Tears of the Kingdom Was Nearly Called “Tears of the Dragon,” Master Works Book Reveals

Posted on September 09 2024 by Julia Wilson

The Tears of the Kingdom Master Works book released in Japan on August 30th, 2024. This stunning 464-page A4 hardcover book contains artwork, storyboards, and design concepts from Tears of the Kingdom, as well as interesting comments from the game’s developers.

Nintendo Everything have translated part of the text, which reveals that a very strong contender for the game’s title was “Tears of the Dragon!” However, Zelda Series Producer Eiji Aonuma reveals that this name raised concerns about putting too much emphasis on the Light Dragon, as the developers did not want it to be obvious that the Light Dragon was connected to Princess Zelda.

The full translation is detailed below:

“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.”

Thank you to SatsumaFS, Philip Proctor, and Simon Griffin on behalf of Nintendo Everything for sharing this information with the Zelda community.

As of the time of writing, Tears of the Kingdom Master Works has only been announced for Japan.

What do you think of the name Tears of the Dragon? Would this title have raised questions about who or what the Light Dragon would be? Would you have preferred this title to Tears of the Kingdom? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Tears of the Kingdom Master Works (via Nintendo Everything)