Thank You, Nintendo, For Making Link Shirtless In The First Act of ‘Tears of the Kingdom’

Welcome to The Mary Sue, your primary resource for the Link Thirst Beat. Because, look, Link is hot. The fact that the Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom iteration of Link was specifically designed to be gender-neutral just makes his hotness all the more glorious. It’s a warm glow you can bask in. And we get to bask in it over the next 100-plus hours of our gaming lives as we make our ways through Tears of the Kingdom.

And I’m pretty sure producer Eiji Aonuma and the rest of the Legend of Zelda team know he’s hot. They have to. Because why else would they choose to make Link shirtless for the first playable stretch of Tears of the Kingdom?

What’s more, Tears of the Kingdom is now the second game in a row where Link starts off in just his boxers. Breath of the Wild starts the same way. This poor guy. He keeps getting gravely injured, and people keep taking off all his clothes as a result. I feel bad for Link. I do not feel bad for me, however.

Link gets what technically qualifies as “pants” pretty quickly. It’s more of a skirt. A skort, perhaps? Like with BotW‘s Shrine of Resurrection, as you head out from the inner chamber, you find some clothes. But very much unlike BotW, there was no accompanying shirt to be seen.

At first, I didn’t think too much about the lack of a shirt, because I was far too busy giddily diving Link’s ass off. But after a shirtless conversation with Rauru, I started to think I really did miss something. So I looked up the location of the ancient tunic (the internet is so fast these days, eh kids?), and I found out that Link’s tunic was way on the other side of the sky island. He was going to be shirtless for a second. Hell, you solve a shrine before Link gets a shirt. It’s maybe an hour of game time, depending on your pace.

“When does Link get a shirt in Tears of the Kingdom” is getting searched enough on Google that engine just auto-filled the search bar for me. It warms my heart that this is a reasonable thing to search for.

So thank you, Eiji Aonuma and the Tears of the Kingdom team. This is a franchise with overtly sexual buxom giant fairies, so it’s not like we should be surprised by any opportunities for thirst placed in the game. Still, I sure appreciate it.

(Featured image: Nintendo)