The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom introduces several new abilities for Link, and one of the handiest skills that you’ll unlock is Ascend. This useful power allows Link to move upwards through structures and resurface on top of them, and if it feels like a cheat ability, you aren’t wrong.
In an interview with Polygon, producers Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi revealed how the Breath of the Wild sequel added caves that became tedious for the development team to navigate their way out of, so an escape button was added to this version of the game. After discovering that “cheating can be fun,” the Ascend ability was born and properly worked into the game.
“The Ascend ability was actually the result of a debug feature that we have in the game,” Fujibayashi said. “When I was exploring the caves, I would get to the destination where I was trying to get to, and once I checked it out, I would just use the debug code to get to the top. I thought, well, maybe this is something that can be usable in the game. And it was right around that time that Mr. Aonuma said: ‘It’s a pain to go back.’ And to be blunt and honest, cheating can be fun. So that’s why we decided to drop it in there.”
Link has a few other neat tricks up his tunic, and for more details on how Fuse, Recall, and Ultrahand work, you can check out our Tears of the Kingdom guides hub that’s being regularly updated. Alternatively, you can quickly learn the basics with this Tears of the Kingdom tips and tricks guide.
GameSpot’s Tears of the Kingdom review scored it a 10/10, and as Sea of Thieves developer Rare has noted, it’s okay to jump ship from other games to go check out Nintendo’s masterpiece.
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