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News The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom Announced for Switch, Releases September 26 (Playable Zelda)

Since the objects that can grant new echoes appear to be preset, I would imagine that they would work like traditional items in Zelda in gating progression. The difference would be that the sheer number of possible echoes means that you might find multiple options to bypass certain obstacles depending on how you choose to explore, e.g. maybe one player gets a raft to cross water while another player gets a monster that ices over the water.
VintoWin said:
Imagine if it actually functions as a sleep spell lol.
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There's a context popup to rest while Zelda is on the bed, so you might be able to use it to heal while in the overworld.
 
The echo system will also compatible with traditional dungeon, it's perfectly fine you will learn a specific Echo item inside the dungeon that solve the puzzle
 
About the conversations regarding the state of the series wrt sandbox stuff:

I get how those who were hoping 2D Zelda would be the bastion of the “classic” style are disappointed. This game is undeniably BotW/TotK influenced.

From the developers perspective though, I feel like they would feel arbitrarily limited if 2D Zelda was obligated to stick to the classic formula. It’s clear the “breaking conventions” mindset was for the entire series. It makes sense in hindsight that if the 2D Zelda games echoed the 3D games back when they were doing the traditional formula, that they’d echo the emergent games as this is the new formula. Especially since the latter is so popular.

And honestly, I think it’s pretty cool to have a 2D game that tries to be more like TotK. Especially because there was likely synergy due to both being in development around the same time.

I expect Switch 2 era Zelda to pivot to another big draw given that it’s hard to imagine TotK being topped in terms of scale and absolute freedom, so for now I’m just enjoying this era of Zelda and the strengths it brings to the table
 
carbvan said:
Spoilering my take on the Arlo stuff since I feel similarly. I know there's people here who just don't want to engage with Arlo stuff so this'll shrink the text down and y'all can ignore it.

I'm surprised by the response to the Arlo video I'm seeing here tbh. I think it's a bit harsh to say all he's trying to do is farm rage clicks, or that he's entitled because he doesn't like where the franchise is going. I find myself agreeing a lot with his points from that video, besides the box art complaint lol, even if it's phrased poorly.

I'm pretty worried and I'm still going to get it. I'm excited for it even if I've grown to dislike this new Zelda formula, similarly to Arlo. I've always felt like Miyamoto's design philosophy has, over time, betrayed itself because of it's focus on simplicity and game play over story. It's how a game like Galaxy 2 happened, which is a game I personally dislike even though its the sequel to my childhood favorite. And now it seems I'm seeing it all over again with Zelda and Aonuma, especially after that interview. Tears of the Kingdom coming out and doubling down on all the things that irked me, and then being told the new formula is simply better now is almost like being told my taste is just bad by the guy that makes the game. It's upsetting to see a franchise I loved keep going in a direction I wasn't totally in on board with in the first place, and I know a ton of others who feel similarly. I don't think Arlo is trying to say there's a giant civil war within the Zelda fandom, but there's certainly a divide which wasn't there before. There's a lot of people who love the open formula, and a lot that don't. There's a few Discord servers I'm where a debate emerges whenever a preference over the game formulas is brought up, so maybe Arlo sees something like that going on on Twitter? But to brush off his concerns as "he's just rage farming" or "he's entitled because he's gotten exactly what he wants"... Just kinda lame when there's a lot of other people out there, some even in this thread, who feel the same way.
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I mean... of course there's a divide. There is not a singular thing in the history of everything that everyone has agreed on.
Galaxy 2 is just as beloved as the original, but by a different set of people.
As is 64
As is Odyssey
to an extent, as is 3D world.

As the designer, Aonuma's going to push for his vision, which isn't the same as everyone's. TOTK re-evaluated and re-added some designs of classic Zelda, like dungeon items in the sage abilities. Chances are, when the next Zelda isn't constrained to be a direct sequel to BOTW, a large amount of game design elements will be reconsidered. I don't think "grown to dislike it" is fair until we've seen how the philosophy operates outside of BOTW. Of course the game he's the face of, will near unlimited dev time, would align with his perspectives of the series.

