There are some video game trailers that stick with you. While they are obviously made to sell us products, they are also pieces of art unto themselves. Intricately edited showcases for the adventures to come where stories, characters, worlds, and more are shown in the best light.
Some can be underwhelming, while others send our hype into the stratosphere. As someone who covers video games for a living, I try to be objective when writing about upcoming games as I want to treat everything impartially, but sometimes I can’t help but let my inner child run free and bounce around in my chair like an idiot when a killer trailer comes around. This is exactly what happened with Tears of the Kingdom two years ago.
Nobody Does Trailers Quite Like The Legend Of Zelda
I’ve written about my obsession with this trailer before, and how very few in recent years did such a fantastic job not only expressing the dramatic stakes of the game’s narrative, but also the characters players would meet and the mechanics they would interact with. Zelda hasn’t abandoned story once during its long existence, but with a lack of voice acting and Nintendo sticking to a very traditional structure, it always felt quite dry and predictable. That wasn’t the case with Tears, and ever since its reveal, fans were kept guessing about exactly what it was going to entail.
But its quality isn’t the point of this article, but how its pacing, content, music, and delivery is something that is still talked about by Zelda players to this day, and compared to everything else that came before, nothing has managed to top it.
And Tears Of The Kingdom Is Easily The Best Ever
Things start off quietly as a soft horn takes us across the myriad islands found across the sky. Slimes jump around in their natural habitat, auburn leaves sway in the breeze, and cute little Zonai robots chop at trees as they gather resources. This vision of Hyrule exists in a state of tranquil normality, and then Link begins descending from the sky.
As the main theme swells and this changed vision of a familiar land comes into view, it becomes clear we are in for one hell of a ride. It makes use of a soft, almost melancholic piano motif from Breath of the Wild, but with a more optimistically fierce attitude. As if the world has come back to life and is ready to fight back for the first time in a century.
Given it takes place in the same world, Tears of the Kingdom has a responsibility to show us exactly how much has changed and why exactly we should care. It takes us on a brief tour of each region with brief glimpses of the sky and the depths before Hyrule Castle rises from the ashes and ushers in the dawn of a new era of evil. Before Zelda falls into the pit and Ganon appears before the crimson moon, we’re already hooked. The pacing is immaculate, and the music is unrivaled, showing us that when it’s firing on all cylinders, Nintendo is untouchable.
Narrations from familiar characters like Zelda, Ganondorf, and Sidon don’t even begin to be heard until the two-minute mark, and at that point it’s a blistering race to the finish as the trailer shows us new mechanics, locations, characters, and so much more as one final sequence filled with dialogue ushers in a saxophone-laden crescendo. It gives me goosebumps every single time I watch it. How Tears of the Kingdom was gradually shown off to the world is as big a part of its legacy as the finished product, which is why I’m talking about this trailer as it’s a fully-fledged experience in its own right.
So, if you’re hankering for a dose of hype in this quiet period, do yourself a favour and go watch this trailer for the first time in two years. I promise you won’t regret it.
