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- She/Her
Tri... 3...
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News The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom Announced for Switch, Releases September 26 (Playable Zelda)
- Thread starter N 2 Deep
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Undeniablybiased
Moblin
This is what bugs me the most about old and new Zelda. New Zelda is a little more fun about it since you can play around more, but in both styles, the instant I walk into a room I know exactly what they want me to do. Everything is so bare bones that the only things that exist in the shrines and dungeons are the things you need, and how they work is incredibly obvious.
It sucked in the old games because they were very restrictive, and you didn’t have any room to experiment. But I dislike them in the new games too, because even though I can do things differently, the “aha” moment of actual, proper puzzle solving isn’t there because of course all I have to do is attach the wheels to the stone slab and drive it across the lava, it’s all right there. The fact that I could attach a rocket to my shield and glide across doesn’t make it more fun beyond the first times you do it.
Old games mitigated this a bit by having the play spaces be interconnected, and some good puzzles spanned the entire space if I was lucky. But mechanically they weren’t very interesting. New games are now mechanically cool, but they haven’t done a good job with the physical space and everything is cornered off into its own self-contained puzzle. So really, I don’t want classic Zelda or new Zelda, but instead a 3rd thing that is better than both.
And as far as map reuse goes… based on the footage I don’t actually expect this game to use lttp’s map, but yes, I agree with the general sentiment that map reuse needs to be axed from their thought process. It needs to be something they throw away and never consider again. The play space of these games is just as important as the tools they give you to play around with. I don’t care if we get the same art style forever, I don’t care if the games are technically set in “Hyrule” for the rest of time, just never reuse a map again.
Aether
Kremling
Good point, agree. There is more to most of it, but yeah, it's less the structure and more the execution. Add to that the fact that imo link needed a fresh move set that doesn't feel so stif (I still actively dislike how link feels in TP and find SS link a little cumbersome outside of raw sword combat)
A well executed "classic" Zelda would still work.
But it seems to be really hard for them to do that.
Heck, ironically ALBW is one of the best in that regard. The over world is not to cumbersome to traverse (not to puzzly like the Capcom games), link controls beautifully, gating to a minimum.
Dungeons are fine (maybe slightly easy but that's a different topic), and the maimais are a greatly handled collectable (not intrusive, well messaged, good overview where you still have to explore, optional)
VintoWin
Bob-omb
^^This 100%^^
Also, the open world formula will get really stale if they continue to do koroks and shrines the way they are now. Critics will probably start pointing this out with the next entry if they don't change it.
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I'm not entirely sure it's complete map reuse - i think its inspired by LTTP Hyrule but seems to have a bit of Ocarina in there too - there's Gerudo that look Ocarina/BOTW style, also that mountain looks snowy, which makes me wonder if there are Rito up there, Great Deku... in which case we're looking at a Hyrule that has BOTW's species/races... perhaps they are putting LA Remake into its own timeline with its own Hyrule that's a mash up of LTTP/Ocarina and BOTW - or like LA are we looking at Zelda's dream of what happened to Link when he went missing (hence the toy style)
Kartina
THE PROCESS WON
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- He/him
I still think the next step for the zelda open world formula should be hidden dungeons in the overworld, mini adventures that you can find by exploring and putting together clues detached from the main story, pretty much what they did with caves in totk but on a larger scale (few of them but bigger and more complex. Also reworking the shrines to still have them in the overworld and not separated with a loading screen could do wonders for them.
To me it looks like what they did with twilight princess map which was heavily inspired by ocarina of time map but still it's own. They're probably going to do the same with this. And tbh with both a link between worlds and tears of the kingdom they explicity said that they were reusing the same map of a previous game since the beginning unlike this time so I don't expect that this game will also reuse it too.
Aufhebung RPG
History is tragedy becoming comedy
Yes! Exactly what I was thinking.
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I really do like this idea.
balgajo
Koopa
The other day I was thinking on creating a thread about the conventions they should rethink next and finding dungeons by yourself would definitely be my top priority. I mean, no problem on them contributing to the main story but I really dislike the idea you need to complete chores in a linear fashion to get to a dungeon. That's a great thing they should borrow from Zelda 1. At least for me it worked really well for Elden Ring. Probably my favorite part of the game.
I mean, no problem on sometimes you doing some chores to get to it. I just don't want it to be a formulaic thing because there isn't a good reason to be like this. Sometimes you can enter it right away, sometimes It can direct me to search for some item, sometimes related to a village quest, sometimes overcoming a boss right on the entrance(like ER Morgit).