Beyond that, what do you want? Do you want them to discard their more popular, more critically acclaimed, from the sound of it true to what the devs want to do to make more classic games? The game design may have pivoted away from your prefence, but It's quality hasn't.

I'm not trying to be aggrivating here, but the perspective that X dev has ruined the series is a take to me that reeks of both trying to find someone to blame something unrelated you're unhappy with on and trying to paint different as bad.

Was galaxy 2/ TOTK not to your tastes? Sure.
Was galaxy 2/TOTK equally/drastically more popular than their predeccsors? Also yes.
Is either these games or theirs predecessors bad? No
Is either Aonuma/Miyamoto bad for pushing for their vision? Also no
 
The studded walls here definitely seem like they're intended to require a specific echo or other tool to traverse, though I'm sure enterprising princesses will be able to find alternatives.

hTnTK1g.jpeg
 
Apopheniac said:
The studded walls here definitely seem like they're intended to require a specific echo or other tool to traverse, though I'm sure enterprising princesses will be able to find alternatives.

hTnTK1g.jpeg
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To me it just looks like an ordinary climbable wall.
 
Apopheniac said:
The studded walls here definitely seem like they're intended to require a specific echo or other tool to traverse, though I'm sure enterprising princesses will be able to find alternatives.

hTnTK1g.jpeg
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Only thing I can think of right now are wall skulltulas. but it's probably an object. Or the wall is just climbable.
 
This is anecdotal, but my friend messaged me saying she was interested in a Zelda game for the first time because of the seemingly new puzzle direction of the game.
 
Meriadock said:
The game is basically the third version of Breath of the Wild in seven years. And people complain about those who prefer the traditional style when they are clearly playing the same thing repeatedly.
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there is literally no reason to believe that this game is anything like Breath of the Wild....
 
Individualised said:
What did you mean by this?
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I think the sentiment is basically...
"Zelda playing like link means that The Dev's don't actually care about Zelda as a character enough to define her, and she can only exist as a substitute to link" or smthn.

Edit: I'm more personally interested whether people think Showtime or this is the better of giving female characters leading roles. Aside from Showtime's being target to younger audiences, it's better suited for becoming a series, while EoW is rolling out the red carpet with a main series entry, but doesn't have as clear of a path for contiunation.
 
Vall said:
I think the sentiment is basically...
"Zelda playing like link means that The Dev's don't actually care about Zelda as a character enough to define her, and she can only exist as a substitute to link" or smthn.

Edit: I'm more personally interested whether people think Showtime or this is the better of giving female characters leading roles. Aside from Showtime's being target to younger audiences, it's better suited for becoming a series, while EoW is rolling out the red carpet with a main series entry, but doesn't have as clear of a path for continuation
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For future titles I don’t see why this wouldn’t have a clear path for continuation. It’s about the same in both regards & comes down to the devs wanting to make a sequel or something different involving both leading ladies.
Meriadock said:
The game is basically the third version of Breath of the Wild in seven years. And people complain about those who prefer the traditional style when they are clearly playing the same thing repeatedly.
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As opposed to before when there was nothing but games based on OOT?
 
Meriadock said:
The game is basically the third version of Breath of the Wild in seven years. And people complain about those who prefer the traditional style when they are clearly playing the same thing repeatedly.
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We’ve got about 15 more games to go til we catch up to the traditionalists then!

🤪
 
I would love for "classic Zelda" to come back.

I just don't want a version of it that is hyperlinear when it doesn't need to be, have items have an actual multi-purpose usage rather than being around for one dungeon and then dropped, have the entire experience being dragged down by unnecessary padding and makes exploration - one of the core aspects of Zelda - cloyingly slow and unfun.

So in short, I don't want a version of Zelda that plays like a Zelda game that came out between 2001 and 2017.
 
Meriadock said:
Based on the trailer, we have many reasons to believe it is. Sandbox, non-linear, create, use, be creative.
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How is it a sandbox exactly? What has lead you to believe it is non-linear? You don't really create anything, you just copy certain objects, and you can be creative sure but that is not exclusive to BOTW. Based on what we have seen it is just as easy to say that this is basically A Link to the Past with some more items at your disposal. It MAY turn out to be similar to Breath of the Wild but so far I see far more similarities to A Link Between Worlds personally.
 
