 Hey everyone, before we get into this video, I wanna remind you we have a giveaway going on right now for a Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Switch OLED, a collector's edition of Tears of the Kingdom, and a special Tears of the Kingdom pin that you could only get by attending PAX East. There's a link down in the pin comment and or the description and we are now on our road to 133,000 subscribers. So I'd appreciate if you would drop a like and subscribe to the channel. Why 133? Because Nintendo is 133 years old. So today, we're going to talk about something that actually wasn't originally on my docket today. I have a separate video already in the works. Well, two other videos. Man, Tears of the Kingdom stuff is just pouring out of the seams at this point but I have a couple videos in the works. One of them is a graphics comparison I mentioned. Yesterday, that video is gonna take some time because I need to make sure that I get all of the proper shots that show Tears of the Kingdom in its best light and then obviously shots that show Tears of the Kingdom maybe in its worst light. We wanna make sure that we're being fair in representing the whole experience but besides that, I wanna also try to really nail down all of the news. There is additional details on Tears of the Kingdom official, actual tangible news out there that we haven't reported on yet on this channel. Maybe you've seen the news elsewhere, I don't know but as we've been sort of a hub for all Tears of the Kingdom news, I wanna make sure that every piece of Tears of the Kingdom news out there pre-launch anyways is right here on the channel. So I'm working on a video for that as well and also to make that video worthwhile for those that maybe have already heard of the news. Now that being said, this just popped up today for me and it is a rumor. I wanna note that we are talking about a rumor, we are talking about a potential leak and there's gonna be a ton of spoilers here and this is because this was a sort of overlooked rumor on Reddit that I never really cover because I didn't really think much of it. The latest trailer apparently has confirmed many details and the post itself has actually been removed. So this ended up popping up again on Gaming Leaks and Rumors Reddit and we're gonna go through it. I can't, I'll show one screenshot of it but otherwise it's really, really jumbled together and kind of a hot mess to read through right now and that's because this is a recovered post rather than the original. It was posted again by user nolyf and he said it was recovered courtesy of the user Carlos Vigilante. So let's get into this stuff. Apparently it's someone who has play tested and beaten the game supposedly. I'm not even gonna explain how I have this information and I'm not gonna be giving away any major new story spoilers because I have common decency. Instead I'll just talk about the game world, new enemies, gameplay differences, et cetera. I will say this game is definitely not $70 Sky Island DLC which we all know now and Nintendo is doing a crap job of marketing tears of the kingdom. Again, this was all before the marketing stuff began. So I'm gonna go out of my way and do it myself. If you don't want to read all of this and just want to know my verdict, I personally give it a 9.5 out of 10 and I like this game more than Breath of the Wild which was a solid nine out of 10 for me. Note throughout the post, I will give my personal thoughts on the different aspects of the game. First let's get into the game world differences, the main overview. The Legend of Zelda tears of the kingdom starts about three years after the events of Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. The game will reuse the same map as Breath of the Wild but it will become significantly altered slash destroyed through the story events of tears of the kingdom which will become more apparent as the game progresses. Tears of the kingdom overall will have a much darker tone than Breath of the Wild, a dark slash creepy in a similar sense to Majora's Mask or Twilight Princess and this darker tone will be manifested through the different aspects of the game such as the story, enemies, et cetera. The name tears of the kingdom itself can have multiple interpretations. Tears as in crying, referring to the darker themed tones and motives of the game. In addition to special story items that Link will collect throughout the game. We've sort of seen that different characters with actual tears in the trailer. Could have been a lucky guess, we'll see. Tears can also refer to tearing apart, ripping apart the destruction that will overcome Hyrule map in this game. Tears also sounds a lot like tears AKA tears of things like a pillar which can also refer to new tears, vertical exploration, sky caves that will be available to explore the game. So he's basically saying that tears of the kingdom while there might be a physical manifestation item which we know that to be the case could also be a reference to many things throughout the game which that makes some sense. Major differences, Sacred Realm. One major difference of this game is that the Sacred Realm has merged into the game world after the destructive awakening of the quote, incarnate Ganondorf. So he's acting