I’m never entirely sure if it’s a weakness or a strength thatNintendorelies on the same series decade in and decade out. Right now, the biggest guns in the Nintendo arsenal areMario,Zelda, andPokemon. Just like they were in the ’90s, and ’00s, and ’10s. There’s room for shuffling -SmashandAnimal Crossinghave grown in cultural cache with each entry,Metroidis up and down,Kirbyis not the star he once was,Fire Emblemis at its peak, andStar Fox… Well, we don’t talk about Star Fox anymore. This reliance on a small roster has led to innovation, the latest of which isEchoes of Wisdom. But what comes next?
Echoes of Wisdom is the first major Zelda game where you can actually play as Zelda. That’s something of an innovation in itself, while the game also introduces a more active use of magic into the series, reimagining what dungeon crawling looks like without the Master Sword (or some breakable stick you just found) by your side. It also feels like a rare instance of The Legend of Zelda being pushed into doing something that is notably different to what came before.
On the face of it, this sounds like a stupid point to make. Don’t worry, I can be a fairly stupid person.Breath of the Wildtransformed not only the boundaries of a Zelda game, but the entire industry’s approach to the open world formula. ThroughOcarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and A Link to the Past, the series has always been iterating on itself, telling its classic fairy story in new ways, supplemented by new mechanics. Compared to Pokemon, which has been largely treading water with the same basic game for almost its entire life cycle, the Zelda series seems highly inventive.
Should Zelda Have A Wider Variety Of Games?
But for the specific point I’m making, Pokemon is actually way better than Zelda. Sure, the mainline games are repetitive, but we have Pokken,Snap,Mystery Dungeon, PokePark, the vastly underrated Conquest, and dozens more. Mario, the third force in Nintendo’s main triumvirate, has an even greater variety of games out there. Golf, Party, Kart, Tennis… you name a casual activity and Mario has done it. Mario also has thePaper series,the RPG series, the & Luigi series, the + Rabbids series, and that’s before you get intoLuigi,Peach, Yoshi, and Toad all having their own fully fledged spin offs. Zelda? It’s got the Zelda games.
Echoes of Wisdom is in between all of these. It’s still, at heart, a mainline Zelda game. You can even play as Link in it. But it’s certainly smaller thanTears of the Kingdom, and the next Zelda game will be seen as TOTK’s true follow up. Echoes is a stop gap, an amuse pouce. You play as Zelda, but it’s no Princess Peach: Showtime. It’s not a separate thing from The Legend of Zelda, but it’s also not really a ‘proper’ The Legend of Zelda game. So what is it?
If you wryly giggled to yourself at my typo in amuse bouche, it is in fact you who are the subject of giggles, as pouce means ‘thumb’, making it a very sophisticated and urbane slice of wit.
Zelda has always been a series to look onwards and upwards, and Echoes feels like a step backwards. Not in terms of overall quality, necessarily, but in ambition and scope. This is not a series that peppers its timeline with smaller releases too often, certainly not in theSwitchera, and Echoes feels like a decision to embrace a wider world of Zelda that remains connected to the ‘main’ series, whatever that means.That this began life as a Zelda Makershows a desire to experiment on new ideas within the Zelda framework, and I don’t think Echoes will have fully satiated that desire.
Do Other Series Need Their Own Echoes Of Wisdom?
Maybe the question isn’t so much what Echoes is meant to be. It is what it is, and Zelda has never been a series with a desire to fit into a neat little box. The question is, what comes next? Will we see true Zelda spin offs in its wake? We’ve had them before with Hyrule Warriors or Cadence of Hyrule, but they were both reskins of other series. Meanwhile, its original spin offs have never been serious and earnest games like Super Mario RPG or Pokemon Conquest. So do we get more games like Echoes? A real Zelda Maker? Will the series go the kart racer route? Probably not that exactly (why give Mario competition?), but Echoes could be the foundation of a more expansive future for Zelda.
Alternatively, it could be a stepping stone for others.Animal Crossing: New Horizonstook the series from being a fairly popular Nintendo mainstay into one that’s ascending to superstardom. The game was consistently supported with events, then a full DLC, but it’s odd that a series so rich with characters and activities hasn’t followed up New Horizons with a spin off that banks on its popularity.Most fans don’t even know it has a movie- largely because it isn’t available in the West without a fan translation.
There are other series besides Animal Crossing, and other ways for Zelda to expand besides doing different sports to Mario (Zelda Cricket, anyone?). Maybe Echoes of Wisdom is just another game and in a few years we get the true follow up to TOTK and the world keeps on turning. But this seems like a new direction for a series that has always followed good ideas until it strikes gold, and I wonder what riches Echoes of Wisdom will eventually lead to.
