A Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player has found a "punishment cell" hidden in the game that separates Link from the entire world.
Twitter user and Zelda fan @yukino_san_14 recently shared a video of Link in this strange empty area that he can't seem to get out of. In the tweet, Yukino writes (machine translated): "I was sent to the punishment cell, probably because I overloaded it! When I load from the title, I'm sent to this mural area and can't do anything." The tweet continues: "There are no lights, no items, and no sound. The only menu is the system."
If you're not familiar, Yukino is actually one of the Tears of the Kingdom players that's been ruining the big Ganon fight in increasingly silly ways. The Zelda fan has been sharing their various attempts to push Ganon over the edge as they trap the villain in various self-made traps, create torture devices for him, and more. I guess Ganon finally had enough and decided to fight back, sending Link to the mysterious empty land.
負荷かけ過ぎたせいか懲罰房に飛ばされたー！タイトルからロードしてもこの壁画エリアに飛ばされて何もできない。明かりもアイテムもなくて音すらない。メニューもシステムだけ。ゲーム再起動で直りましたが手動セーブしちゃうと詰んじゃうかも #TearsOfTheKingdom pic.twitter.com/3ABG8heHjuJuly 11, 2023
All joking aside, Automaton actually asked Yukino how they ended up in this position. According to the outlet, the player in question was performing more of their experiments in Tears of the Kingdom using loads of the elevator railings in the game, even during one of the game's boss fights. Whilst reloading the fight, they were transported to this peculiar area and, no matter what save file they loaded, they always ended up in the same place - spooky!
Eventually, Yukino managed to break the cycle by rebooting the game completely but warned other players that, if they were to end up in the same position and manually save whilst in the "punishment cell", they could end up stuck there forever. Clearly, you don't want to be in this position as you may have to start your adventure in Hyrule all over again.
We have no idea where this location can be found or what purpose it serves in the game. My best guess is that it could be an in-game test bed or debug room. As another Twitter user pointed out, replying to Yukino's tweet, the murals on the wall of the area look seem to match up with the ones shown on the title screen and the tomb under Hyrule castle. It's not been confirmed what the space is, but regardless, you probably shouldn't attempt to access it, apparently by breaking the game extra hard, unless you want to get stuck there forever.
Punishment cell aside, 23 game developers explain why Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be talked about for years.