like that is the actual full name of Ganondorf and manifests as giant floating islands in the sky that Link can travel through different means. Based on what has been shown in the recent trailers the sky islands which will become known as the remnants so apparently that's what the sky area will be called are much more massive and expansive than what has been shown already. There are two major settlements that float in the sky Matani village and city of Tesa Kima it's T-A-S-S-E-U-K-E-I-M-A that's a really interesting name and he says to be fair it's just a glorified massive town it's not really a city. Tesa Kima is basically the home of the last remaining Zonai and you'll meet most of the important story characters. The construct race which were shown off in the gameplay demo are ancient robots that take on different forms yet all have the same blue, green, Zonai aesthetic. Some of the variants of these robotic entities such as the ranger contract are friendly to Link and give him information and lore about the sky islands. The rangers are also the ones who maintain the remnants by planting and tending to the goddess trees that inhabit the islands. The soldier and warden constructs however are hostile to Link and will attack onsite. The warden construct itself is a mini boss, the first boss you fight and that giant blocky entity from the most recent trailer there are also three other construct types. The dragon construct which drops a flamethrower part then Link is used to a shield or certain handheld weapons. The sentry which just hides and alerts soldiers and scholars to your presence and the scholar constructs which are just soldiers but with the ability to scale and climb walls. Now number three, major differences, underground caves. Openings to the underground have appeared across the Hyrule map and these openings lead to an extensive underground cave system. Across the caverns are different biomes in small rooms, enemy types, infused materials. There are different tiers to the underground caves with biomes closer to the surface resembling more of the aesthetic of the surface biomes of Hyrule. However, as Link explores deeper into the caves, the biomes take on a more fungal and alien aesthetic. One major point of interest occurs near the deepest depths of the world and that is the forgotten city which Link will eventually learn is the ancient Zonai city of Dumorin, D-O-U-M-O-R-R-I-N. So in case I'm mispronouncing this. This area is a massive deserted underground cavern filled with Zonai temples and buildings. The city's architecture resembles much of the architecture created by the Meso-American peoples and reminds me of the pictures of the Tenno-Chitlin, T-E-N-O-C-H-T-I-T-L-A-N. I know that's an actual real life, you know, I don't want to say race. I meant an actual real life culture but I don't know much about them. Link will visit parts of the city throughout the game but can only advance the new areas of Dumorin once he gains greater power and strength through the various dungeons and tiers of the kingdom. The size of Dumorin is easily about one fourth the size of the Hyrule map. Man, that's massive. And the city itself is located within a dangerous underground biome that covers the lower area of the cave called the Gorge. There is a bunch of other underground caverns and biomes but I'll talk more about the enemies. Like-likes are returning in addition to Peahats and Moldorms. There are also re-skinned variants of the Moblins and Bocomins and Lysophil enemy types that stalk the upper tiers of the caverns near the surface. Now here are some gameplay differences. New arm abilities. Due to story reasons, Link has a new arm which grants him new abilities. The first four below are the abilities highlighted in the gameplay demo so I'll talk about them briefly adding some clarifying info. Fuse, the fuse ability allows Link to fuse almost any two items together so just two items, not more. To create weapons including existing weapons and shields it also allows him to fuse any item in his inventory to his arrows which provides a unique buff and aspect to the arrows. The system will address the weapon durability concerns. Weapon durability will be in tiers of the kingdom as it allows Link to fuse two of the same weapons together to increase durability. Or other items to be damaged weapons to further increase the durability and possibly gives a weapon above slash aspect. It's important to note that you can only fuse two items together. You cannot fuse another item to an already fused weapon or tool. Ultra Hand, the Ultra Hand ability is similar to Fuse except Ultra Hand fuses other items together, items that are not weapons in order to create vehicles, platforms and other contraptions among the sky islands. The remnants Link can find the Zonai technology such as fans and batteries that extend the lifespan of the tech. These items can power self made vehicles that race, fly or surf around the world. You can also complete optional terry town like side missions where you can build new settlements and add onto already existing towns which is actually really fun. Recall, the recall ability allows Link to rewind the movement for a singular object such as a boulder rolling down a mountain or a piece of the remnant falling