After the epic final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom that showed its new-look Ganondorf for the first time, it was hard to imagine where Nintendo might go from there aside from actually launching the game. It decided to go an entirely different way with its next ad, showing a man traveling to and from work, seemingly downtrodden by his life in general and having something light up inside him when playing his Switch.
Whether the ad brought a tear to your eyes or made you roll them as Nintendo suggested its $70 game will make your life better, turns out it was based on a true story. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of people who have been able to relate to Tears of the Kingdom's man on a bus ad, but as reported by Kotaku, Nintendo based it on the experience one particular player had after discovering Breath of the Wild.
A Japanese player wrote a review for Breath of the Wild years ago, and it was recently seen, and properly translated, by someone who speaks Japanese after spotting a story about the new ad on Kotaku Australia. The review is written by a businessman who describes his repetitive commute, buying alcohol every day as he doesn't have the energy to eat, and even admits he wonders why he's even still alive.
That changes after he buys a Switch, complete with Breath of the Wild. The mountain he passes on his way to work, which he previously said irritated him, had become something he looks at and wonders how long it would take to climb. That moment, in particular, is effectively lifted right out of the review and popped into the Tears of the Kingdom ad. The ad's version of the businessman marvels at Link gliding through Hyrule's sky and then looks longingly out of the bus window at his own.
There are some differences between the reviewer's life and the life of the man on the bus. The ad's Zelda fan has a wife while the real-life player does not. I also get the impression the man in the ad is living in the UK. If so, that makes his bus journey the least believable part of the entire advert. Not only would it be impossible for him to find a seat on a British bus during peak hours, if a bus were to show up at all, but the sounds of Link battling bokoblins would be drowned out by a teenager blasting dubstep out of a speaker on the backseat. The ad also wasn't the only element of Tears of the Kingdom inspired by its predecessor. Its creators watched YouTube videos of Breath of the Wild player creations when dreaming up the sequel.