Tentacle-tropes said:
For future titles I don’t see why this wouldn’t have a clear path for continuation. It’s about the same in both regards & comes down to the devs wanting to make a sequel or something different involving both leading ladies.
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I don't entirely agree - Peach now has a unique gameplay style that has room to iterate on, while Zelda is an iteration of a gameplay style if that makes sense? So if someone wants to make a game similar to showtime, its obvious to utilize peach, while Zelda is sort of competing against link in that regard, if that makes any sense?

To be clear I do want to see more playable, Zelda, just have some doubts about the immediate future.

Though thinking about it more, the existence of Tri is good because isn't necessarily typecast as a summoner in future 2d zelda games like I initially was thinking.
 
Vall said:
I don't entirely agree - Peach now has a unique gameplay style that has room to iterate on, while Zelda is an iteration of a gameplay style if that makes sense? So if someone wants to make a game similar to showtime, its obvious to utilize peach, while Zelda is sort of competing against link in that regard, if that makes any sense?

To be clear I do want to see more playable, Zelda, just have some doubts about the immediate future.

Though thinking about it more, the existence of Tri is good because isn't necessarily typecast as a summoner in future 2d zelda games like I initially was thinking.
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My personal guess is that Eiji Aonuma made Zelda controllable in EoW because he wanted to test for Zelda becoming controllable in the next 3d Zelda.
 
Vall said:
I don't entirely agree - Peach now has a unique gameplay style that has room to iterate on, while Zelda is an iteration of a gameplay style if that makes sense? So if someone wants to make a game similar to showtime, its obvious to utilize peach, while Zelda is sort of competing against link in that regard, if that makes any sense?

To be clear I do want to see more playable, Zelda, just have some doubts about the immediate future.

Though thinking about it more, the existence of Tri is good because isn't necessarily typecast as a summoner in future 2d zelda games like I initially was thinking.
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I mean nothing is stopping this from becoming a unique gameplay style inherently different from Link that has room to iterate on. It’s not like they are almost the same person doing the exact same thing.
 
Phendrift said:
About the conversations regarding the state of the series wrt sandbox stuff:

I get how those who were hoping 2D Zelda would be the bastion of the “classic” style are disappointed. This game is undeniably BotW/TotK influenced.

From the developers perspective though, I feel like they would feel arbitrarily limited if 2D Zelda was obligated to stick to the classic formula. It’s clear the “breaking conventions” mindset was for the entire series. It makes sense in hindsight that if the 2D Zelda games echoed the 3D games back when they were doing the traditional formula, that they’d echo the emergent games as this is the new formula. Especially since the latter is so popular.

And honestly, I think it’s pretty cool to have a 2D game that tries to be more like TotK. Especially because there was likely synergy due to both being in development around the same time.

I expect Switch 2 era Zelda to pivot to another big draw given that it’s hard to imagine TotK being topped in terms of scale and absolute freedom, so for now I’m just enjoying this era of Zelda and the strengths it brings to the table
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Honestly, at least the far more than expected success of the series so far would tell them that they were right to go down this path, at least until they usher in the exhaustion of their own creator's ideas before further overhauling them, otherwise I think non-linear puzzles, non-linear exploration, and free interactions are going to be at the core no matter what changes in theme happen.Of course totk's build theme was made clear by Fujibayashi in an interview at the end of last year that they wouldn't be doing it again for the next Legend of Zelda, and they said they wanted to challenge new themes.
 
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Meriadock said:
Based on the trailer, we have many reasons to believe it is. Sandbox, non-linear, create, use, be creative.
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...okay, and how is any of that different than A Link to the Past, a game this one is taking very obvious clues from?

In a Link to the Past, there is a vast open world that slowly opens up but once it does, gives you the freedom to tackle its dungeons in phases where in each phase, you can esentially choose which dungeon to do even if there is a preferred order.

Again, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with these definite, declarative statements from...nothing, honestly?
 
Tentacle-tropes said:
I mean nothing is stopping this from becoming a unique gameplay style inherently different from Link that has room to iterate on. It’s not like they are almost the same person doing the exact same thing.
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True, it's just a step further than what Peach did.
 
