Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom was delayed for a year just to ensure no bugs

A common quote that floats around the game industry is: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” There’s debate about where the quote actually comes from, but the message behind it is clear and correct.

The folks at Nintendo seemingly had this idea in mind when creating their latest entry in The Legend of Zelda series, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a contender for this generation’s greatest video game ever made. We described it as a jaw-dropping spectacle of game design and an expectation-defying work of brilliance in our review and for good reason. It’s insanely good and we owe it all to the years of work that went into crafting it, one of which was dedicated to polishing out any bugs.

Take a look at Tears of the Kingdom in action below.

That’s right, according to a Washington Post interview with series producer Eiji Aonuma, a year of Tears of the Kingdom's production was solely used for testing and polishing the game’s performance and game mechanics. Gene Park, the journalist who conducted the interview, shared the information on Twitter, saying, “Eiji Aonuma said when he announced in March 2022 a delay for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the game was pretty much complete. The last year was spent on polish, making sure the wild physics of the game just work.”

Safe to say that extra time was well-spent and appreciated as Tears of the Kingdom has a whole host of possibilities in terms of what players can do and create. Players have feverishly scoured Hyrule for nearly everything it has to offer, and skyrocketed the game to the highest-rated title of the year so far on Metacritic.

The Ultrahand mechanic has been the best feature of the game by far, with players pushing the limits of creativity by building planes, cars, and other more phallic creations that we’re sure even the developers didn’t expect to see. In fact, this has to be one of the thirstiest Zelda games we’ve ever seen, with degenerate fans thirsting over the new Ganondorf, as well as searches for Zelda exploding on Pornhub.

Clearly, that year’s delay did wonders for the game, as it truly is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. Upcoming releases will have their work cut out for them as they try to knock Zelda off its pedestal, so hopefully, they’ve got enough stamina wheels to climb their way to the top.