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Aether
Kremling
That was what I expected from both after the early showings, and what they did ... Partially.
Labyrinths, castle, the dark woods at the north. Kinda the coloseum? Missed oportunity
In totk: fifth dungeon, the cave between the outpost and the castle.
But only 1 is a major dungeon. They need to do it more organically and cut the "do these X things" narrative.
Do the Pokémon thing: split the dungeons and the helping other races. Say link needs to help them... AND find some relicts but nobody knows about them so you simply organically go to discover them.
Or heck, kids strong powers and skills and items in them, but don't need then to finish the game. Have half the game be simply "optional".
balgajo
Koopa
That's me. What hyped the most was this idea that it would be like Zelda 1 in this sense(also the reason why I think ER feels like Zelda 1 without items).
I remember looking at the official artwork of Link climbing and thinking that the Temple of Time was some type of haunted house dungeon.
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One thing I hope they continue to push is the idea of a seamless world. In the future that could mean instantly loading into whatever the shrine equivalent space is. Part of me wonders if that was the hope with TotK; how cool would it have been if, after the shrine opens, you'd have been able to step in and out seamlessly of the overworld, and able to see the overworld from inside the shrine entry?
Instant loading could also open up some interesting problem solving and exploration possibilities. Imagine if the 'shrines' are actually a giant, interconnected labyrinth, which you can enter from different points of the overworld. You could explore it part by part and transport out into a new part of the overworld, using clues across both to help you traverse more of the world. That commitment to hiding loading - through skydiving or Ascend - is present in TotK to try and create seamlessness. New technology will make that easier.
It'll be very interesting to see how Echoes handles the world. There's already clues, with Zelda zipping over the trees, that we're going to have much freer traversal than in the past.
Aufhebung RPG
History is tragedy becoming comedy
It seems to me that Spirit Temple's search quests already fit this idea pretty well, allowing you to forcefully land on the island even if you don't go exploring for more clues at all, and find the switch to enter the underground Temple itself.
balgajo
Koopa
Definitely. Discovering Spirit Temple by myself is my favorite Totk moment.
Another interest case for me is Bottom of the Well in Ocarina of Time. Lately I kind of got obsessed on seeing people experiencing Oot for the first time and not taking the optimal path that we usually do. And I love when I see people discovering it by themselves before it becomes a requirement for the main quest. That's a really clever designed quest. Definitely my kind of thing.
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Aufhebung RPG
History is tragedy becoming comedy
This is exactly the kind of improvement idea I mentioned in the thread, the problem isn't that the individual shrine puzzles are too simple and too small, it's that most of them can't be related to each other, they could have considered allowing multiple puzzles to be related to each other without expanding the size of the individual puzzles, this way it wouldn't fall into the traditional Zelda dungeon design approach of forcing the player to familiarize themselves with the structure of the dungeon, but also allow for a greater explorationdrive and creativity in utilizing the mechanics, all of which can be accomplished in a seamless concept.
NBOctoling
Octoling
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- They/Them
You rang?
GenOneCam
Moblin
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- They/Them
Zelda has never been very hard though? And Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are probably the hardest ones yet. I expect Echoes will be about as difficult as past 2D Zelda games which is to say not very.
VintoWin
Bob-omb
Eh combat wise yes.Puzzle wise in a vacuum yes.✖Exploration complexity in dungeons/shrines way down.
Unfortunately, that last thing is incredibly important. Level design really makes a game.. It's why many of us like Metroid and classic Zelda dungeons.
I never expect Nintendo to make difficult combat though.
Apopheniac
Monolith Soft action game truther
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- he/him/his
Watched the trailer again and found an instance of Zelda having five triangles for echoes, so I think we can conclude that the summon limit can be raised multiple times throughout the game.
In this image, you can see that Tri has three triangles behind it as Zelda begins to echo another spider. The spider she's on looks like it's only using one triangle, but we know it's using two because that's the cost to echo it, as seen in the upper right corner of the screenshot. The second triangle on the spider's thread is below the visible one, but it's rotated and blends in with the thread.
Both triangles on the first echo are visible here, and you can see two of the other triangles fly away towards the second echo as it spawns in. The spare fifth triangle remains flat above Tri.
The embed links to 4:15 of the trailer upload if you want to double check this with frame-by-frame.
In this image, you can see that Tri has three triangles behind it as Zelda begins to echo another spider. The spider she's on looks like it's only using one triangle, but we know it's using two because that's the cost to echo it, as seen in the upper right corner of the screenshot. The second triangle on the spider's thread is below the visible one, but it's rotated and blends in with the thread.