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NBOctoling said:
...okay, and how is any of that different than A Link to the Past, a game this one is taking very obvious clues from?

In a Link to the Past, there is a vast open world that slowly opens up but once it does, gives you the freedom to tackle its dungeons in phases where in each phase, you can esentially choose which dungeon to do even if there is a preferred order.

Again, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with these definite, declarative statements from...nothing, honestly?
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Using the A Link to the Past world is why I'm pretty confident the game will be open, even if I think that was a safe and easy assumption to make anyway what with things like the BotW cliff overview moment they did in the trailer and just what all of the recent Zeldas have been like.

But it being a sandbox game like BotW and TotK and unlike ALttP is explicitly shown by the main mechanic and everything about how they described it and showed it being used. I don't think that was really subtext at all, they were very clear and thorough about explaining and demonstrating it. They even brought out the TotK menus where you scroll through a massive line of objects to pull out. They said they haven't even counted how many there are, and demonstrated the use of different methods to overcome the same obstacles. They showed climbing and traversal as a major element of the game, something that was never in any other Zeldas until BotW. It was instantly obvious to me that they were translating that sandbox game philosophy of BotW and especially TotK into a 2D Zelda format with the Tri Rod concept, which emphasises creativity and the freedom to mess around in a systems-based world. We saw different items being used organically for things like stacking to climb to higher places or reacting differently with wind depending on their weight, and Zelda spreads fire like you could in BotW in one scene of the trailer.
 
Stilt Village said:
Using the A Link to the Past world is why I'm pretty confident the game will be open, even if I think that was a safe and easy assumption to make anyway what with things like the BotW cliff overview moment they did in the trailer and just what all of the recent Zeldas have been like.

But it being a sandbox game like BotW and TotK and unlike ALttP is explicitly shown by the main mechanic and everything about how they described it and showed it being used. I don't think that was really subtext at all, they were very clear and thorough about explaining and demonstrating it. They even brought out the TotK menus where you scroll through a massive line of objects to pull out. They said they haven't even counted how many there are, and demonstrated the use of different methods to overcome the same obstacles. They showed climbing and traversal as a major element of the game, something that was never in any other Zeldas until BotW. It was instantly obvious to me that they were translating that sandbox game philosophy of BotW and especially TotK into a 2D Zelda format with the Tri Rod concept, which emphasises creativity and the freedom to mess around in a systems-based world. We saw different items being used organically for things like stacking to climb to higher places or reacting differently with wind depending on their weight, and Zelda spreads fire like you could in BotW in one scene of the trailer.
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Sure, but the original take is incredibly reductive: "A third version of Breath of the Wild."
Will it follow the same philosophies? Sure, probably.
Does that in any way make it the same as BOTW? Absolutely not - we all accept the triple Mario RPG remakes in a year, so I don't get why the why 3 exploration zelda games, with a completely different method of viewing and interacting with the world, across 7 years lifespan, with multiple traditional remakes/remasters in between should be met with such derision.
 
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Stilt Village said:
Using the A Link to the Past world is why I'm pretty confident the game will be open, even if I think that was a safe and easy assumption to make anyway what with things like the BotW cliff overview moment they did in the trailer and just what all of the recent Zeldas have been like.

But it being a sandbox game like BotW and TotK and unlike ALttP is explicitly shown by the main mechanic and everything about how they described it and showed it being used. I don't think that was really subtext at all, they were very clear and thorough about explaining and demonstrating it. They even brought out the TotK menus where you scroll through a massive line of objects to pull out. They said they haven't even counted how many there are, and demonstrated the use of different methods to overcome the same obstacles. They showed climbing and traversal as a major element of the game, something that was never in any other Zeldas until BotW. It was instantly obvious to me that they were translating that sandbox game philosophy of BotW and especially TotK into a 2D Zelda format with the Tri Rod concept, which emphasises creativity and the freedom to mess around in a systems-based world. We saw different items being used organically for things like stacking to climb to higher places or reacting differently with wind depending on their weight, and Zelda spreads fire like you could in BotW in one scene of the trailer.
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Ok, but like...we then see people stretch this into

1. This game will have zero dungeons
2. It will just have shrines
3. It is breaking every classic Zelda convention

Like, even the Echo ability, while expansive, isn't that different to what older Zelda games have done. Give you more than one option to solve something? Yeah sure, but nothing inherently breaks Zelda conventions in the way say, Ascend, or Ultrahand did. Nothing I have seen is this slap in the face to classic zelda fans I've seen being expressed. Nothing is actually making a classic Zelda game not inherently work in this framework. And like...maybe I've been playing the games wrong for a decade but nothing feels that vastly different from the classic 2d zelda games where I feel the need to claim that this is too sandboxy to be called 2D Zelda.

