Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's geography is hiding more secrets than you thought
Nintendo's doing some pretty clever stuff.
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The map in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a lot bigger than you might expect, and players have noticed something interesting about its geography.
Spoilers ahead for Tears of the Kingdom!
The big selling point for Tears of the Kingdom has obviously been all those floating sky islands way above Hyrule. Why wouldn't they be, they're pretty magical right? But it seems that the game was harbouring a massive secret - there is an entire underground area that is pretty much the entire size of Hyrule itself. It's a pretty ridiculous secret that Nintendo somehow managed to keep, and really shows why the game took as long as it did (and makes it even more of a technological marvel). Interestingly, though, it seems that Hyrule's depths mirror their above ground counterparts.
As spotted by GamesRadar, Media Molecule principal designer Peter Field shared a good drawing of how exactly the above ground we're all familiar with in Hyrule is essentially flipped in the depths. He demonstrates this by showing that if there's a mountain above ground, there's normally a deep pit underground. It's a cool but subtle detail, one made easier to notice by looking at the map.
It's not the only thing that above and below ground share with one another. Over on the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit, one player shared some tips, noting that "shrines and lightroots are in the same locations. The names are backwards anagrams of each other." Pretty useful to think about if you've managed to get all the shrines above ground but not all the lightroots in the depths!
This is one of those details that really make you appreciate just how much thought and detail has been put into this sequel - like the simple way you can share cool secrets with friends, or the even lovelier tribute to the late Satoru Iwata.