Nintendo is still releasing new artwork for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ahead of the game’s launch on May 12, and fans are already looking at the images for clues. All will be revealed in just a few weeks, but why wait when the beautiful art is right there waiting to be analyzed under the microscope?
Following the hot Ganon’s big debut in the final trailer last week, Nintendo released an official Gerudo King artwork yesterday that sparked some ventilator theories for the “tears” referred to in the game’s title. Maybe he collects them to become a full Thanos? The tears of the kingdom‘s champions also have new artwork showing Zora Prince Sidon, as well as two other companions, Gerudo, who looks like Riju, and Rito, who is possibly Theba’s son Thulin. The kids are all grown up and seem ready to kick ass.
The first thing that caught the attention of players was that we are still missing the fourth champion, probably the Goron, which was not shown in the recent batch of trailers and gameplay footage. with Breath of the wildis Yunobo is nowhere to be seen, some fans have speculated that this could be because Death Mountain appears to be infected with malice, potentially signaling that Link will first have to fight a Goron champion before joining as a companion.
This also fits with the wider fan theory that Ganon is trying to collect colored gems called tears that function in Hyrule sort of Infinity stones from The Avengers. The new character image shows that Ganon currently has room for seven on his ‘infinity’ necklace and already owns three – red, purple and silver. Sidon, meanwhile, seems to get a blue tear in the course of the adventure, suggesting that it’s possible that Ganon already has the red one because he took it from Goron. Rest in peace.
One of the biggest revelations in The tears of the kingdomthe final trailer of was that champions like Sidon would at least occasionally be able to fight side by side with Link. Building on the backstories of the characters created in the hack ‘n slash spin-off, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamityit appears that champions can indeed accompany the Hero of Time on his adventure at various points as fully functioning NPC allies.
When Breath of the wild came out, Nintendo released separate Amiibo for each of the game’s champions. So far The tears of the kingdom there is only one figure for Link. We’ll see if the new champions get the same treatment once the game finally arrives.