And it's why it's frustrating to see it. Like, if people don't like the Echo system, I get it. It's weird, it's probably clunky unless there is a shortcut menu, and sometimes having a single solution can be satisfying compared to having a hundred different ones. But we keep seeing people branch out into wild and unproven theories that just feel like people wanting to turn "I don't like X" into a morality argument where disliking it is the correct choice.
 
As one of the unfortunate few who didn't gel with TotK at all, I'm not nervous about EoW. I feel like the Echo concept is a lot more elegant than Ultrahand. Also, there's so many ways in which they could gate player progression still, as mentioned above. Finally, despite reusing some LA assets this game looks (and, based on the trailer, sounds i hope) fresh as heck.

Also very happy that 360 degree movement is back in after LA's directional locking.

If this game is half as good as ALBW (and it looks fantastic) I'm happy!

Bonus: I put the lossless trailer through a stem splitter to remove the voiceover. So if you want to check out the music: here you go! It's a little warbly of course due to the voice removal.
 
considering how link's awakening at times struggled to maintain 60fps and this looks to be a way more complicated and resource intensive game, i wonder if they'll just lock it to 30fps.
 
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GenOneCam said:
How is it a sandbox exactly? What has lead you to believe it is non-linear? You don't really create anything, you just copy certain objects, and you can be creative sure but that is not exclusive to BOTW. Based on what we have seen it is just as easy to say that this is basically A Link to the Past with some more items at your disposal. It MAY turn out to be similar to Breath of the Wild but so far I see far more similarities to A Link Between Worlds personally.
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Aonuma said paraphrasing "Everyone playing this game will have a different experience" and "breaking conventions". That definitely implies sandboxy gameplay to me.
 
Hermii said:
Aonuma said paraphrasing "Everyone playing this game will have a different experience" and "breaking conventions". That definitely implies sandboxy gameplay to me.
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Not necessarily. It implies ‘there’s different ways to get past the obstacle on the way from A to B, and there’s enough echoes for lots of players to do it in different ways, but you still need to get to B’. to me. 2D overworlds just aren’t that big.
 
It's silly to think of "multiple solutions" as a sandbox game, does anyone think Immersive Sims is a sandbox game?

I think only the mechanic design in totk where ultrahand can splice everything has some sandbox tendencies, I don't see that in EoW.

If you don't understand why non-fixed solutions and systematic design aren't unrepresentative of sandbox games, play Dishonored
 
PixelKnight said:
Not necessarily. It implies ‘there’s different ways to get past the obstacle on the way from A to B, and there’s enough echoes for lots of players to do it in different ways, but you still need to get to B’. to me. 2D overworlds just aren’t that big.
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That was the impression I got when watching the footage.

I guess from the dev point of view it's giving the player the freedom to figure out how they do Task A as they see fit, as opposed to having a singular defined solution.
 
Hermii said:
Aonuma said paraphrasing "Everyone playing this game will have a different experience" and "breaking conventions". That definitely implies sandboxy gameplay to me.
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Maybe. It definitely could be but I don't think it necessitates it. I think sandbox is one of those terms where the waters have been pretty muddied and it gets used in a lot of ways that I don't think the term applies. For instance I would not even consider Breath of the Wild to be a sandbox game. It is open world, and people have a choice in how they explore and discover the world and complete the objectives, but it isn't really a sandbox.

