Tears of the Kingdom leaked ad, website reveal cool new details

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom got a big, boisterous new trailer on Thursday, revealing all-new gameplay, story, and character details about Nintendo’s sequel to Breath of the Wild. But Nintendo still has some secrets to share, as a newly leaked ad for Tears of the Kingdom and the game’s official website have revealed. The latter includes a small but enticing detail: Link’s journey will begin in the skies of Hyrule.

According to the official Zelda website, the mysterious floating islands “that have suddenly appeared in the skies above Hyrule” are where players will first get control of Link. “It’s there our hero will have to gain new abilities before returning to the surface world to begin his epic adventure,” Nintendo says on the game’s website.

It makes sense. Some of the earliest artwork — showing Link overlooking Hyrule from high above — teased that, and trailers show the game’s hero doing a lot of diving down to the land below.

On the surface of Hyrule, much has changed, Nintendo says: “Familiar locations have been dramatically transformed, with new towns, dank caves, and mysterious gaping chasms springing up across the world.” Exploring the underground areas of Hyrule has also been teased from the beginning, with Link and Zelda apparently exploring caves where the seemingly mummified corpse of Ganondorf resides.

But players may go deeper into the bowels of Hyrule than they expected. A video advertisement for Tears of the Kingdom shows Link exploring at a depth of -470 units below the surface, based on coordinates at the bottom of his minimap. The Sky Islands have a height of about 1,500 units, indicating that Link will go deeply underground.

While in that deep underground area, Link is seen shooting an arrow at a tree to light up the environment around it. This appears to be a feature of Tears of the Kingdom’s Fuse mechanic, with Link seemingly attaching a flower — perhaps a nightshade — to an arrow to create makeshift light sources.

That video also confirms that the three-eyed dragon Link will face is indeed a Gleeok. The video shows the name Fire Gleeok, so it’s possible there are other elemental types of the dragon in Tears of the Kingdom. Whether that’s in relation to the elements fire, earth, wind, and water, or simply the elemental weapon types of Breath of the Wild (fire, ice, lightning) remains to be seen.

Soon, all will be revealed; The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrives on Nintendo Switch on May 12.