Nintendo's New Zelda Game Looks Like ‘Breath of the Wild’ In Some Surprising Ways
Learning from the best.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom launch is less than two months away now, and a new trailer from Nintendo just offered the best look yet at its version of Hyrule. If the reaction on social media is anything to go by, the biggest reveal from the new trailer was clearly Zelda’s adorable horse (I mean, just look at it). But it also shows that while Echoes of Wisdom is a very different kind of Legend of Zelda game, it’s still taking major cues from the series’ recent successes.
The bulk of Nintendo’s new trailer is a quick tour of Hyrule, showing how Echoes of Wisdom will portray the decades-old kingdom at the heart of The Legend of Zelda. For the most part, it’s the Hyrule we know and love, complete with the desert-dwelling Gerudo, rock-munching Gorons, and not one but two varieties of aquatic Zora. That’s also where we see Zelda’s own version of Epona, which ranks right up there with the cutest critters Nintendo has ever put in a video game.
Echoes of Wisdom finally gives Zelda her own game, with inspiration from the series’ recent hits.
Despite Echoes of Wisdom ditching Link’s sword for Zelda’s magic abilities, the world should look very familiar to series fans. That’s to be expected, but the trailer also shows how deep the similarities go — taking mechanical inspirations from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Hyrule has always been populated by a variety of NPCs, but in the two Legend of Zelda games on the Switch, those wandering characters also give Link side quests to take care of while he makes his way to Ganon. Echoes of Wisdom will be similar, with NPCs on the road asking Zelda for favors. She even keeps her tasks written down in a quest log that looks almost identical to the ones in BotW and TotK.
Where those games gave Link the ability to cook with a variety of monstrous ingredients, Zelda can give collected food items to a friendly Deku Scrub to turn them into stat-boosting smoothies. Zelda will also be able to change into a variety of outfits to further enhance her abilities, or just to try out a new look, which also featured prominently in Link’s adventures on Switch.
Breath of the Wild seems to be an even more direct influence on Zelda’s new abilities in Echoes of Wisdom. We’ve already seen her Echo power, which lets her place copies of items and enemies in the world and seems to enable the same kind of creative construction as Tears of the Kingdom’s building system. A second power, Bind, also looks suspiciously like one of Link’s latest skills. Bind lets Zelda pick up and move objects in the environment, much like Tears of the Kingdom’s Ultrahand ability or Breath of the Wild’s Magnesis. However, Bind may be even more useful, since it lets Zelda pick up enemies (even dropping one off a cliff, as we see in the trailer), or hitch a ride on moving platforms and creatures.
Princess Zelda’s new powers let her duplicate objects and even hitch a ride on moving enemies.
The Legend of Zelda games have always had plenty of sword-swinging action, but in series tradition, they’re just as much about solving puzzles as defeating foes. The introduction of open world design provided more paths to wild puzzle solutions than the more rigid earlier games, and that philosophy seems to have rubbed off on Echoes of Wisdom. This time around, everything from fighting Bokoblins to scaling mountains looks like a form of puzzle, letting players create their own way forward by cleverly combining Zelda’s abilities. Echoes of Wisdom’s powers do look directly influenced by the Switch adventures in some way, but the embrace of player creativity in overcoming obstacles might just be the most important connective tissue between the games.
After the massive success of Legend of Zelda on the Switch, it’s no surprise that Nintendo is taking a lot of cues from those games for future titles in the series. What’s most heartening is that it’s not simply repeating what made Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom great, but taking the ideas behind their best mechanics and finding entirely new ways to use them. From what we’ve seen so far, Echoes of Wisdom is shaping up to be a worthy successor, following the best parts of Legend of Zelda series traditions while also forging a whole new style of gameplay for itself.
