It says a lot about Legend of Zelda Tears Of The Kingdom that fans are so desperate for information on it that they’re looking at patents filed by Nintendo. The game is genuinely shrouded in mystery from top to bottom, and that means that fans want any information to tide them over until the title gets a new trailer or deep dive. But what is it that a patent can tell us about the game? Well, on Reddit, someone found a Japanese article citing a new “process” that Nintendo might use for the upcoming game.

What’s more, one of the people filed under the “inventors” section of the patent has previously worked on the Legend of Zelda franchise. So many think the patent could be used for Legend of Zelda Tears Of The Kingdom.

But what is the patent for? According to one Redditor who translated the article, the patent is for “an image processing method that expresses objects with a sense of transparency with a low processing load.”

As another Redditor stated, that’s a very long talk for having good-looking clouds. Believe it or not, having clouds look and feel like actual clouds from the gamer’s perspective is hard to do on a system. It takes a lot of memory and processing power. Given that the Nintendo Switch isn’t the most powerful console in the world, that means that clouds put a lot of strain on the system. However, if this patent is to be believed, they might have found a workaround to ensure the clouds look good and move believably without taxing the system to the extreme.

It makes sense that Nintendo would want an optimization tactic for clouds in the game due to sections of the title taking place in the sky. Recall that the “plot” of the game, as we know it now, is that sections of Hyrule have been lifted into the sky, and Link will travel from “island to island” for various reasons. So having the clouds look good while you’re up in the sky is essential.

Nintendo may have filed more patents along this line to optimize their results for the upcoming game, so we’ll let you know if more are found.

Many hope we’ll get a Nintendo Direct next month that’ll give us a new trailer for the game and elaborate more on the story, characters, and new version of the world we’ll be traveling in May.

Source: Reddit