{"id":1824738,"date":"2023-05-25T17:16:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T21:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/plato-data\/why-tears-of-the-kingdoms-bridge-physics-have-game-developers-wowed\/"},"modified":"2023-05-25T17:16:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T21:16:01","slug":"why-tears-of-the-kingdoms-bridge-physics-have-game-developers-wowed","status":"publish","type":"station","link":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/plato-data\/why-tears-of-the-kingdoms-bridge-physics-have-game-developers-wowed\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Tears of the Kingdom\u2019s bridge physics have game developers wowed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s a bridge to cross the lava pit in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Marakuguc Shrine<\/a>, but it\u2019s broken. More than half of the bridge is piled on top of itself on one side of the pit, with one clipped-off segment on the other. The bridge is the obvious choice for crossing the lava, but how to fix it?<\/p>\n

A clip showing one potential solution went viral on Twitter<\/a> shortly after Tears of the Kingdom<\/em>\u2019s release: The player uses Link\u2019s Ultrahand ability<\/a> to unfurl the stacked bridge by attaching it to a wheeled platform in the lava. When the wheeled platform \u2014 now attached to the edge of the bridge \u2014 activates and moves forward, it pulls the bridge taut, splashing lava as it goes, until the suspension bridge is actually suspended and can be crossed. But it wasn\u2019t the solution itself that resonated with players; instead, the clip had game developers\u2019 jaws on the ground, in awe of how Nintendo\u2019s team wrangled the game\u2019s physics system to do that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To players, it\u2019s simply a bridge, but to game developers, it\u2019s a miracle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most complicated part of game development is when different systems and features start touching each other,\u201d said Shayna Moon<\/a>, a technical producer who\u2019s worked on games like the 2018 God of War<\/em> reboot and its sequel, God of War: Ragnar\u00f6k<\/em>, to Polygon. \u201cIt\u2019s really impressive. The amount of dynamic objects is why there are so many different kinds of solutions to this puzzle in particular. There are so many ways this could break.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moon pointed toward the individual segments of the bridge that operate independently. Then there\u2019s the lava, the cart, and the fact you can use Link\u2019s Ultrahand ability to tie any of these things together \u2014 even the bridge back onto itself.<\/p>\n

Nintendo reportedly used a full year of Tears of the Kingdom<\/em>\u2019s development for polish, and it shows. \u201cThe amount of different options available is a testament to the amount of work that every single person at every level of the team did, especially the QA testers,\u201d Moon said. \u201cOpen-world games with a ton of real-time physics objects like this are notoriously difficult to QA test.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another big game that inspired this sort of physics-based shock and awe from game developers on social media was in 2020, when The Last of Us Part 2<\/em> included a rope<\/a> necessary for solving a puzzle. Like Tears of the Kingdom<\/em>\u2019s bridge, the rope and its natural-seeming movements were just something players expected to work, but game developers could see how much work went into the development of it.<\/p>\n

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