EDIT: To further clarify I do think Tears of the Kingdom is probably in the sandbox realm
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
Only thing I’m worried about is the map being too heavily based on ALttP. The additions seem nice but if the topography is the same again…
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There are more changes than I'd thought, with the volcano in the northwest being the most obvious but yeah, there's a chance the basic layout is the same. Hyrule Castle has a town now, but it's still in the centre, while there's a Gerudo town but perhaps it's still in the southwest desert; Kakariko village has a different design and looks like it has elevated terrain, but it's still to the west of the castle. I wonder if fixing rifts will change the topography in more interesting ways.

One other thought I had was that there might simply be more terrain outside of the usual boundaries of Link to the Past's overworld. The trailer voice-over used the word 'vast' to describe this iteration of Hyrule; LttP's world isn't small but it sure isn't vast and it was essentially doubled through the Dark World/Lorule mechanic. Without that double world the amount of terrain and exploration is suddenly massively cut down, so I assume there's more we're not seeing.
 
GenOneCam said:
Maybe. It definitely could be but I don't think it necessitates it. I think sandbox is one of those terms where the waters have been pretty muddied and it gets used in a lot of ways that I don't think the term applies. For instance I would not even consider Breath of the Wild to be a sandbox game. It is open world, and people have a choice in how they explore and discover the world and complete the objectives, but it isn't really a sandbox.
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The starting point for systematic or emergent design was Deus Ex in 2000, before Dwarf Fortress, and I'm not even sure why anyone would link this design principle directly to sandbox games.
 
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Dardan Sandiego said:
Only thing I’m worried about is the map being too heavily based on ALttP. The additions seem nice but if the topography is the same again…
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I can definitely understand why some people could be disappointed by that. I am personally pretty excited about it, but it is one of my favourite video game maps of all time. A Link to the Past is my favourite childhood game and I played the crap out it. I played it so much that I found the Chris Houlihan room by accident lol. I also frequently do runs in ALTTP randomizer. It is pretty safe to say I have spent more time in that world than most people. It is definitely a comfort for me so I am always happy to return.
 
NBOctoling said:
Ok, but like...we then see people stretch this into

1. This game will have zero dungeons
2. It will just have shrines
3. It is breaking every classic Zelda convention

Like, even the Echo ability, while expansive, isn't that different to what older Zelda games have done. Give you more than one option to solve something? Yeah sure, but nothing inherently breaks Zelda conventions in the way say, Ascend, or Ultrahand did. Nothing I have seen is this slap in the face to classic zelda fans I've seen being expressed. Nothing is actually making a classic Zelda game not inherently work in this framework. And like...maybe I've been playing the games wrong for a decade but nothing feels that vastly different from the classic 2d zelda games where I feel the need to claim that this is too sandboxy to be called 2D Zelda.

And it's why it's frustrating to see it. Like, if people don't like the Echo system, I get it. It's weird, it's probably clunky unless there is a shortcut menu, and sometimes having a single solution can be satisfying compared to having a hundred different ones. But we keep seeing people branch out into wild and unproven theories that just feel like people wanting to turn "I don't like X" into a morality argument where disliking it is the correct choice.
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I haven't seen most of that myself, but sure, I would agree there's no evidence of that stuff.

I think Echoes are definitely meant to be this game's Ultrahand though, and it's a game changer to a much bigger degree than Ascend was. Ascend just reminds me of the wall merge ability from ALBW, which was cool and made you think about how you could traverse the world differently, but ultimately it was one ability that did one specific thing and feels more like a really good item. You could theoretically get away with introducing Ascend as a mind-blowing new ability midway through the game that revolutionizes traversal, maybe more naturally in a Metroidvania than a Zelda, but doing that with Ultrahand or the Tri Rod would just be insane. That is the core mechanic of a game, full stop. The Tri Rod and Ultrahand are similarly expansive in how they change how you can approach every object in the world and the main way you're intended to solve puzzles now (in this case maybe the only way, assuming those other D-pad directions don't end up being assigned to a suite of other abilities we haven't seen yet akin to Fuse/Ascend/Recall).