down to the ground which Link can rewind in order to reach the islands. This is the main way that players can reach the remnants although there are other ways too such as using Ultra Hand to build floating platforms. Also if an object hits an object that is being recalled it will affect the movement of such an object so just be careful and mindful. Ascend, the ascend ability allows Link to jump up and no clip through the ceiling to the nearest ground. There are a few restrictions Link cannot ascend through super long stretches of ground but this ability is super useful in the caves for traveling amongst closely clumped together sky islands. The abilities that are highlighted above are the abilities Link receives at the beginning of the game but by completing certain dungeons Link can acquire more arm abilities. So here's some additional ones. Morph, the Morph ability works similarly to Cappy in Super Mario Odyssey. That is the Morph ability allows Link to possess malice enemy types and control them. This is super useful in avoiding such creating new and unique combat opportunities and infiltrating enemy ranks especially in hordes underground where it can become congested. Seven, Glide. This arm ability was shown off in the title reveal trailer and creates a giant platform when Link is falling in the sky from the remnants and allows him to glide great distances over the Hyrule map in short amounts of time. Glide essentially eliminates the need for ground traversal which is useful later on as the map and enemies dynamically become more dangerous. So I think that's that giant bird that we've seen. That's what he's claiming anyways. Descend. While technically not a separate arm ability itself descend is just an extension of us end and acts in the opposite manner by allowing Link to no clip through the ground to the nearest ceiling below some restrictions to reply. And then grapple. This ability allows Link's arm to become a long rope itself and grab onto certain zonai checkered surfaces to swing across chasms. This reminds me of, what was that in the Wind Waker? You know, it wasn't a hook shop but that other man that claw, not the claw shop. I don't know, I forgot what it's called. But when you could swing the rope and then start swinging. This kind of reminds me of that a little bit. In addition to grabbing on certain walls to run across in this ability useful in both the sky islands and the caves as the ruins in both areas are zonai themed and have the checkered surfaces that Link can grapple onto. Now enemies. All enemies from Breath of the Wild will be present in Tears of the Kingdom and more of course, which I explained above. Overall, the combat is pretty similar to Breath of the Wild with more enemy and mini boss types. Not really worth going through the effort to list them all. Dungeons. There are seven mandatory story dungeons that Link has to complete. But there are also four optional dungeons that contain the four other arm abilities I mentioned above. Which is Morph Glide, Descending Grapple. And yes, the game can be completed without these other abilities. Although I would not recommend going through the game without them. Three story dungeons. There are seven total story dungeons that Tears of the Kingdom and in contrast to the freedom and open world nature of Breath of the Wild these dungeons sort of had to be completed in a particular order. The first dungeon, the Construct Manufactory must be completed first. The next three dungeons can be completed in any order which include the Hebra Citadel, the Pharaon Mines and the Dumoran Sanctuary. The last three must be completed in a certain order as follows, the Sheikah Archive, the Zonai Observatory and the Research Labs and the Ark of Dumoran. In order to reach Incarnate Ganondorf, each story dungeon is uniquely thinnish and will have a variety of puzzles that you must complete. What is cool about these dungeons that they reward Link for completing the optional dungeons explained below to gain the other arm abilities. Puzzles become easier to complete and each story dungeon takes less time overall to master. The first four dungeons are rather short sort of like the Divine Beast dungeons but still fun enough and unique enough to where I didn't have much of a problem. The last dungeons are much longer and overall more fun to complete but at the same time they are much more difficult. The first four story dungeons, the Constraint Manufactory is the first of the dungeons that you have to complete and it is an abandoned Zonai factory and industrial building. There was nothing really noteworthy about this dungeon because it's more like a tutorial dungeon than anything else. Even the boss, the Manufactory Warden is just a larger version of the Warding Constraint. Hebra Citadel is the structure that materializes beneath the raging storm above Hebra Peak. It is similar to the aesthetic of the first dungeon but with more of an ice theme. Again, it's not really noteworthy. The boss is called the Frozen Ancient. The Frozen Ancient, Idren and takes the form of a giant whizrobe like sorcerer. It was just a damaged spun, hit it enough times and you kill it. Then you can complete the Farum Minds which is a Zonai ruins below the Farum region in the highest cavern tier. This