Despite usingBreath of the Wild’s foundations,The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomlooks like it’ll shake up the usual franchise formula in a few interesting and maybe even unexpected ways. One of those ways isTears of the Kingdom’s new abilities. In the upcoming open-world adventure, Link will have access to a slew of new powers, some of which have the potential to really shake up theZeldaformula. In particular,Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Fuse ability looks to be the most impressive new ability, allowing players to meld together just about any environmental object to create makeshift vehicles and weapons that could greatly affect the Master Sword’s role this time round.
Available in just about everyLegend of Zeldagame, the Master Sword is one of the franchise’s most iconic images, and one of the most iconic weapons in gaming. Though its abilities change between each entry, the Master Sword is generally considered to be the most powerful or useful weapon in its respective games. However, that might all change inThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
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Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Fuse Ability Might Overshadow the Master Sword
InThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Master Sword is locked away in plain sight for the vast majority of the game. In an attempt to emphasizeBreath of the Wild’s new weapon durability system, and to encourage players to experiment with all the game’s different weapon types, the Master Sword is locked away in the Korok Forest. While players can find the Master Sword fairly early on in the game if they know where to look for it, they won’t be able to pull it from its pedestal until they have at least 13 hearts.
Breath of the Wild’s approach to the Master Sword is pretty satisfying, with it acting as a big payoff for all the time and effort the player has put into the game. It also helps thatBreath of the Wild’s Master Swordoffers the gameplay benefit of being the only invulnerable weapon in the game, albeit one that needs to recharge for 10 minutes in between uses. It seems likely thatThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomwill follow a similar pattern for its own Master Sword, though this time, rather than being locked away to emphasize weapon durability, it’ll probably be locked away to encourage players to use Fuse.
Teased for a little while now but revealed fully inZelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s last gameplay trailer, Link’s new Fuse ability will let him join together almost any object in the environment to produce a new weapon, traversal method, or other forms of adventuring tool. The trailer showed off a few of the different ways Fuse can be used, such as joining together a boulder and branch to create a hammer, joining together a Keese Eyeball and arrow to create a homing arrow, and melding a few logs and fans together to create a makeshift boat. Nintendo seems to be placing a large emphasis on this new Fuse ability, and it seems likely that the Master Sword will take a back seat once again in order to encourage players to use it to its full potential.
It’s extremely likely thatThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Master Swordwon’t be given to the player until the very end of the game, probably after they’ve dropped at least 30 hours into it, at least ifBreath of the Wildis anything to go by. It’s also likely that when the players do get the Master Sword, it won’t be quite as powerful as it usually is in the rest of the franchise, with the devs probably wanting players to keep on using Fuse to create weapons throughout the game.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomis set to release July 24, 2025 for Nintendo Switch.
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