The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Was Originally Supposed to be Called Tears of the Dragon

NOTE: There are spoilers ahead for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

As many will remember, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s official title wasn’t revealed until surprisingly close to launch, and we now know exactly why.

Spotted by Nintendo Everything, it’s revealed in the recently released official artbook for the open world action-adventure title, titled The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Master Works, that the game’s name was originally supposed to be Tears of the Dragon.

Series producer Eiji Aonuma explains in the book that even until quite late into the game’s development, its title was supposed to be Tears of the Dragon, though it was one that the development team was reluctant to officially announced, since it quite overtly referenced a major story spoiler.

“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.

“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…

“We went through many words, and then one time a staff member suggested, ‘What about 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. With the title decided, the logo finally became what it is now.”

A couple of years before the game launched, Nintendo spoke about how it was reluctant to unveil the game’s title because it contained potential hints about the story. Of course, the title Tears of the Kingdom does still vaguely allude to Princess Zelda’s fate in the game, though not nearly as explicitly as the originally planned title would have.

Meanwhile, next up for the Zelda franchise is The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which launches for the Nintendo Switch on September 26.