Tears of the Kingdom player discovers (and gets trapped in) mysterious liminal space-like punishment ward

A The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player has drawn notice after reporting that they were thrown into “solitary confinement” for putting too much load on the game. It appears that a mysterious “punishment ward” exists in the game, and you could potentially end up stuck in there permanently. 

Tears of the Kingdom greatly expands on the gameplay of its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, and provides players with a high degree of freedom. Due to this, it’s common to see players investigating and researching various aspects of the game. One such player is Yukino, who has been performing tests that push the limits of what can be achieved in the world of Hyrule ever since Breath of the Wild. You can see the fruits of Yukino’s research on their Twitter account and YouTube channel. Most recently, they reported being whisked off to a “punishment ward” and put in what seems like solitary confinement.

The video included in the post shows Link wandering around a mysterious area. The area doesn’t appear to have any lights, items, or even sound—it’s simply stagnant. The only menu that is accessible is the system menu, and Yukino speculates that if you were to manually save while in the area, you may be stuck there forever. 

It’s unclear just what this location is. It bears a resemblance to an area from the later parts of the game, but there’s nothing conclusive. However, one user pointed out that the murals are the same as those shown on the game’s title screen, which does appear to be the case. At any rate, it’s an incredibly mysterious area. 

So how does one find themselves in this punishment ward? We asked Yukino for details, but… there were far too many spoilers relating to the game’s story. Thus, we have reluctantly decided to refrain from including the particulars. In short, Yukino had been having fun performing experiments using a large quantity of the super-light elevator railings that have been a hot topic recently among the game’s player community. Yukino repeated the experiments while engaged in battle with a certain boss, and while loading and retrying the fight, they suddenly arrived in the strange area. Once there, Yukino attempted to load up a past save, but no matter which save file was loaded, the game always began in this same room. Even choosing to start a new game had problems, as there were no sound effects or background music. In the end, Yukino rebooted the game, which returned things to normal. 

One point of curiosity is why a Blood Moon reset did not occur. It was reported that in both Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, when the processing load becomes too high, the game deals with this by causing the Blood Moon to appear and resetting the in-game world (Related article). It’s quite interesting that in Yukino’s case, the high processing load caused them to be sent to the “punishment ward” instead of triggering a Blood Moon. 

When we asked Yukino why they think a Blood Moon did not appear, they replied, “I imagine that it’s related to the specifications of the Blood Moon, and that the moon can’t be triggered under certain conditions, like during an event battle or a minigame.” Based on Yukino’s testing environment—taking on a story boss—you could certainly understand why it would be a situation where the Blood Moon cannot be triggered. 

Taking this into account, it’s natural to assume that if the processing load grows too high while playing normally, it will trigger a Blood Moon, but under specific conditions, the Blood Moon is unable to appear, and you are instead transported to the strange, debug-room-like area. Basically, if you are deliberately messing around with things that put a large burden on the game, and also happen to be doing so under certain conditions, the result is that you end up being put in the punishment ward. It’s quite an unlikely occurrence when you think about it like that. It’s perhaps fitting that it was discovered by Yukino, who has investigated the strange behavior of Breath of the Wild when put under a high load and continued these efforts in the sequel.  

In the end, it’s still unclear just what this punishment ward actually is. The idea that it may be a debug room is mere speculation. However, this mystery may eventually be brought to light in the future through the zealous investigations of players. That said, as we mentioned earlier in this article, there’s a risk that you may end up stuck in the “solitary confinement,” so we think it’s probably better if you don’t try to access it deliberately.  

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-07-12 17:19 JST)