The blood moon in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is likely one of the sport’s creepiest moments. Scarlet clouds paint the sky and a ghostly aura reanimates monsters from the useless. The scene is amongst one of many scarier elements of the sport, however beneath its crimson ooze, this occasion hides a sensible utility: The blood moon features as a technique to refresh the sport’s reminiscence use and cease Hyperlink from pushing the Nintendo Swap to its limits.
The common (non-glitched) blood moon rises each 168 minutes, the equal to at least one week of in-game time. As soon as the cutscene performs, enemies in Hyrule respawn and Hyperlink will get a recent batch of monsters to combat. Though ready for the elapsed time is the extra widespread methodology to expertise a blood moon, it isn’t the one method. Gamers can pressure a blood moon scene by overloading the Swap’s reminiscence. Followers have dubbed the phenomena a “panic moon” as a result of the sport makes use of the moon as a failsafe to cease issues from crashing when gamers push the sport’s reminiscence utilization to its limits.
In a earlier article, Polygon spoke to MiztrSage, an knowledgeable builder from the Hyrule Engineering subreddit. In his work, the builder defined how the sport itself generally is a limiting consider what can — or can’t — be constructed within the sport. The builder defined to Polygon how the blood moon is definitely used as a technique to make up for the Swap’s limitations:
The sport has a built-in reminiscence ‘refresher’ which mechanically triggers a blood moon when you begin ‘pressuring’ the sport with, for instance, too many objects in Hyperlink’s neighborhood. The blood moon then removes all of the objects round you that brought about this overload and resets enemies. All as a result of the Swap is just not highly effective sufficient.
Gamers have documented a couple of methods to tug off the “panic moon.” In a single, a participant pressured the occasion by firing a number of opal-fused arrows with a Lynel bow at a breakable rock wall; a Lynel bow fires three arrows at a time and the opals create a splashing water impact, so firing them on the wall rapidly overloads the Nintendo Swap with animations and water results. In different circumstances, folks have triggered the blood moon with topaz-fused arrows, which end in {an electrical} burst upon touchdown.
Tears of the Kingdom is a technical marvel in some ways. Even seemingly “easy” duties like constructing a bridge can current huge technical challenges to builders. For our report on the sport’s bridge physics, a technical producer talked to Polygon a few specific bridge that may be towed throughout a lava pool. “The quantity of dynamic objects is why there are such a lot of totally different sorts of options to this puzzle specifically. There are such a lot of methods this might break,” the producer stated.
In a way, the blood moon represents the head of Nintendo’s intelligent sport improvement. It’s a sneaky however elegant method the builders masks the constraints of this in any other case awe-inspiring sport. On a tonal stage, the blood moon provides a creepiness to the sport and develops the general somberness of Hyrule post-Upheaval. From a gameplay perspective, the blood moon respawns enemies and may deliver pleasure again to the world. And on a technical stage, the blood moon additionally saves the Swap from itself, stopping it from pushing too far previous its limits. It transforms a limitation right into a function.