The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Soaring Through the Skies of Hyrule

The Quest for Flight

Since the release of the very first Tears of the Kingdom trailer, players have been treated to the sight of Link freefalling from one of the Sky Islands, which invoked memories of flying in Skyloft on Loftwing in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

Loftwings do not make an appearance in Tears of the Kingdom, so players have been trying to replicate the ability to glide among the clouds using various Zonai-built vehicles. These vehicles are usually built from a combination of useful Zonai devices such as carts, stabilizers, and big wheels, in addition to parts like wooden wheels and planks that can be found throughout the expansive world of Hyrule.

Using Zonai devices as part of a build, whether it is for traversal or even combat, can significantly drain Link’s Energy Cells, which are essentially batteries that power the mystical items. Additionally, some Zonai devices will also disappear after a while. While solving this problem would be difficult at best in most games, the versatility of Tears of the Kingdom’s sandbox allows players to look for ways and experiment with the physics in the world to come up with a solution.

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The Remarkable Flying Vehicle

A Reddit user known as scalhoun23 has built a flying vehicle that can travel through the Hyrule skies for over two hours without any input from the player beyond the initial startup to get it to take off. The vehicle combines Zonai technology through stakes and a steering wheel, which does not disappear, as well as other materials found throughout the game.

In particular, the build also uses a raft found in the Depths, propellers that scalhoun23 fused to another item to smuggle them out from the Gemimik Shrine, and rails acquired from the Right Leg Depot. By combining these parts, as well as using a technique called the zero point energy drive, which essentially allows the player to use resistance to activate the propellers, the device can fly without any input.

The five-minute-long video that the player shared with the Tears of the Kingdom-inspired subreddit called Hyrule Engineering is at the very end of the journey, which was concluded because, according to scalhoun23, they accidentally bumped the left stick on their controller after being caught off guard by the appearance of a Blood Moon. This vehicle is not scalhoun23's first attempt at autonomous flight, as their Reddit profile shows that they have been improving the build for over a month.

The Impact and Significance

Builds like scalhoun23’s show how much thought the developers of Nintendo put into creating the sandbox for the Breath of the Wild sequel. While there are no plans for a The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom DLC, players are showing why the game was one of the highest-rated titles in 2023.