Nintendohas revealed thatTears of the Kingdomwill feature “dank caves”, seemingly confirming the long-standing fan theory that the game will feature underground segments.
Ever since Tears of the Kingdom was first revealed (oh to be back in the days of “Sequel to Breath of the Wild”),Zelda fans have been convinced that the sequel would feature underground caves of some kind. This was mostly because Link and Zelda could be seen travelling underground in the reveal trailer, but subsequent footage has had little hints that the theory was true.
Related:If Zelda Isn’t Playable In Tears Of The Kingdom, We Riot
Turns out that some of you had some Sheikah-level foresight,as the final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom has confirmed that underground caves will indeed be a thing. There are several shots in the trailer that seem to show the underground world in action, but the most concrete one is when Link is riding a rail cart around in an area that’s full of lava -you can pretty clearly see that Link and the lizalfos are fighting underground there.
If that wasn’t enough proof for you, Nintendo went ahead andconfirmed the feature itself on the official Zelda website. Following the trailer’s release, Nintendo updated the website to feature new descriptions about the game - one of them reads, “The sky isn’t the only thing that’s changed in Hyrule. Familiar locations have been dramatically transformed, with new towns, dank caves, and mysterious gaping chasms springing up across the world - all waiting to be explored.”
We’d probably have picked any other word than “dank” to describe the caves in the internet-savvy world of 2023, but that does confirm that they’ll be featured in the game to some degree. For those wondering who can’t be bothered to Google it, “dank” means damp and cold, which seems to suggest that the caves are going to be fairly sizeable. Nintendo probably wouldn’t specifically call out the caves if they weren’t worth mentioning, either.
Caves being confirmed is great, but it’s not too surprising - not only have fans been theorising about this since the very beginning, but the last trailer that Nintendo shared actually had a few shots that seemed to show caves. One scene had Link running away from a rock monster in what looked like a cave, and another showed a strange area that looked like it was underground.
Nintendo revealing that there are “dank caves” doesn’t necessarily confirm a whole underground world like some fans have been hoping for, but it does mean that the sky islands aren’t going to be the only new thing to explore in Tears of the Kingdom’s version of Hyrule.
