Zeldas: Tears of the Kingdom players are creating an industrial revolution

By DeAngelo Epps May 18, 2023

I expected a lot of cool contraptions to be built when Nintendo revealed that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the long-awaited sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was going to have a full crafting system. What I didn’t expect, though, was that fans would bring a full-on industrial revolution to Hyrule using Ultrahand.

In this new open-world Zelda title, players are given the ability to put together doohickeys of all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re making a caveman-style hammer by attaching a simple rock to a stick or a flying boat with a turbo-fan engine to take flight, there seems to be something for every class of player to mold from their imagination. But some players are going even further, creating machinery that calls back to history’s own evolution.

My rigging experience literally plays into my TotK gameplay I had to try this in game as well https://t.co/iIvGq5ox5i pic.twitter.com/CVDeVUrYUD

— Liz-C 😱🤯 (@Liz_Caingcoy) May 15, 2023

The above clip from Twitter user Liz Caingcoy shows that players have gone as far as to create functional engines and rigs in the game. And these aren’t just for show. As seen in Caingcoy’s creation, they can serve a real purpose in the game. The clip shows one example of a mobile death trap that can jab enemies on its own.

@superpixel_games
You can build wHat?! #zelda #tearsofthekingdom #zeldatok #zeldatotk

♬ original sound – SUPERPIXEL | Game Stories

While I’m sure a lot of these tools break the Geneva Conventions in the land of Hyrule, the freedom Nintendo has presented here really blows me away. What started off as a seemingly simple system has quickly evolved into something akin to Minecraft, where players are only limited by their imagination and how chaotic they want their adventure to be.

And thankfully for those who aren’t into using the new attach power to build these contraptions, there are tons of ways to simply harass citizens, enemies, and Koroks with simple creations.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out now on Nintendo Switch.

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De'Angelo Epps is a gaming writer passionate about the culture, communities, and industry surrounding gaming. His work ranges…

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