For years, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was known under the working title “Breath of the Wild 2.” When Nintendo finally revealed the game’s actual name, many fans found themselves confused. The name wasn’t as clear as Breath of the Wild, which emphasized that game’s vast world. However, the name made sense once players reached a certain point in the game. It turns out, the title was something of a problem for the developers. In the recently released book The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Master Works, producer Eiji Aonuma revealed that the game’s name nearly gave away a huge spoiler, before the developers made a slight tweak.
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“Letting it slip that the Light Dragon is Zelda would have been a problem, and this had an effect on the title too. One of the candidates for the title that made it to end was ‘Tears of the Dragon’,” writes Aonuma (translation provided by Nintendo Everything).
“But it would be a bad idea to have the keyword ‘Dragon’ in the title, and we wanted to have dragon patterns in the logo, but decided otherwise. It’d emphasize the Light Dragon, after all (laughs). But nothing else good was coming to mind, and we were running out of development time…
We went through many words, and then one time a staff member suggested, ‘What about Kingdom?’. With ‘Tears of the Kingdom‘, it felt like the phrase could connect to the Light Dragon to us, and we could use dragons in the logo. With the title decided, the logo finally became what it is now.”
Needless to say, calling the game “Tears of the Dragon” would have absolutely spoiled the game’s story, while ruining a lot of the mystery and speculation that surrounded the Tears of the Kingdom moniker. It’s difficult to say whether fans would have been able to surmise Zelda’s role as the Light Dragon, but it would have made it easier to figure out. Tears of the Kingdom really did turn out to be the best option, and the title stacks up well with Breath of the Wild.
The next Zelda game has been given the title The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. That name seems to be a bit more straightforward, inspired by the fact that Zelda can create echoes of enemies and items in the Nintendo Switch game. However, there’s a chance that there’s some kind of angle to the name that we won’t deduce until the game comes out on September 26th!
Are you happy Nintendo changed the name to Tears of the Kingdom? Do you think that helped to prevent spoilers? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!