dungeon was pretty cool as it featured more diverse terrain and natural puzzles. The boss was called the Burrowing Fiend to Tremorath and was a giant horned worm that would burrow beneath you and attack you from below if you stayed in one spot too long. You kill it in a way similar to Molduga but Tremorath has a second phase where it would slither after you. Just use a shroom bomb to stun it, hit it on its one eye, rinse and repeat until it dies. Then there was the Dumeran Sanctuary which is a large temple on the outskirts of the city, another standard dungeon and it kind of reminded me of Skyview Temple from Skyward Sword in terms of aesthetics, overgrown and crumbling. The boss was called Corrupted Berserker, Zonerock and is stupidly difficult warrior type boss that was similar to the Stalfos mini bosses from Skyward Sword. Five, the last three story dungeons which are the Sheikah Archives. Let's see, these dungeons were definitely better than the first four as they featured more segments and diversity in the aesthetics and enemies. First one you have to complete is the Sheikah Archives which is the library slash museum themed dungeon it is located in the pit beneath the elevated Hyrule Castle you first explore the upper levels of the structure which is the museum segment. This area has a bunch of artifacts and skeletons of different creatures on display around the different rooms and the enemies you face are malice infused versions of the skeletons. You have to find four hidden keys in the museum in order to reach the archives below. Once you ultra hand the complete key you have to fight a returning boss, malice incarnate Stal Lord which takes on the appearance of the human eye blight Ganon with bones. To kill this boss you have to weaken the arm and leg joints until it has no more malice and then destroy the exposed bone matter until Stal Lord has nothing to rebuild itself with once you destroy the entire body until only the head remains you destroyed the head. After the first boss you can travel further down to find the library slash archive section of this dungeon. The library and archive section is much more difficult than the previous section and the main enemy type here is giant spiders. You don't have to find any keys here but you do have to travel to lower regions while fighting off increasingly larger spider enemies. Once you reach the bottom of the Sheikah archives you will be in the spider nest and have to face Arcanite Abomination Maliceestra. This boss has the ability to climb walls and teleports around the arena shooting web attacks and attacking from above. You just have to shoot it in its eyes to stun it and attack the abdomen. The boss can summon spider enemies while regenerating health so be wary. The last three story dungeons is the Zonai Observatory and Research Laboratory. This is certainly my favorite of the dungeons. The Zonai Observatory is located high amongst the remnants essentially in the highest tier of the world you can explore. You first have to complete the lower section of the dungeon which is just the control station so you can gain access to the observatory and research lab. The enemies here are just pure malice manifestations taking on a variety of different forms. Once you complete the lower puzzle you can explore the upper dungeon. The idea here is to resemble the central ori of the observatory by exploring the research lab and surrounding areas. Once Link has reassembled the central ori malice corrupts the ori structure itself and it becomes my personal favorite boss in the game. An ethro planet malice structure called the Twisted Celestial Maglanorium. You have to use Zonai Charged Fused Arrows in order to land any damage to do this thing and to hit the objects you assembled on the structure. The only attacks the boss has is shooting charged malice at you and using its quote unquote arms to try and crush you. Once you stun each of the planet structures enough you have to climb on top of the boss and destroy each of the four energy outlets on the quote unquote back of this thing. You have to complete this step quickly because Maglanorium will shock Link with electricity and cause him to fall off. Once each of the power outlets is destroyed the quote unquote head or sun object of Maglanorium will disassemble itself and float around attacking Link. Really the best way to kill this boss is to use the grapple ability to climb onto it and hit it with your weapons but if you didn't complete the optional dungeon to get that ability, you're gonna spam shoot the boss with arrows until it dies. Overall the puzzles in this dungeon were the most creative and enjoyable in my opinion. The Zonai Observatory and Research Lab took me the longest to complete out of any of the dungeons. It's a 10 out of 10 dungeon and boss. Seven, the Ark of Dolmarin. I'm going to keep this one brief because there's a lot of story spoilers but the Ark is located in the middle of Dolmarin. The dungeon itself is fine but certainly the least interesting of the final three dungeons in my opinion. The aesthetic is similar to the Dolmarin Sanctuary but with a lot more enemy types and puzzles. The final boss, guessed by anyone with half a brain is Ganondorf or as he calls himself in this game Gerudo Incarnate