Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom nearly had a scaled up name that spoiled its twist

We all know The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was (and still is) called The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but once upon a time Nintendo was thinking of a slightly different name for its Breath of the Wild follow- up.

Please be aware of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom spoilers below.

According to Tears of the Kingdom’s producer Eiji Aonuma, the team was once thinking about calling the game Tears of the Dragon. However, there was concern this would put too much emphasis on some key plot points within the game.

“Letting it slip that the Light Dragon is Zelda would have been a problem, and this had an effect on the title too. One of the candidates for the title that made it to end was ‘Tears of the Dragon’,” Aonuma explained in Tears of the Kingdom’s newly-released art book (as translated by Nintendo Everything).

“But it would be a bad idea to have the keyword ‘Dragon’ in the title, and we wanted to have dragon patterns in the logo, but decided otherwise. It’d emphasize the Light Dragon, after all (laughs). But nothing else good was coming to mind, and we were running out of development time…”

Aonuma told the team “went through many words” before landing on Kingdom. “With ‘Tears of the Kingdom’, it felt like the phrase could connect to the Light Dragon to us, and we could use dragons in the logo,” the Zelda producer said, adding: “With the title decided, the logo finally became what is it now.”

That logo, which you can see below, shows two dragons in an almost Ouroboros formation. And as those who have played and finished Tears of the Kingdom know, towards the end of the game both Zelda and Ganon make their way above Hyrule in dragon form.

As for what is next for the Zelda series, Echoes of Wisdom is set to release on 26th September.

Our Tom has already been hands-on with the upcoming release, noting it “manages to still feel like a proper Zelda game – rather than being a more forgettable princess-led spin-off” in Eurogamer’s Echoes of Wisdom preview.