The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is set to be a rare instance of the Zelda series doing a direct follow-up, but even though the open world title’s story will pick up where 2017’s Breath of the Wild left off, those who haven’t played the latter won’t have to worry about how accessible the sequel will be to newcomers in terms of both story and gameplay.
Speaking in an interview recently published as part of Nintendo’s Ask the Developer series, The Legend of Zelda series producer said that owing to Tears of the Kingdom’s “intuitive” new gameplay mechanics, first-time players will be able to grasp it easily.
After discussing how the upcoming open world sequel will build on Breath of the Wild’s gameplay foundations, Aonuma said, “When we talk about these things, many may think, ‘Well, you can’t enjoy this game unless you’ve already played the previous game and are familiar with the setting.’ But the new gameplay ideas we packed into this title are all things that can be solved intuitively, so I think first-time players can rest assured that this game is easy to get into.”
Meanwhile, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi added that the game will be similarly accommodating where its story is concerned as well, citing the new Character Profile feature as an example, which will allow players to read up on different characters.
“The same goes for the story too,” he said. “We put in some effort to make sure that it feels comfortable for both first-time players and those with experience of the previous game. For example, we’ve prepared a Character Profile feature that players can see anytime during their adventure, so it’s easy to understand the relationship between characters, even without knowledge from the previous title.”
During the same interview, Tears of the Kingdom’s developers also talked about how they decided early on in its development that they would use the same setting as Breath of the Wild, while Aonuma may also have dropped hint about which of the series’ three timelines the game is placed in.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launches for the Nintendo Switch on May 12.