We’ve had a lot of footage from Nintendo, but we’re still yet to get total confirmation about the prospect of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom dungeons. The series has had them going all the way back to the very first game, but with Breath of the Wild’s mold-breaking formula they were suddenly a thing of the past.
That is until we saw the image below featuring a creature surrounding by what look like seven tears, which was enough to hint at the prospect of dungeons returning in Tears of the Kingdom. We’ll explain why this was so crucial in the opening section, but the snagis that the ten minutes gameplay Direct didn’t go on to confirm them.
AdvertisementThat is unless you look beyond what series producer, Eiji Aonuma, was trying to show us to see if there’s more to the evidence. It’s still early days, and we’ll probably need to wait for the release date to come around in May before we know for sure, but the details below should give you something to go on.
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Will there be dungeons in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom?
Our simple answer to that it certainly looks like it’s possible and we’ll explain why. The image above with the seven tears hearkens back to the days when you needed to visit dungeons in Zelda games to make it through to the final boss.
Seven tears hints at two things. Firstly, that you might need to visit seven classic dungeons to find the tears and the tears will give you some kind of power that is capable of really stopping the threat to Hyrule.
AdvertisementThis is similar to the four divine beasts that we had to visit in BotW, which were the equivalent of dungeons. The difference here is they were machines that when combined halved the health of Calamity Ganon before you take him on and there was only four of them compared to the usual 7-plus.
If you look at it from this perspective, you could say that there will be some form of dungeon no matter what. If Breath of the Wild had the Divine Beasts then Tears of the Kingdom will have something akin to this.
However, the question is whether or not they will be closer to the older style of dungeons that we know and love from The Legend of Zelda series. And to this we’re going out on a limb and saying that it certainly seems like it might be the case.
As mentioned, we’re expecting Link to need to collect the seven tears for some key to saving Hyrule, but the second point is that there are also a number of new structures in the background in the footage we’ve seen. They’re big and could easily be the dungeons that we’re hoping for.
The first big example is in the picture above and it looks like a large fortress above where Kakariko Village is in Breath of the Wild. Admittedly, there were large structures in BotW, but with the added point around the tears it’s easy to make it a 2 + 2 situation.
There are more buildings up on the sky islands, for example the one that looks like a Japanese temple in the image at the top of the page, which could be an entrance to a dungeon. If these are replicated throughout Hyrule then it won’t take long to get up to the seven needed to correlate with the image with the tears.
The clues continued with the recent arrival of trailer 3, which showed another large building rising from the sand of Gerudo. It looks even more like a classic Zelda dungeon than anything we’ve seen so far, so another good sign we’ll get them in the game.
The second point to consider is that there are references to the number seven in previous Zelda games, so we’ll go into this in more detail in the section below. Tears of the Kingdom looks huge, so there’s definitely room for dungeons, but the seven tears tell us a little more.
Does seven dungeons hint at more?
AdvertisementThe number seven is pretty important in the world of The Legend of Zelda, because in previous games it relates to the seven sages. These were first mentioned in The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past and and their lore is expanded upon in Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker.
You usually have to rescue them or their spirits to get a special power to take on the evil that has overshadowed the world. In A Link to the Past it was to open the way to Ganon’s Tower, in Ocarina of Time it was to weaken Ganondorf and in The Wind Waker it was to restore power to the Master Sword.
The sages are also in Twilight Princess and A Link Between Worlds, but it is the idea of restoring power to the master sword that fits best with what we know of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. The trailers have revealed that it gets broken and Link must relinquish it in order to dive after Zelda to try to save her from the fall.
It could be that you need to travel to 7 dungeons in order to find 7 sages to fix the master sword, giving you the power you need to take on the final boss. Obviously, this is all just a theory at this stage, but it definitely lines up with everything that we’ve seen in the video footage to-date.
AdvertisementIn earlier The Legend of Zelda games, you also got some kind of cool new weapon or ability item at each of the dungeons, like the boomerang or power gauntlets. It would be nice to see something like this in the upcoming release too, but maybe we’re asking for too much.
It already looks like you’re going to have a sandbox building site all to yourself by the end of the game, so Tears of the Kingdom is shaping up to be a brilliant return for the series. Throw in some Pegasus boots and unlocks for things like the flying glider pictured above at the dungeons and it’s going to be a big 10/10 from us.
We’ll update our guide as we discover additional details about the game. Check out our computer games section for more news and features on The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, or visit the official website at https://www.zelda.com/.
