A🔯s part of Tears of the Kingdom’s somewhat idiosyncratic marketing push, some of the lead developers did on Wednesday to answer fans’ burning questions about the game - barely 24 hours before it launches. It’s always a rare treat to hear Nintendo developers speak about their work, but at this point I understand that some people would prefer to experience the game for themselves this weekend. When Nintendo’s Twitter account shared the interview, it included a simple quote from developer Satoru Takizawa: “The dungeons are huge and each carry their own regional look and feel.” Apparently this is being considered a spoiler, and Zelda fans on Twitter are inconsolable.
I have not played Tears of the Kingdom yet, and I know very little about it. But I have played Breath of the Wild, and all the Zelda games that came before it, so I can pretty confidently tell you a few th🐼ings about Tears of the Kingdom. One, you pꦗlay as a young man named Link in the kingdom of Hyrule. Two, you’re looking for a Master Sword, a Hylian Shield, and possibly a Tri-Force so you can defeat the evil Ganondorf. And three, it has dungeons in it.
I guess dungeons weren’t officially confirmed by Nintendo until this Q&A, but are we really going to act like this is a spoiler? The new Zelda has a thing that almost every single Zelda game has, why is anyone surprised by this? The fact that the developer mentioned it so off-handedly and Nintendo tweeted it so casually should be your clue that it isn't some kind of closely guarded secret, some forbidden knowledge that’s going to tarnish your experience of discovering Tears of the Kingdom for the first time.
I’m sure part of the problem is just how cagey Nintendo has been about Tears of the Kingdom. For years we called it Breath of the Wild 2 because even the title was considered to be a spoiler. We didn’t even see a long-form gameplay reveal until about a month ago. Maybe people thought that if Nintendo hadn’t mentioned the dungeons yet, there must be a good reason for it. For some people, this casual confirmation may have dashed their hopes that there was something so mind blowing about the new dungeons that won’t even mention them until the game is out. I think you’re a little too high on the hype if that’s ♉what you’re mad about, but I’ll still give you a pass.
That’s not why people seem to be upset though. Reading through the replies, they’re worked up simply because they didn’t know whether or not Tears of the Kingdom would have dungeons and they wanted to find out for themselves before Nintendo ruined the surprise. To those people, I have to ask: what made you think Nintendo would ever make a Zelda game 💫without dungeons?
I’m not trying to play dumb, and I’m fully aware that some people don’t consider the Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild to be dungeons. It baffles me, but I know they’re out there. The Divine Beasts are different from the kind of dungeons we’re used to i🦋n the linear
Zelda games, it’s true. They aren’t as tightly themed as older dungeons typically were, nor are they as densely packed with multiple floors you have to nav🌜igate up and down - but they’re definitely dungeons. They have locked doors and hidden keys, they have puzzles to solve, and they have bosses to fight. They’re dungeons. They’re shaped like robotic animals instead of a water temple, but they’re still dungeons.
The backlash to the dungeon ‘reveal’ has me worried about how people are going to react to Tears of the Kingdom’s dungeons. Though I have not seen them, I can assure you that they'll be a lot like the Divine Beasts. This is the sequel to Breath of the Wild, and everything we've seen about the sequel so far represents an evolution of the system, mechanics, and design principles that originated in Breath of the Wild. All Takizawa said is that they’re “huge” and they each have their own “look and feel”, which are things you could say about the Divine Beasts as well. I am confident that Tears of the Kingdom’s dungeons are just Divine Beasts 2.0, so if you didn’t think those were dungeons, you won’t think these ones are either. That should be good news for everyone upset about the spoiler. It means Nintendo didn’t actually spoil anything at all.