of what type of content the game will — and will not — have.
Tears of the Kingdom will be rated E10+, which is quite typical for the series (Breath of the Wild had the same rating), and even lower than the T rating given to Twilight Princess. It was given this rating for Fantasy Violence and Mild Suggestive Themes. This has mostly squashed theories this title would skew further toward a more “adult” oriented title, however, there is certainly a possibility of it still being darker in tone, even if not explicitly with blood and violence.
Majora’s Mask, for example, is considered one of the darkest Zelda games and was given an E rating upon initial release.
Gameplay 
While there’s a lot we don’t know about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom‘s gameplay, we’re pretty confident that players will be returning to the Hyrule seen in the original Breath of the Wild. Nintendo’s Eiji Aonuma initially said that he would love to visit the world again and introduce new gameplay concepts alongside a new story. He later went on to say that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will indeed be a “continuation” of the original, meaning we should expect to see more of the Hyrule we’ve come to know and love over the past few years.
The 2023 E3 trailer confirmed much of that statement — although we now have a bunch of floating islands in the sky we’ll be able to explore. It’s unclear if these locations will be easily accessible while roaming around on the ground or if they’ll be set in a completely different timeline — similar to the young and adult Link variants seen in Ocarina of Time.
One thing everyone picked up from the reveal trailer is the fact that this entry is looking to be a much darker adventure than its predecessor. Aonuma went on to confirm this, saying the entry will be similar in tone to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask — easily the darkest and most disturbing game in the series. How exactly that will play out is unknown. However, it’s been confirmed that it will not tie into Majora’s Mask in any way. It might be going for a similar aesthetic, but that doesn’t mean any story elements from the hit Nintendo 64 title will make an appearance.
Apparently, the driving factor for making a Breath of the Wild sequel came from the development team conjuring up too many DLC ideas. While DLC works to add small changes to a game — it essentially functions as an expansion — you’re often limited to the existing structure of the title. Aonuma said that the team had some big changes they wanted to implement, but they couldn’t do this using DLC. As time went on and more ideas began percolating, it became clear that a new game was the only way to make these a reality.
As soon as the trailer was revealed at E3 2019, the internet exploded with rumors and speculation. Not all of it is reliable, but we’ve compiled a list of the most realistic rumblings. Nintendo hasn’t commented either way about the following claims, so it’s possible that some of these great ideas might make it into the final product:
As for the E3 2021 gameplay trailer, we saw Link with a few new tricks — such as the ability to teleport through solid objects and a deadly new gauntlet — and it confirmed that much of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom won’t stray too far from the original title. Speculation is already swirling about how Link, Zelda, and Ganon all fit into the picture, but for now, it’s just a bunch of fan theories, regardless of how intriguing they may be. Until Nintendo gives us some more concrete details, we’ll leave the guesswork up to internet sleuths.
The 2022 trailer shows off new ways to interact with objects to rise directly up into the Sky Islands by rewinding time, as well as the ability to build vehicles to ride on land or air. The last gameplay trailer expanded on this by showing Link observing one falling, tracking it down, and using a new ability called Recall to rewind time. However, this is just one way to reach Sky Islands.
A second new ability called Fuse allows Link to combine two objects into one, such as a branch and a boulder to make a kind of hammer. This ability can be used to combine all kinds of weapons and objects to add new effects, such as combining a stick with a pitchfork to make an extremely long-range spear, or combining arrows with an ice element to add a freezing effect or with an eyeball to make the arrows home in on enemies. Beware, because enemies can also hold Fused weapons. The number of possibilities appears to be almost limitless, and every combination appears to have some use.
The building mechanic was also shown off with the ability Ultrahand, which lets Link simply attach any object to another, such as a row of logs and some fans to make a raft. No vehicles are found in the game — they can only be built by the player.
The final new ability we got a glimpse of is Ascend. This allows Link to travel up through a ceiling to the floor above him. It can even be used inside a cave to travel all the way up to the top of the mountain above without using stamina.
One new enemy we see is called a Construct. The one we saw wielded a branch and dropped a Zoni Charge.
Multiplayer 
The game is rumored to include co-op — but that’s only because fans saw Link and Zelda exploring together in the reveal trailer. Nothing is official yet, although offering co-op would be a massive change when compared to Breath of the Wild.
Preorder 
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the first Nintendo game to start at a $70 price point, but there is also a Collector’s Edition for those who want to spend even more for some extras. Either way, there are no bonuses simply for preordering. The Standard Edition will simply include the base game for $70, either a digital or physical copy. Here’s what is included in the Collector’s Edition that retails for $130.
While not technically a preorder for the game since it doesn’t actually include a copy of it, you can purchase a special The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo Switch OLDED model for $360. This console will release ahead of the game on April 28. No preorders have shown up online just yet, but we will update this post as soon as we spot them.