Eiji Aonuma’s recent The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay demonstration finally gave us an expanded look at Ultrahand, a new ability that allows you to pick up almost anything and stick them together.
The idea of being able to create anything that comes to mind sounded amazing, especially when we learned more about powerful and unique Zonai devices in our hands-on session. However, one glaring downside of the system ingrained deep anxiety: the potential that we’d have to painstakingly recreate these necessary constructs every time we wanted to cross a river or glide over a ravine.
After our hands-on with Tears of the Kingdom though, we’re happy to confirm this won’t be the problem we thought it could be because there’s a way to streamline building with Ultrahand.
Ultrahand's possibilities
To get more into the ability to build with Ultrahand, Tears of the Kingdom really does let you attach just about anything in any way. You can rotate found objects and stick them together, then add a seemingly unlimited number of Zonai devices. These devices are operated by a “battery” attached to Link, and some drain the battery faster than others depending on how powerful they are.
For example, Fans and Rockets can sort of accomplish the same thing — they propel an object they’re attached to. Fans are slower, but deplete battery slowly, while Rockets are, well, rockets: they explosively push whatever it's attached to, but that hectically fast energy depletes that battery just as quickly. We know we’ll be able to increase this battery’s capacity, but how, we’re not sure just yet.
We saw just a handful of these Zonai devices, from Flame Emitters to Balloons, and know there will be many, many more to discover, and there are likely unique and interesting objects to be found in the world to attach them to. You can create constructs both useful and cool looking, with perfectly placed Zonai devices with sets of Wings and other objects to create monstrous flying devices, for example.
The precise location of some of these Zonai devices on an object really do make a huge difference– it took us a couple of tries to get Fans or Rockets positioned correctly to get us going in the right direction, at least without a Steering Stick to attach as well. We can’t wait to see what people can come up with, but the idea of losing a painstakingly created construct was kind of a bummer.
Unfortunately, we can’t get into much detail about the solution besides that, yes, you can easily and quickly recreate things you’ve previously built with Ultrahand as long as you have the right materials to do so – and we can’t exclaim enough about how useful the feature really is.
We’ll have tons more Tears of the Kingdom coverage in the days and weeks to come so for all things Legend of Zelda. In the meantime, check out our full Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom preview.
Additional reporting by Brian Altano
Casey DeFreitas is the deputy editor of guides at IGN. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is what fully developed her love of gaming, and she hasn't really left Hyrule since.