Tears of the Kingdom Has a ‘Wide Variety’ of Traditional Zelda Dungeons

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom features a “wide variety” of traditional dungeons each with their own unique look and feel.

Revealed in a developer interview on Nintendo’s website, the team behind Tears of the Kingdom finally confirmed the game will step away from Breath of the Wild’s Divine Beast style of dungeons, which were criticised by some fans for being a bit too samey.

“We’ve made dungeons unique to their respective environments, so we think you’ll be able to enjoy the wide variety of regional characteristics,” said technical director Takuhiro Dohta.

“The dungeons are huge and each carry their own regional look and feel, just like traditional The Legend of Zelda games.”

This was expanded upon by art director Satoru Takizawa, who made clear that dungeons in Tears of the Kingdom will be more akin to those featured in previous games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess.

“Making a wide variety was pretty challenging. The four Divine Beasts were the dungeons in the last game, and they shared similar designs,” Takizawa acknowledged.

“This time, the dungeons are huge and each carry their own regional look and feel, just like traditional The Legend of Zelda games. We think they will provide a satisfying challenge for players. They were certainly a challenge to develop.”

Though we got a half-second glimpse at what could be a dungeon in the third trailer for Tears of the Kingdom, and also saw some footage of traditional looking bosses, this is the first time Nintendo has confirmed that classic dungeons will return.

Game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi even teased how one of these dungeons begins, revealing that it takes full advantage of Tears of the Kingdom’s new sky area.

“There is a dungeon that connects directly from Hyrule’s surface,” he said. “If you dive from the sky straight into the dungeon, you’ll trigger an event. We think this will be a new experience that wasn’t possible in the previous game.”

Tears of the Kingdom is now just days away from launching on May 12, and Nintendo has slowly but surely revealing more and more about the highly anticipated sequel, like that it always planned to use Breath of the Wild’s map.

We also know that Ganondorf is returning, of course, and is being played by Matthew Mercer. It looks to include Breath of the Wild’s biggest side quest too, though it takes place years after the original.

Tears of the Kingdom also includes an already legendary NPC being dubbed Bucket Head, a reference to a classic Nintendo toy, and an enemy from Ocarina of Time. All this contributes to the largest file size of any first party Nintendo Switch game and a more expensive $70 price tag, but Nintendo promises it to be worth it.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.