Both triangles on the first echo are visible here, and you can see two of the other triangles fly away towards the second echo as it spawns in. The spare fifth triangle remains flat above Tri.
The embed links to 4:15 of the trailer upload if you want to double check this with frame-by-frame.
electricmastro
Rattata
- Pronouns
- He
Why did Nintendo choose 2024 to realize a Zelda-protagonist game instead of several years ago?
GenOneCam
Moblin
- Pronouns
- They/Them
they got woke
ziggyrivers
thunder
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- He/him/his
Especially if you forget that Ascend is an ability you have xD
Watched the trailer again and found an instance of Zelda having five triangles for echoes, so I think we can conclude that the summon limit can be raised multiple times throughout the game.
In this image, you can see that Tri has three triangles behind it as Zelda begins to echo another spider. The spider she's on looks like it's only using one triangle, but we know it's using two because that's the cost to echo it, as seen in the upper right corner of the screenshot. The second triangle on the spider's thread is below the visible one, but it's rotated and blends in with the thread.
Both triangles on the first echo are visible here, and you can see two of the other triangles fly away towards the second echo as it spawns in. The spare fifth triangle remains flat above Tri.
The embed links to 4:15 of the trailer upload if you want to double check this with frame-by-frame.
you just know some of the testers broke the game with a bokoblin army before implementing a limit
Lugia667
Darknut
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Watched the trailer again and found an instance of Zelda having five triangles for echoes, so I think we can conclude that the summon limit can be raised multiple times throughout the game.
In this image, you can see that Tri has three triangles behind it as Zelda begins to echo another spider. The spider she's on looks like it's only using one triangle, but we know it's using two because that's the cost to echo it, as seen in the upper right corner of the screenshot. The second triangle on the spider's thread is below the visible one, but it's rotated and blends in with the thread.
Both triangles on the first echo are visible here, and you can see two of the other triangles fly away towards the second echo as it spawns in. The spare fifth triangle remains flat above Tri.
The embed links to 4:15 of the trailer upload if you want to double check this with frame-by-frame.
I imagine that's what dungeons are for
- Pronouns
- he/him
Watched the trailer again and found an instance of Zelda having five triangles for echoes, so I think we can conclude that the summon limit can be raised multiple times throughout the game.
In this image, you can see that Tri has three triangles behind it as Zelda begins to echo another spider. The spider she's on looks like it's only using one triangle, but we know it's using two because that's the cost to echo it, as seen in the upper right corner of the screenshot. The second triangle on the spider's thread is below the visible one, but it's rotated and blends in with the thread.
Both triangles on the first echo are visible here, and you can see two of the other triangles fly away towards the second echo as it spawns in. The spare fifth triangle remains flat above Tri.
The embed links to 4:15 of the trailer upload if you want to double check this with frame-by-frame.
Pretty expected but it's nice to have hard evidence!
Slightly off Topic but TOTK is so badly hampered by the Sage ability system, they should've been assigned to the scroll weel like Recall was.
Because, playing with them, they're such good abilities. While they don't add anything explicitly unqiue, they make exploring the world so much more reasonable, but they're so annoying to use.
Did you know Sidon's water bubble keeps you safe burning heat, and when not in combat can be chained indefinitely?
Tulin's is the one that's regularly used.
Yunobo is effectively an infinitely reusable bomb with significantly greater range.
The only one that doesn't have great utility in the overworld is Rijus.
Each of them is also really useful in combat
Sidon Gives a Free hit when playing defensively and a one off buff to damage,
Tulin's gust can be used to blow enemies and their gear away for environmental damage,
Yunobo provides powerful AOE and disruption.
Riju provides a huge amount of stun, ranged damage and even some AOE thrown in.
It's really annoying, because it proves that BOTW game design can have room for significant exploration & combat progression, but was just mishandled so badly for no conceivable reason. There's even precident for giving Sage abilities to the scroll wheel with Zelda, I cannot understand it.
Because, playing with them, they're such good abilities. While they don't add anything explicitly unqiue, they make exploring the world so much more reasonable, but they're so annoying to use.
Did you know Sidon's water bubble keeps you safe burning heat, and when not in combat can be chained indefinitely?
Tulin's is the one that's regularly used.
Yunobo is effectively an infinitely reusable bomb with significantly greater range.
The only one that doesn't have great utility in the overworld is Rijus.
