If we can gather anything from The Game Awards nominations for the last three years, it’s that The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is one of the most highly anticipated releases lined up for 2023. Despite some production setbacks that previously delayed the release, the game is due to come out this year. One thing everyone wants to know about is Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom multiplayer.
When the game was first announced at E3 2019, it was informally billed as Breath of the Wild 2. Considering how revolutionary that game was, including its expansive DLC, expectations are high. Tears of the Kingdom must have some pretty big plans in store. Maybe even a co-op mode?
Elsewhere, read up on the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom release date to mark in your calendars. We've also got a look at a potential Dark Souls 4 release date.
Is The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom multiplayer?
One popular theory is that it may be possible to play Tears of the Kingdom as Princess Zelda. Having multiple playable characters could also open up the door to co-op or multiplayer modes in the game.
Co-op gameplay started being rumoured after a Reddit user pointed out that Dutch adverts for Tears of the Kingdom included a Switch Online logo. Co-op play could be possible using the Switch’s online functionality, although it might just refer to cloud saves or possible future DLC releases.
On the same advert, it states that the only compatibilities for the game are single player modes. You can see this in the bottom right of the advert, where it says the game can be played docked, using wireless controllers, or portably. Notably, there is a one underneath each compatibility. That number denotes how many people can play the game in that mode. So, it’s pretty safe to say that Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t have local co-op modes.
A number of previous titles in the Legend of Zelda franchise are multiplayer. The first one was Four Swords on the GameBoy Advance. Some level of multiplayer functionality is in a whole host of the other games that also feature Toon Link, like Spirit Tracks.
It isn’t always Toon Link games that feature multiplayer modes, though. More recently, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity featured multiplayer gameplay. Aonuma also produced this game after saying he wanted to “fuse” what was learnt from the creation of Breath of the Wild with multiplayer mechanics in a new Zelda game. Will this be the only co-op Zelda game we get for a while?
Unless any more information comes out between now and May, we might not know if Tears of the Kingdom is co-op until it drops. It’s even possible that the functionality would be added later through DLC. Until then, read up on whether Minecraft Legends has early access.