Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Fans Think France is Part of Hyrule

By Marc Deschamps

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom takes place in the kingdom of Hyrule, which exists outside of the real world. Like so many other games, that gives the developers more freedom to tell the story they want without worrying about any real-world complications! While that's always been the case for the series, fans have noticed that Tears of the Kingdom makes an interesting reference to France. As pointed out by Twitter user @SuddenlyDoug, one of the mane options for a horse in the game is a "French-Braided Mane."

The Tweet from @SuddenlyDoug can be found embedded below.

Obviously this doesn't mean that Nintendo fans should expect to see Emmanuel Macron visiting Princess Zelda to hash out what the international community should do about Ganondorf. Instead, this seems to be a case of Nintendo using a common term to prevent the kind of confusion that might result had the company made up an entirely new name. In fact, like french fries, the french-braid did not even originate in the region! So while it might seem unusual to see a real-world country casually listed in the game, fans shouldn't read too much into it. Perhaps "french" is merely a word used in Hyrule to describe a certain style, with no other context needed.

Since Zelda fans have caught on to this, it will be interesting to see if future games in the series keep that term in use. Notably, the first Pokemon games made several references to the real-world, with Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow mentioning both America and South America at different points. Subsequent games and remakes have removed these references altogether, though re-releases have kept them intact. Those references are a little more blatant than using the name of a hairstyle that didn't even debut in the country it's attributed to, so fans will just have to wait and see if things change in the future!

Are you surprised by this real-world reference? Do you think Nintendo will change it in subsequent games? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!

[H/T: The Gamer]

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