The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom holds a big, dark secret that takes a page off Elden Ring that makes it worth at least 33% more than the entry price called The Depths.

You've got that right. Even if Nintendo is asking you to hand over $70 for the game, it's still worth at least double that price for the amount of content and quality of the game that you'd get out of it. And while many fans went in having high expectations of the features that Nintendo has teased and featured in the previous months, it looks like Nintendo was still able to keep some things under wraps to still be able to surprise fans with things they previously didn't highlight.

And this surprise that we want to talk about is The Depths, a large, darkly-lit open-world area almost the same size as the overworld found beneath the ground. While Nintendo didn't really feature this much in many of their marketing materials, it's actually one of the first things you'd notice from one of the game's early trailers which depicted Zelda and Link spelunking down caves. However, it appearing in one of the earlier trailers plus The Depths not featuring prominently in subsequent marketing materials turned it into a pleasant surprise for many fans who picked up the game who didn't realize it existed.

We also go full circle in game development. Elden Ring has always been thought to have been inspired by how Breath of the Wild inspired its open-world design. Now, it's Nintendo's turn to use inspiration from FromSoftware in informing their game design. The Depths, of course, appears to be heavily inspired by Elden Ring's underground maps, sprawling areas that are almost as large as the overworld itself. This is the kind of iteration that we live for in video games.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out now, exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.