Tears of The Kingdom Demo Reveals Useful New Link Ability

Numerous hands-on previews for Tears of the Kingdom just dropped, which means that we’ve finally learned quite a lot of new information about the new Legend of Zelda game. We even caught of glimpse of some of Link’s new abilities (even if some of the details surrounding them remain a mystery).

First off, Link actually has access to a new version of the “Ability Wheel” that can be accessed at any time. Players can pull up this wheel by hitting the “L” button and using the right stick to select which ability they’d like to equip. Doing so seems to stop the flow of gameplay. So, if you’re in combat and want to stop and rewind an object that is coming right at you, you’ll have time to swap to the Recall ability.

Here’s a better look at the ability wheel those who recently played the Tears of the Kingdom demo had access to (the image comes from Skill Up’s preview of the game). It’s not known if this is the final version of that wheel, though the implication was that it represents something close to the full range of abilities you’ll eventually have access to.

So, we already know what most of the abilities on that wheel are. The red hand is the “Ultrahand” ability that lets you grab and manipulate items around you. The UFO-like symbol is for “Ascend,” which lets you move vertically through objects and barriers. The orange symbol is the aforementioned “Recall” ability that lets you rewind time, and the blue sword icon is presumably the “Fuse” ability that lets you combine items (though that is honestly an assumption based on context rather than something that has been outright stated).

That leaves four spots that are not officially accounted for. The Amiibo slot is clearly reserved for interacting with your available Amiibo accessories, so that will do different things depending on what in-game benefits an Amiibo offers. The green compass is a bit of a mystery, though it is presumably related to your map. I haven’t seen any official word on what it does, though the implication is that it doesn’t significantly impact gameplay.

That leaves two mystery spots: the blank spots and the “purple hands” icon. The blank spot is presumably an ability that wasn’t available in the demo, though there’s been no confirmation of what will eventually fit into that spot. Some are speculating it could just be a blank spot there to help separate your abilities, but that would be a curious design choice.

The purple hands are much more interesting. The demo did let people use that ability, but those who played the game were told to not name the ability or outright say what it does. However, some did talk about that ability in ways that made it pretty clear what it does.

For instance, YouTuber Zeltik said that the new ability isn’t available near the start of the game but is intended to “streamline the Ultrahand building process to make things more convenient.” Well, IGN may have spilled the beans on that ability by revealing that there is a way to save your previous Ultrahand designs and automatically recreate them later so long as you have the materials in your inventory to do so. Given that they said they “can’t go into much detail” about that feature yet, it seems logical that the “purple hands ability” lets you save, access, and create previous Ultrahand designs.

While that’s not the most exciting ability on paper, it seems like Tears of the Kingdom really emphasizes the value of the Ultrahand ability. As such, being able to quickly access previous creations could save you a ton of time and allow you to experiment quite a bit. It’s odd that such an ability wouldn’t automatically be part of the game rather than a separate feature, but hey, that’s the Nintendo way.