Tears of the Kingdom dev describes utterly chaotic Ultrahand development: "It broke! It went flying!"

Mar. 22, 2024

“I would hear things like, ‘It broke! It went flying!’ And I’d respond with, ‘I know! We’ll deal with it later!'”

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomgives players an unprecedented amount of freedom by letting them attach objectives to each other using the Ultrahand, and the process of developing such an intricate system and having it feel polished was no easy task.

“When I first saw the prototype, I was excited that this was going to be a great game, but this was going to be very, very difficult,” Takayama said. “I said to myself, ‘Are we really doing this?'”

“I would hear things like, ‘It broke! It went flying!’ And I’d respond with, ‘I know! We’ll deal with it later!'” Takayama added.

That sounds a lot like the vibe in my living room when I’m attaching a rocket to a platform while fighting off Bokoblins and it blasts off in the opposite direction of where I’d planned and crashes and sinks into a river.

Per IGN, Takayama added that Nintendo fixed most of the issues it was facing early on with the Ultrahand simply by making literally every object physics-based, which made them simulate the real-world behavior of objects and environments and react to gravity, collisions, friction, and so-forth. But until that point, it sounds like things were pretty wild.

There’s a reason Tears of the Kingdom is one of thebest Switch gamesto play today.

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After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.

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