The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom almost had a very different name, but Nintendo was worried it would be a massive spoiler.
As part of the new Tears of the Kingdom artbook, series producer Eiji Aonuma explained that one of the front-running names for Tears of the Kingdom would have let an important detail about the game’s narrative “slip.”
This article contains story spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Aonuma (as translated by Nintendo Everything) explains that “one of the candidates for the title that made it to the end was ‘Tears of the Dragon’.” That title had its pitfalls, however: “Letting slip the Light Dragon is Zelda would have been a problem,” he notes.
“It would be a bad idea to have the keyword ‘Dragon’ in the title,” Aonuma explains, pointing out that Nintendo had already started leaning away from putting dragon patterns in the game’s logo. “But nothing else good was coming to mind,” he says, “and we were running out of development time.”
Nintendo “went through many words” in order to find the perfect title, but in the end, another staff member suggested ‘Kingdom’, which left Aonuma with enough space around the Light Dragon to use them in the logo, which eventually took shape after the title was confirmed.
The rest, as they say, is history, and personally, I’m more of a fan of the final title than the working one. Tears of the Kingdom isn’t expected to get a sequel, and the series is currently moving on to the next game – The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which releases later this month, and finally puts Zelda herself at the forefront of her own legend.
Check out our Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom preview for an early peek at the next Zelda game.