Each of them is also really useful in combat
Sidon Gives a Free hit when playing defensively and a one off buff to damage,
Tulin's gust can be used to blow enemies and their gear away for environmental damage,
Yunobo provides powerful AOE and disruption.
Riju provides a huge amount of stun, ranged damage and even some AOE thrown in.
It's really annoying, because it proves that BOTW game design can have room for significant exploration & combat progression, but was just mishandled so badly for no conceivable reason. There's even precident for giving Sage abilities to the scroll wheel with Zelda, I cannot understand it.
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Stilt Village
GBA
This is kind of why I'm disappointed Classic Zelda died actually. I felt like it never got anywhere close to its full potential due to always being weighed down by the same sorts of problems time after time. A few of the 2D games don't really have any of that baggage due to being made in these convenient in-between periods for the series where conventions were less entrenched, and I would say most of the better Zeldas are 2D ones for this reason, but they also just can't replicate a lot of what makes 3D Zelda special either.
Breath of the Wild was so immediately refreshing to play because it shed everything that had been holding Zelda games back since Ocarina of Time... except it also threw out most of what was great about those games, and immediately picked up a whole new collection of problems that already look like they're going to persist for several more entries until everyone gets sick of them in 20 years and they start all over again.
kirbyfan407
Twinkle Popo
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Maybe you know this, but Nintendo said something they were going for with this game was to create a sense of cooperation and "connecting" in contrast to BOTW being "a relatively lonesome game". I think that's why the characters are present like that and not just a menu option. However, I understand the desire to have them ALSO be able to be activated via a menu. Only having the ability to deactivate them in a menu doesn't do quite enough to offer more control.
I personally didn't find them that annoying to use, but I know I definitely sometimes activated them accidentally or struggled to find the one I needed. It'd have been nice to be able to issue commands to them. That's the kind of QOL feature I could see being added in a TOTK remaster in 15 years.
Oh I love the part of them fighting with you don't get me wrong.
I just think it should be
Have them fight with you by default, and teleport to you when you activate one of the sage abilities.
rick_C
Shriekbat
Watched the trailer again and found an instance of Zelda having five triangles for echoes, so I think we can conclude that the summon limit can be raised multiple times throughout the game.
In this image, you can see that Tri has three triangles behind it as Zelda begins to echo another spider. The spider she's on looks like it's only using one triangle, but we know it's using two because that's the cost to echo it, as seen in the upper right corner of the screenshot. The second triangle on the spider's thread is below the visible one, but it's rotated and blends in with the thread.
Both triangles on the first echo are visible here, and you can see two of the other triangles fly away towards the second echo as it spawns in. The spare fifth triangle remains flat above Tri.
The embed links to 4:15 of the trailer upload if you want to double check this with frame-by-frame.
I even think that it may reach to unlimited at the end of the game. The echoes ability is different from TOTK, all summon have time limit, it won't crash the game.
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- She/Her
While the game does introduce a core ability that allows for non-linear puzzle solving and occasional sequence-breaking, that doesn't exclude the multitude of other "classic Zelda" components.
There's nothing in the trailer that has deconfirmed or debunked:
1. Linear storytelling with distinct beats and arcs.
2. Uniquely themed dungeons and bosses.
3. A difficulty curve and dungeons being in a specific order.
4. Hand-crafted, less copy-paste environments.
5. Side quests that feels meaningful and not fetch quest-y.
etc.
What is probably gone is strict lock-and-key puzzles as well as item gating in the overworld, neither of which feels like the most vital/integral components of games like Link's Awakening and Twilight Princess.
Y'all, classic Zelda will be fine.
There's nothing in the trailer that has deconfirmed or debunked:
1. Linear storytelling with distinct beats and arcs.
2. Uniquely themed dungeons and bosses.
3. A difficulty curve and dungeons being in a specific order.
4. Hand-crafted, less copy-paste environments.
5. Side quests that feels meaningful and not fetch quest-y.
etc.
What is probably gone is strict lock-and-key puzzles as well as item gating in the overworld, neither of which feels like the most vital/integral components of games like Link's Awakening and Twilight Princess.
Y'all, classic Zelda will be fine.
PixelKnight
Observing the process
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I think with item gating, the ones I liked the least were stuff like the power gauntlet (pick up rocks) and the hammer (smash down rods) as they just weren’t very useful for anything else of consequence (sure, you can pick up pots and technically use the hammer as a weapon, but they are still not very exciting).
