Zelda fans have already figured out where every part of the Tears of the Kingdom demo happens on the map

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom new Switch screenshots
(Image credit: Nintendo)

We're all eager to see how the map for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom compares to the Hyrule of Breath of the Wild, and fans are already doing the big work, breaking down where every part of the recent gameplay demonstration takes place.

How? Well, it's all thanks to the minimap shown in the Tears of the Kingdom gameplay video. A number of people quickly pieced together much of the sky island using minimap snippets, but the real key is the X, Y, and Z coordinates shown on throughout the video. Using those coordinates, Reddit user teo_many was able to take the Breath of the Wild map, scale it so that the pixels lined up exactly with the numbers, and overlay the minimap captures to get a sense of the scale at play. The map's even annotated with all the major moments from the demo.

We broke down the whole gameplay showcase on the map from r/tearsofthekingdom

Tears of the Kingdom's overworld is broadly the same as Breath of the Wild's, though producer Eiji Aonuma says "it's changed in many ways." There are big new areas with the sky islands above, and players continue to speculate that there's going to be a massive underground cave complex below Hyrule, too.

Judging by this newly-pieced-together map, it looks like those sky islands are going to be massive, too. The island we see in the gameplay video looks to be around the same size as the previous game's opening area, the Great Plateau - perhaps even a bit larger. Given that, and the fact that Link seems to just have his starting equipment in the gameplay we've seen, there's good money on the idea that this sky island will serve a similar tutorial role.

Looking to pre-order The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? You can follow that link for a guide on what you need to know.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.