Zelda leads were blown away by what Tears of the Kingdom players made with Ultrahand: "It's beyond even the development team's imagination"

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"Oh man, they kind of one-upped me"

Zelda Tears of the Kingdom powers abilities
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Here's something for Tears of the Kingdom engineers to put on their fridge. Long-time Zelda veterans were mighty impressed with what players cooked up with Ultrahand, with series producer Eiji Aonuma even calling some of them creations of "complexity that I wasn't able to do during development."

In a new interview with IGN, Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi – who previously directed several other Zelda games – discussed the open-world masterwork with a retrospective eye. Both devs pounced on the community's Ultrahand tinkering, with Fujibayashi saying: "The first thing is just surprise, it's beyond even the development team's imagination of what kinds of things people created."

Aonuma adds: "When I was in college, one thing I did was work on creating puppets. And these were puppets that functioned by turning a crank of sorts to get them to move. And this was something that when we were working on the Legends of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I wasn't able to do... But after the game came out, I saw that, oh my gosh, people created puppets like the ones I made in real life when I was in college, but with more complexity that I wasn't able to do during development. And so I see that and I'm like, oh man, they kind of one-upped me in that regard."

Looking at the many viral videos of some of the more complex Tears of the Kingdom creations, Fujibayashi says that "initially I was like, this must be a different game. And then I read through it, I was like, oh, it's the game we made. And it was certainly a surprise." 

Aonuma singles out a recent Godzilla-inspired mech and wonders how the video, which doesn't feature Link at all, was even made. "It almost does feel like a different game in that way," he says. "And I'm still kind of mystified by that." You've gotta wonder how they might feel about Ultrahand being used as a tool to teach actual engineering students. That and, you know, the Korok-related Geneva Conventions violations. 

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is among the most imaginative of the best games of the year 2023, so it's high praise for its lead creators to be impressed with the imagination demonstrated by players through their Ultrahand tinkering. Just weeks ago a Tears of the Kingdom player demonstrated their dominance over horses by building a big, infinite-motion wheel which they can ride across Hyrule, saying: "The big wheel yearns for slaughter."  

In the same interview, Aonuma wonders why players would want to go back to the "limited" and "restricted" days of pre-Breath of the Wild Zelda games.  

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.