An Entire Year Was Spent Just Polishing Tears Of The Kingdom, Producer Reveals

In a vast spectrum convoluted with major releases that fail to perform up to the mark upon launch, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a striking string of proof that things don’t have to stay flickering on that note necessarily. According to the producer of Nintendo’s latest front-running title, Tears of the Kingdom was ready to release by March 2022, but Eiji Anouma announced the delay in an attempt to polish Tears to kingdom come.

Sitting down with The Washington Post in an interview to cast a lens on his industry masterclass, Eiji wanted to ensure that Tears of the Kingdom would ultimately represent what Nintendo is capable of, and the rest has been history so far, bar none. Link’s latest venture is an exceptionally enjoyable game to experience, made even more glorious with improved features and the novel Ultrahand mechanic that players just can’t get enough of.  

 It was supposed to be out by last year, but in March 2022, Aonuma had to announce its delay, ‘to make sure that everything in the game was 100 percent to our standards,’ he said.

And it absolutely shows as well. The way this game runs on the Nintendo Switch does indicate that playtesting was done to death with Tears of the Kingdom, simply leaving no stone unturned in optimizing it with whole-hearted content. The AAA release is no less than a tour de force for showcasing how video game releases should happen—clean, enriched with quality, and error-free for the most part. 

That is why you’ll find players having no less than a blast with Tears of the Kingdom, quite literally, we kid you not. Some good folks have been turning Link into a bomber pilot in the game, subjecting the protagonist to rain hellfire from above and thus dispatching his foes like there’s no tomorrow. But this is barely where the fun starts to begin. Talk about majestic flying battleships, shooting NPCs into the sky, and a specialized Link launcher.

This novelty Ultrahand feature seems to have grabbed all the attention of the Zelda community; you can find dozens of people’s creations in a dedicated subreddit called r/HyruleEngineering, created in light of the sprawling imagination of players trying their hand at the fusion-centric mechanic. To put it simply, Nintendo has spoiled us with Ultrahand and there just might be no going back from here on out for future Zelda games.

We presume this is exactly the facet Eiji Anouma expanded upon in the interview. The element of physics in Tears of the Kingdom is amazingly well done and truly grips you into the game with its innumerable creative possibilities. That layer of polish has paid off to boot. At this point, it’s no wonder how the title has managed to push the boundary of open-world games instantly upon release. 

Tears of the Kingdom launched to terrific fanfare on the 12th of May 2023, for the Nintendo Switch exclusively.