Picture the E3 2019 Nintendo Direct. The Breath of the Wild credits had barely finished rolling when a new, darker Hyrule flickered onto the screen. Fans lost their minds. So did Nintendo employees.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was one of the most tightly guarded secrets in Nintendo history, and it turns out the company kept that secret from almost everyone, including most of its own staff. Former Nintendo of America marketing and PR leads Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang have shared details about just how extreme the secrecy around the sequel's announcement actually was.
The information lockdown inside Nintendo of America
Ellis, who served as director of social media marketing and original content at Nintendo of America, described the project as operating at a "higher level" of security than anything else he worked on during his time at the company. Only a small handful of people at Nintendo of America were even told the sequel existed.
Here's the thing: Ellis was one of them. But that trust came with a serious catch. He had to prepare communications materials entirely on his own, keeping his own social team completely in the dark until the moment the teaser went live. "I had a ton to do," Ellis explained. "There was this big communications team, like an E3 machine, cranking out materials, and obviously the main place for this was in the Nintendo Direct. It became clear, I have to do these different teams' jobs in secret, and when this happens, feed them this thing and tell them what to do with it."
That meant Ellis was essentially running a ghost operation inside Nintendo's own marketing department, doing work that would normally involve multiple people, all while those people sat a few desks away with no idea what was coming.
How Nintendo staff reacted to the reveal
Yang confirmed that the E3 2019 teaser landed like a bomb inside Nintendo itself. Staff who had been grinding through E3 prep work with no knowledge of the sequel suddenly found themselves watching the same reveal trailer as millions of fans around the world. The reaction, apparently, was exactly what you'd expect: celebration.
There's something almost poetic about that. Nintendo managed to give its own employees a genuine surprise reveal, which is a level of internal compartmentalization that most studios would find difficult to pull off for a project of that scale.
From secret sequel to Switch 2 staple
The game that emerged from all that secrecy went on to become one of the biggest releases on Switch, expanding dramatically on Breath of the Wild's open-world systems with the Ultrahand, Ascend, and Fuse mechanics. Both Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild were later updated for the Switch 2.
The Zelda franchise has stayed busy since. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment arrived as a prequel to Tears of the Kingdom, covering the events of Zelda's journey back in time. A full remake of Ocarina of Time is also confirmed for release this year, and a live-action Zelda film is in the pipeline for the not-so-distant future.
What most players miss when they think back to that E3 2019 moment is just how deliberate the chaos was. Ellis effectively ran a one-man communications operation to keep the secret intact, and it worked. The surprise hit its mark on fans and Nintendo staff alike.
If you want to revisit what made the game worth all that secrecy, the full Tears of the Kingdom guide collection covers everything from early exploration to the toughest late-game challenges. And if you're jumping into other titles while waiting for the Ocarina of Time remake, the broader gaming guides hub has you covered.
