I dusted off mySwitchthis weekend to play a newZeldagame. The very act of loading up a new adventure in Hyrule is inherently nostalgic to me, and the fact that new titles aren’t subpar annual releases likePokemonmeans that there’s still an exciting spectacle that comes with watching the title screen appear in front of me.
With Pokemon – my other major childhood favourite – loading up a new game these days is fraught with trepidation as I worry about the state of what’s to come. Will the framerate stutter over 30fps this time around? Will the monsters pop into the open world in a way that shatters all immersion? Will the RPG use the same tired tropes it always does instead of innovating like Nintendo’s other mascots consistently have?
That’s not to say Zelda is perfect. Breath of the Wild is one of my favourite games of all time, up there with Majora’s Mask as my favourite Zelda title. Tears of the Kingdom, however, trod too many of the same paths, paths I’d already spent hundreds of hours exploring in its predecessor. I didn’t get on with the game’s Ultrahand building – the main innovation – and that’s why I fell off the sequel hard.
However, there was still stuff I liked. Anything in the sky archipelago was ace, including the route to the Sky Temple, which remains one of the best platforming sections in any Zelda game. The innovations were built on innovations, and even if some of them don’t quite hit for you, you can appreciate the others that do. It’s the sort of thing I wish Pokemon did more often, rather than recreating the same game with easier difficulty and worse performance each year.
Then I found out about the Breath of the Wild proof of concept game that Nintendo produced to pitch the game.A low-graphics, top-down version of the gamewas shown off in a GDC presentation in 2017. I needed to play it. I still haven’t, and likely never will, but Echoes of Wisdom is scratching that itch for now.
Exploring Hyrule from this top-down perspective is so refreshing, and the Link’s Awakening Remake-esque art style is incredibly endearing. But it’s the echo mechanic that brings me the most joy.
The old Zelda titles – Minish Cap, A Link to the Past, and the like – all had a great central gimmick. Whether it was shrinking in size or time travel, each game made Hyrule feel fresh and new. But they were often quite linear, despite their open worlds. Echoes of Wisdom manages to balance its central gimmick with the open-endedness that makes Switch-era Zelda so revolutionary.
Aside from the obvious change to the classic Zelda formula (that being the princess protagonist), the echoes mechanic allows complete freedom in a way that only a modern game could achieve. You can copy almost anything from the world around you, and approach the puzzles in your way with almost immersive sim levels of creative problem solving. Sure, you can use tables to make stairs or start a Moblin civil war, but why don’t you try to approach both problems with a humble pot?
Where Link breaks pots, Zelda can summon them. I need a 1,000 word breakdown of how this represents their respective characters, stat!
I’ve only scratched the surface of this game, but I love how deep this deceivingly simple mechanic can go. Copying echoes can turn this game into an Animal Crossing-esque home decorator or a Dishonored-esque stealth puzzle depending on your playstyle. No approach feels wrong or leads to a dead end. It nails the creativity of Breath of the Wild in an old-school package.
I always wanted to experiencethe sandbox freedom of Breath of the Wild in this retro Zelda fashion, but I thought it would never happen, especially afterinterviews from Zelda creators confirmed that the Breath of the Wild formula would be further explored going forward. And yet this little nibble was exactly what I wanted. My Nintendo Switch is a Zelda machine these days, and with the amount of creativity in every new title, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
