Warning! This article contains spoilers The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Realm.
As revealed by Eiji Aonuma, renowned Nintendo developer and producer of the Zelda series, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was almost supposed to be called Tears of the Dragon.
Nintendo Everything translated comments by Aonuma in the Japanese art book for Tears of the Kingdom, in which he stated that the band dropped the name so as not to spoil the fun for fans and not to reveal an critical plot point.
Nintendo felt that Tears of the Dragon would focus too much attention on the Dragon of Light that flies around Hyrule, and would undercut the impact of the surprising reveal (last spoiler alert) that Zelda is a dragon herself.
“Letting Light Dragon be Zelda would have been a problem, and that also affected the title. One of the candidates for the title that survived until the end was Tears of the Dragon,” Aonuma said.
“But it would be a bad idea to have the keyword dragon in the title, and we wanted to have dragon designs in the logo, but decided otherwise. After all, it would emphasize Light Dragon. But we couldn’t think of anything else good, and we were running out of time to develop.”
The name Tears of the Kingdom still makes sense, of course, as players traverse the Kingdom of Hyrule in search of tears that will unlock hidden memories that ultimately reveal the true identity of the great dragon.
Tears of the Kingdom was one of the biggest games of 2023, both critically and commercially. Nintendo announced that the sequel to Breath of the Wild had sold 10 million copies in three days, and in our 10/10 IGN review, it stated, “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an astounding sequel, expanding a world that already felt full beyond all expectations and raising the bar even higher into the clouds.”
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter for IGN. He’ll be talking Witcher all day long.
