Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Monster Hitches Ride on Link's Flying Machine

Aug 14, 2023

A Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player builds an impressive and deadly flying machine that is quickly boarded by an unexpected monster.

A player who built themselves a nifty flying machine in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom got a surprise when a monster somehow hitched a ride as the machine took off. Nintendo put a big emphasis on player creativity with Tears of the Kingdom. So much so that if players have the necessary tools and abilities at their disposal, they can take on any challenge the game throws at them in nearly any way they can imagine.

One of the Tears of the Kingdom’s big innovations came with the introduction of Zonai devices. An ancient and mysterious civilization of sentient machines called the Zonai left behind a wide range of tools that can be combined in an incalculable number of ways using the Zonai powers of Ultrahand and Autobuild. Players can combine Zonai devices to make anything they can imagine, from mechs to simple and useful flying machines Link can pilot to efficiently zip around Hyrule’s massive landscape.

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A player who goes by the name of Minariyoui posted a 32-second video clip in the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit that, at first, could be misconstrued as yet another in a long line of inventive flying machines in Tears of the Kingdom. Minariyoui’s plane resembles an old-school rubber band-propelled model plane, complete with wings and a tail attached to a solid main cabin. Problems arise, however, when Minariyoui flew a little too close to the ground as they tried to fire the Zonai canons mounted on the plane’s underbelly at an unsuspecting group of monsters.

Minariyoui crashed the plane into a pole in a monster encampment. Rather than stick it out and put up a fight on the ground, they quickly adjusted the plane for optimal take-off conditions and launched into the air. But then, a fun little nuance that Tears of the Kingdom’s developers added came into play. Sometimes, in the middle of a fight, the taller and more fearsome monsters known as moblins will pick up and throw the smaller bokoblins at Link. That’s exactly what happened to Minariyoui, only the thrown bokoblin didn’t hit Link, it landed on Link’s plane mere moments after it took off.

The poor bokoblin tried its hardest to hijack the plane, but its AI seemed a little confused as to how to go about it. Rather than engage Link in hand-to-hand combat, it tried firing a couple of arrows that completely missed the mark. Hilarious, considering it was standing no more than a couple of feet away on the same flying machine. This just goes to show that part of why Tears of the Kingdom has captured so many imaginations is because of the unexpected ways its systems and mechanics come together to create moments no designer could have coded into the game.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is currently available on Switch.

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Luis is a former columnist for Cracked.com and a regular contributor to the lifestyle and wellness satire site BunnyEars.com. When he's not writing, he's playing games with his wife, dog, and cat by his side. Check out his one-man sketch comedy podcast called The Inaudible Podcast Network, available on all podcast platforms: https://anchor.fm/inaudiblepodcast https://twitter.com/InaudibleCast