A Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player goes full Top Gun by pulling off a series of impressive aerial stunts as a part of a “Hyrule Airshow.” Since release, Tears of the Kingdom players have been using the game’s slate of building mechanics and materials to craft absurd machines.
Like The Legend of Zelda: Breath the Wild before it, Tears of the Kingdom gives players a series of abilities to manipulate objects throughout Hyrule. This time around, players are given the tools to craft anything from bridges to reach places they couldn’t have otherwise or even construct land, sea, and air vehicles. Using Link’s Ultrahand ability, players can lift large objects and Zonai devices, attach them in whichever configuration they see fit, then power them with batteries. Some players have already gone buck wild with their inventions, like one player who built the Metal Gear REX from Metal Gear Solid.
A Reddit user by the name of twolf201 posting on the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit shared a video of their ingenious aerial device and put on a “Hyrule airshow” high among the clouds. Twolf201 used Ultrahand to attach a Zonai steering device to Korok fronds, a Zonai stabilizer weight, fans, and a couple of wheels to create a highly agile plane capable of making death-defying banks and turns that are a sight to behold. There are a lot of Hyrulians down below who would love to see this thing go up against a Tears of the Kingdom Tie Fighter.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the build is the use of Korok leaves. They can be found throughout Hyrule as early as the opening tutorial level. According to their in-game item description, they can be fused to a weapon and used as a fan to propel Link across the body of water in a pinch. In the comments, twolf201 says they had to use them out of necessity. Every other material they used made the device too heavy to be as agile as it is in the video. The leaves bridge the two sets of fans to the body of the aerial device and do so while adding as little weight as possible, thereby making the flying machine capable of wild dips and turns and rotations that would otherwise have been impossible. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.
The level of craftiness displayed by twolf201 bodes well for the kinds of incredible machines players will be building months and years down the line. Once every aspect of Tears Of The Kingdom has been fully explored and its various materials that can be used in crafting are rigorously tested by the dedicated Zelda community, devices like these, which are mighty impressive now, may seem like a Ford Model-T compared to the spaceships we’ll see in the future. It’s not hard to imagine, seeing as players have already built multi-stage rockets.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on Nintendo Switch.