Key Takeaways
- The new Zelda trailer showcases a new region, abilities, bosses, and characters.
- The Still World in the game provides unique areas with nonsensical terrain for creative problem-solving.
- Combat in Echoes of Wisdom offers various options, including using objects and a magic sword, enhancing player engagement.
Nintendo released a brand new trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom that showcases a ton of new features and mechanics at our disposal. Called the Traversing the Still World trailer, it includes information about a new region called the Still World, abilities, bosses, and characters. While I was always interested in a new 2D Zelda game, especially the first one to give Zelda the leading role, I have to admit that I was skeptical that the new mechanics would click for me.
The latest Traversing the Still Worlds trailer has completely flipped my mindset around the game. Everything detailed in this trailer has assuaged all the hesitancies I had for this game and then some and I pushed this game back to the top of my most anticipated games list.
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Which do you prefer: 2D or 3D Zelda games?
For those of us old enough to remember, Zelda games were once exclusively 2D affairs. From the NES all the way up to the N64 we controlled Link on his various quests from an overhead view, slashing baddies and taking down Ganon with a host of items and magic. But all that changed with Ocarina of Time. That legendary title is still regarded as one of the best and most influential games of all time, but it wasn’t the end of those classic 2D games. Nintendo has managed to keep both styles of Link alive, much in the same way we still get new 2D and 3D Mario games (which could be a discussion for another day). The Switch alone has had two of the biggest 3D games we’ve seen in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but we’ve also had the full remake of Link’s Awakening from the Game Boy and the upcoming Echoes of Wisdom to carry the 2D torch. Each one is evolving their respective genres in vastly different ways. Breath and Tears have reinvented open-world exploration with its physics a
Not just an echo of Link
The missing pieces
What most concerned me after seeing early footage of Echoes of Wisdom was a combination of the Echo mechanic and the world. Taken individually, I love the idea of each of them. Zelda being able to create copies of any object or enemy to traverse or fight on her behalf sounds like a recipe for creative problem-solving that only Nintendo games offer. As someone who was a bit overwhelmed by the the possibilities of the building mechanic in Tears of the Kingdom, this slightly more constrained toolset appeared more approachable.
it didn’t seem like the playspace was designed around the player’s toolset or vice versa.
The world, on the other hand, looks like a classic 2D Zelda overworld. It was wide open, had various regions, and seemed to be full of little secrets and towns. But when I put those two things together in my head, I didn’t see it meshing into a cohesive experience. In short, it didn’t seem like the playspace was designed around the player’s toolset or vice versa.
This latest trailer introduced several key features to the game that I am honestly surprised were kept secret up until now. The most important being the Still World and its dungeons. The Still World is a new area you can enter from various points in the overworld to bespoke areas where the terrain is completely nonsensical. To make it through, you will need to make clever use of your echoes of both objects and enemies to navigate.
Dungeons within finally deliver on the potential of echoes. While basic, the example of spawning a tree to catch fire and then moving it to light an additional torch is the exact type of logic puzzle I was hoping for. If there’s a smooth ramping of the complexity of these puzzles, it could rival Tears of the Kingdom’s shrines.
If there’s a smooth ramping of the complexity of these puzzles, it could rival Tears of the Kingdom’s shrines.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had big questions about combat in Echoes of Wisdom, and I’m glad to say I finally feel like I understand how Nintendo expects us to approach it this time around. We always knew you could spawn enemies to do your bidding, and that did seem novel, but could it stay fun for an entire Zelda game? After all, how much fun is it to just send out other characters to fight all your battles? Thankfully, that isn’t the case. Or, it isn’t your only option, I should say.
Combat options
A double-edged sword
Nintendo
Besides spamming mobs to fight for you, there are numerous objects and devices you can hold to have a more direct impact on a battle. Most of these are ranged tools, but then there’s the Mysterious Sword. My first impression was that this was an admission by the developers that a Zelda game couldn’t function without your standard swordplay, which I felt would’ve been a cop-out. What I appreciated most upon Echoes of Wisdom’s announcement and reveal of Zelda being the main character was that she wouldn’t just be a carbon copy of Link.
Nintendo sidesteps this problem while also appealing to those who aren’t fully sold on the Echo system by giving us what essentially amounts to a Link form, but limits its use. Tying the sword form to a magic meter is the perfect compromise to give players a way to quickly deal with a problem or feel more engaged, but not invalidate the new mechanics the game is built around.
Now, we will have to wait until September 26 when the game comes out to know if any of this holds water, but I can still say that I am now fully confident Echoes of Wisdom will live up to the legacy of the series.
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