The results seem to be a lot closer to the sort of things you'd expect to be doing with a Zelda item than Ultrahand was though, it's kind of funny seeing people call this a puzzle game just because there's no sword when Ultrahand felt like way more of a full on genre shift, and you're right it's not impossible to do a classic Zelda like this. I liked the idea I saw earlier that you could even do dungeon items in this format by making the miniboss of each dungeon the item, but I also 100% would not hold my breath. It's too early to rule it out entirely, sure, but I don't blame anyone who was pinning their hopes on a new 2D Zelda to carry the torch for classic Zelda game design for being disappointed, because it doesn't look like that's their intention here at all and I felt the same way when I first saw the trailer.

That said, by virtue of it using ALttP's world, I'd be surprised and somewhat confused if this was an open world game in the modern sense either. It's not going to be like Link's Awakening, but it's not going to be Tears of the Kingdom. Whatever it is, it's going to be different.

And consider: without a massive open world to fall back on as the main focus of the game this time, the dungeons have to be something more than the same short 5 locks thing every time. ...Right?

Dardan Sandiego said:
Only thing I’m worried about is the map being too heavily based on ALttP. The additions seem nice but if the topography is the same again…
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I don't think this will be a problem. I was looking pretty closely at it last night, and it's way more distinct than ALBW was. They're not afraid to make major removals and expansions in places other than the edges of the existing map. Link's house and Kakariko Village appear to be entirely gone or moved elsewhere, they added a castle town, and there's a whole new stretch of land between the Lost Woods and everything below it that wasn't there before. Plus the implications of the swamp, Zora's River, and the desert potentially being radically different based off of the other footage we've seen, and things like the beach and jungle areas we see that just have no equivalents in ALttP at all and would imply an expansion in the south in addition to the reworked Hebra and newly added Death Mountain in the northwest. Oddly, it's seemingly only the southeastern portion with Lake Hylia and the ruins that appears to have gone largely unchanged, and I wonder if that was done intentionally because it looks like you start the game down there. Probably not? I guess it's hard to say without knowing what happens between escaping from Ganon's Castle/Ice Rod Cave and meeting Tri in what looks like the castle dungeons.
 
As far as progression/exploration etc goes, rifts are an obvious way of shepherding the player, though it's possible Echo abilities will allow people to circumvent rifts. For example, we see a rift open up and block a road on the overworld, but later we see Zelda using Echo abilities to head over treetops, a more free form traversal than anything we've seen in 2D Zelda. Can we bypass rifts with our Echo abilities?

An obvious solution would be to 'hide' certain Echoes in the rifts, which might be what we see happening with the block of water. Perhaps you can't capture a block of water like that in the overworld, so solving that rift gives you a tool for opening up more routes and exploration in the world. Obviously, I'd assume some Echoes are multipurpose, and we know that with Echoes having a cost and Zelda's Echo-spawning having limits that can be increased, there are ways for the designers to gate and focus progression. Players would still have freedom to solve things, but it's not like you can make an endless bed tower to climb a cliff; you need the water blocks (or something else that's more difficult to find than a bed) for that.
 
I guess this 40 year old dude here has to share how he experienced Zelda, with starting to play the series with the very first one on an actual NES as a 5 year old plug.
Keep it short, promise:

BotW is basically the concept of the very first Zelda game, "truthfully" translated into 3D for the first time. And TotK is the logical evolution of it.
Zelda 1 was already somewhat non-linear, you're thrown into the game being told "Have fun figure things out from here on". And while there were dungeons with a certain planned and designed structure, outside of color-theme and enemy cast, they look the same.

Zelda always has been about openess, exploration and dungeon diving. It's the balance of those things that make Zelda what it is, not the focus on one part.
Sure, the phyiscs gameplay put a damper on the dungeon design you're used from earlier 3D Zeldas, but if there's one dev who can make it work, it's Nintendo's devs.

And i think we've definitely not seen enough from EoW to deduct wether it's going to be "fully open" like BotW/TotK are, the scope of the gameplay, the echo system and what other tools / gadgets Zelda will get throughout the game.
Though i definitely think they didn't put that "rock boss monster" tease in the game for no reason. It's there to tell you "Calm down, we got this. We're gonna make this right.".

ILikeFeet said:
I don't see why not having full dungeons. gotta increase your echo meter somehow
Click to expand...

There has to be a way since from the Direct footage, Tri starts out with 3 triangles and throughout the gameplay footage has been seen with more than 3.
 
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