Ganondorf. He basically spends the entire game rehydrating himself which is funny because of the meme associated with that idea. The final boss of Ganondorf reminded me immediately of the kind of proportions in Wind Waker Ganon but a bit more realistic artistically obviously. It was different from the muscular version in knock on your time when it said just an immense broad shoulder, broad chest kind of design. The fight itself gameplay wise was great. My second favorite behind Maglanorium. It was a multi-phase fight with three sections where you have to dehydrate Ganondorf in order to kill him. The ending was very interesting story wise and sets up a very interesting timeline shift. I'll leave it at that for now. The Zonai Trials. The Zonai Trials are denoted by a giant boulder surrounded by green swirly Zonai magic which have been seen in some trailers and the art book and they essentially replace the shrines from Breath of the Wild. The Zonai Trials are also unique in their own sets as in contrast to Breath of the Wild there are only 36 trials but each trial takes more time to complete and in my opinion is much more fun and engaging. Trials are also different from Breath of the Wild as most of them are not mini dungeons but quests. At the beginning of each trial is the ghost of a trapped Zonai who needs Link to complete a task for them. These tasks can range from defeating powerful bosses to solving a Breath of the Wild shrine-like puzzle, collecting items while being hunted down like the Trials in Skyward Sword or completing a stealth section similar to the Yiga Clan quest. After successfully completing the trial the trapped Zonai ghost will enhance Link which will essentially increase his damage potential in combat. Walking, running, climbing, swimming speeds decreases the amount of damage taken from a hit, et cetera. Link is given a skill tree in his arm and he can dedicate these enhancements towards the branches on the skill tree. That's the first time we've heard of a skill tree. That would be interesting. Remember we haven't actually seen the menu system at all maybe that's why. Now, optional dungeons. The optional dungeons are the elevated labyrinths from Breath of the Wild and do not require Link to complete them in any particular order. They follow their own secondary storyline which ties nicely into the main story and doesn't feel disconnected or separated in any way. Despite being optional dungeons they are on par with the first story dungeons but overall they are relatively boring like the Divine Beast. The bosses for each of these optional dungeons are not unique in any way just being the same boss but with slight variations. The dungeons are as follows the Akala labyrinth, the Hebrew labyrinth and the Gerudo labyrinth and another new Zonai labyrinth that rises out of the ground in the Luneiru province. Because they are elevated in the sky now there's a lot more to explore in these structures. Your main goal is to reach the core of each labyrinth after running through a 3D maze solving different puzzles to progress. The boss in each area is just a variation of the Zonai dragon construct which becomes easier to beat the further you are in the game. So my thoughts on the story again I'm not going to reveal any spoilers on the story but I will say it is a much more linear than Breath of the Wild story. Imagine Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword and you can do with that information what you will. Now that's a lot to take in and a lot I mean when you're talking to spoilers maybe there's not a ton of story spoilers but there's a lot of spoilers in this if any of this is true. You guys gotta remember that this is just some random post on Reddit. The reason that it came back up on the Gaming Rumors and Leaks Reddit is because of just some interesting details this was posted before the last trailer happened and there's just interesting details like the description of Ganondorf being broad-chested and more muscular and stuff like that seem to have come true but we don't, yeah, is the rest of this true? Obviously there's nothing that we could say that definitively denies all of this even like the dungeon or whatever we see rising in the Gerudo Desert how do we know it doesn't rise to the sky? How do we know that's not one of the dungeons you talked about? Like there's just so much we don't know about Tears of the Kingdom even still but I wanted to cover this just because I found it to be quite fascinating. It's very descriptive. This sounds like somebody who would have played the game start to finish. I want to know most QA testers want to play the game start to finish and that's really the biggest red flag to me knowing how QA testing works that it'd be pretty rare that someone actually did this. However, we did get the entire art book leaked and you have to wonder if that art book leaked entirely did a copy of the game get outside of Nintendo as well? You know, I guess that's just something we'll find out but I got a link to the source on this down in the description if you guys want to go dig into it. Again, I just thought it'd be really, really good fun and now I got to get into those other videos I said I was working on. So thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.