The items I much preferred were stuff like the Pegasus boots, as while, sure, you need them to charge through the crystal blocks, the speed upgrade allows for faster movement, longer jumps and charge attacks too. Same for the hookshot. Sure, there’s some gaps you need to cross. But it also acts as a useful makeshift ranged weapon to stun enemies and grab items from afar too.
It’s where items are literally ‘x item to get past x obstacle’ I find them really dull and a waste of an item spot.
I still think we could get something along the lines of classic items by echoing something a boss leaves behind after defeating them.
PixelKnight
Observing the process
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- He/Him
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to have some echoes given after boss fights or in cut scenes that are ‘key echoes’ required to beat the game, particularly traversal ones. But to have them vastly outnumbered by the sheer number of monster echoes or stuff like furniture that do similar jobs.
Waiting for the minimum echo speedruns this game will bring.
Good catch. I went back to look at the artwork. Can't believe we all missed that. The heart piece was there as a distraction.
Maybe Zelda will be able to dig them out? She'll get the ability to shovel. You raised good points. Maybe they'll let Zelda be versatile and she can do both-shovel or echo of magnetic enemy. Or she upgrades her rod to the magnetic rod which allows her to pull the chests out.
So Bravely Default?
Stilt Village
GBA
This sort of thing is what I always think of with the term "action adventure game". The adventure game component is the lock and key stuff, but the action game component is the keys being a whole new game mechanic and not just a thing you select from a menu to get past a specific obstacle. Zelda and Metroid are both best in class with this stuff, which isn't to say they don't have weaker items, just that hardly anything else is touching them in this category, even the early pre-1993 games where items were much simpler and less important to the game's progression. Even stuff as mechanically basic as the ladder in the original game that lets you cross any one tile gap, that's so cool and versatile within the context of the game world, how often do you see things like that?
In general I think Twilight Princess and A Link Between Worlds are the two Zeldas that stand out the most for being good at this. Almost every ALBW item is interesting to use because it had to carry an entire dungeon on its own, and Twilight Princess is just the last 3D Zelda with a really expansive selection of items, and naturally has the best iterations of many of these as a result. (Although it also has the slingshot which I think you use exactly one time outside of its tutorial before replacing it with the bow, they can't all be winners.)
Aufhebung RPG
History is tragedy becoming comedy
Prop locks are a necessary form of action adventure, but it never needed to be a hard and fast lock and key structure, and if prop locks are mandatory similar to one-on-one in early Zelda, then you're completely ruling out immersive sims games in general and Dishonors in particular as a part of action adventure games. I think that as long as it is allowed by the rules, a player can take any prop and utilize it's same nature to open the prop lock, which is a form of lock and key as you put it.
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While the "alternate Hyrules are being combined" theory is fun, there's also an alternative simpler explanation for why Zelda ends up imprisoned: an Echo Zelda has already appeared and replaced her.
This would also explain why the Link on the cover art has a different sword and is alongside Ganon: it's Echo Link, not the real Link, standing with Echo Ganon. Maybe the Echo magic can't quite replicate people properly, some minute details are different.
This would also explain why the Link on the cover art has a different sword and is alongside Ganon: it's Echo Link, not the real Link, standing with Echo Ganon. Maybe the Echo magic can't quite replicate people properly, some minute details are different.
PixelKnight
Observing the process
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- He/Him
You wanted that Mahagony wardrobe, but your echo of it is a cheap MDF knockoff
Twohearts
Lilipup
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- They/them
I don't want to sound like an old fogey (I'm 22) but I really like the more metroidvania item based style of the lttp onwards zelda games and feel like a lot of that charm was lost after tp in console and Triforce Heroes (skipping lbw) on handheld. I just like the iteration on small concepts as opposed to having these big central mechanics that define the entire game which seems to be what Nintendo increasingly focuses on for a lot of their bigger games and even some of their smaller ones. I would say that most of the items felt tacked on in Skyward Sword which sucks because the areas feel so alive in a dollhouse sense in that game.
Just waiting to see if there's more to this game than just summoning items before I buy it
Just waiting to see if there's more to this game than just summoning items before I buy it
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Tri-dent being the evil item that creates rifts versus Tri-rod the magic item that fixes them.
Ricimer
Bob-omb
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- She/Her
I'm shocked they didn't do that with dungeons in BOTW and especially TOTK considering that's how the original Zelda operated.
Ab
Like Like
- Pronouns
- He
Fair. And the map does seem to be expanded upon but too early to tell by how much. 20 hours is likely imo. At the bare minimum it'll be that much to do most of the story.
