Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Ascend ability came about from a debug feature

The team behind The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have shared the origins of the new Ascend ability, and it may surprise you how it came to be.

Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi told Polygon that Ascend stems from a debug feature. While exploring caves, he’d use a debug code to get to the top. He then realized that this could be a fun mechanic for the game.

Series producer Eiji Aonuma also touched on the difficult of implementing the idea, mentioning the “need to make sure that people can continue to play the game properly.” It was also important that “there aren’t locations where you’ll pass through the roof and find nothing there because of some data-loading issue or something like that.”

Fujibayashi and Aonuma said:

Fujibayashi: You know, that reminds me — and I don’t think we’ve shared this anywhere else, but — the Ascend ability was actually the result of a debug feature that we have in the game.

When I was exploring the caves, I would get to the destination where I was trying to get to, and once I checked it out, I would just use the debug code to get to the top. And I thought, Well, maybe this is something that can be usable in the game. And it was right around that time that Mr. Aonuma said, “It’s a pain to go back.”

And to be blunt and honest, cheating can be fun. So that’s why we decided to drop it in there.

Link, in the Sheikah armor, lifts up a sword merged with a Black Lizalfos horn attached to it, freshly Fused with a green glow in Tears of the Kingdom

Aonuma: But coming up with these cheat code-style abilities, it did create some issues for us. For example, if you give someone the ability to just pass through a ceiling anywhere, there are all sorts of possibilities to account for. We need to make sure that people can continue to play the game properly. We need to make sure there aren’t locations where you’ll pass through the roof and find nothing there because of some data-loading issue or something like that.

So while giving people cheats like this is fun, it takes a lot of time to implement. This is one issue that enjoying this type of gameplay myself may have put into the development process.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom can be purchased on Switch now.