Tears of the Kingdom blesses you with all of its new abilities quickly so that you can start exploring and experimenting right away. The first few hours are a whirlwind of discovery as you learn how to interact with this familiar world in new ways. Link’s new powers are so thoughtfully designed and powerful that each one could have carried a full game on its own. Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend, and Recall are all incredible in their own way, but the time-reversing power of Recall stands out as Tears of the Kingdom’s most revolutionary new ability.It may not seem that way at first blush. Ultrahand, which gives you the ability to mash any objects together to create something new, is by far the flashiest of Link’s new tools. My social media feed is full of sweet dreams and flying machines, and it's clear that Ultrahand is destined to represent the creative identity of Tears of the Kingdom. Fuse is also incredibly inspiring. The ability to snap any object to your weapons is a great representation of Nintendo’s playful spirit. Even Ascend may at first seem like a more important and impactful ability than Recall, because of how much it increases Link’s ability to traverse and explore Hyrule. These aren’t just fresh ideas for a Zelda game, they’re innovations that will influence gaming broadly, just as Breath of the Wild did before.In contrast, Recall seems like the odd man out. Plenty of games have given players the ability to rewind time, and in similar ways to how Tears of the Kingdom uses it. Many people probably think of Prince of Persia, but the Ratchet & Clank series has used time manipulation several times as a function of puzzle solving, just like Tears of the Kingdom. Braid is an entire game built around the ability to reverse time, and there are lots of other examples of games that include time manipulation as a core mechanic, including Dishonored, Life is Strange, and Timeshift. Admittedly, Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t do a great job demonstrating the power of Recall when you first unlock it, at least not compared to the other new abilities. It tasks you with making a watermill spin backwards so you can complete a platforming challenge, which suggests that Recall is a tool you’ll only use to solve specific puzzles. However, Recall is so much more than that.
One of the most important things to learn in Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild before it, is how to combine your abilities together. Recall can make any object reverse its motion, including objects you move yourself with Ultrahand. If you’d like to quickly get across a gap or over a wall, you can pick up a plank with Ultrahand, move it to your destination, bring it back, then step on it and use Recall. It will follow the exact path you move it in reverse, allowing you to ride the plank wherever you want to go. This is a great way to get wings up in the air without a ramp too. Lift it up high with Ultrahand, bring it back down, climb aboard and use Recall. When the Wing is at its highest point, cancel Recall and you’ll start to fly.
Once you discover how much freedom you have to Recall things, you’ll start to see the entire world in a new way. Just as Breath of the Wild’s Stasis and Magnesis abilities taught players to internalize concepts of physics like momentum, force, and potential energy into their gameplay, Recall teaches us to view the world through a kinematic lens. Recall isn’t really time manipulation, it’s the control of objects in motion.
Everything that moves is under your command. When a Talus throws a boulder at you, you can freeze it in the air and send it hurdling back at them. Throw your weapon at an enemy, and recall it right back to your hand. Make spike ball traps roll uphill and kill the guards that sent them down. Make a boat sail against the current, make a wing fly backwards. There’s so much hidden potential in Recall that you’ll only discover when you realize that the only thing you require to use it is motion.
Among all of Link’s new abilities, Recall is the one that captures the spirit of Breath of the Wild’s emergent gameplay the best. Working with Recall grounds objects, giving them weight and making the world feel like a physical place that really exists. While Ultrahand and Fuse turn Hyrule into a sandbox filled with gadgets and toys that have all been placed there for your amusement, Recall brings the kingdom to life. Building fire-breathing death wagons is neat, but the way Recall engages your understanding of physics and encourages use to solve logic problems with non-linear thinking is what makes it Tears of the Kingdom’s most important ability.