Summary
I thinkThe Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdommight be my most-anticipated game. Since Nintendo announced the Link’s Awakening-inspired adventure at the Direct last week, I’ve thought of little else. The only other games that come close to this level of excitement areCitizen Sleeper 2: Starward VectorandThe Plucky Squire. Not evenDragon Age: The Veilguardcracks my top three, although that might change when I finally crack Inquisition.
I think it tells you a lot about my current gaming mindset when you see my most anticipated games, but that’s a tale for another feature.
I was instantly enamoured with the game for a number of reasons: the toybox aesthetic, Zelda as a protagonist, the echo mechanic. I immediately thought ofhow excited smaller Zelda side projects make me, and howPokemon needs to embrace a similar cadenceto win me back over. But after thinking about the game more, I can already tell that it’s going to be a huge hit in theAnimal Crossingcommunity.
This is due to theecho mechanic. I can’t wait to work out how to overcome every one of Hyrule’s puzzles using items and enemies I’ve found and fought on my journey, but there’s a side effect of this mechanic: decorating.
The trailer shows Zelda copying tables and beds, clambering on top of them to ascend high cliffs and leap across buildings. It’s a unique mechanic worthy of a followup to the physics-based puzzling of Tears of the Kingdom, but it will also let players decorate every dungeon to their heart’s content.
Imagine conquering a dark cave, defeating the enemies within, and then setting to work making it homely. The bed can go next to the deathly ravine, the lamp over there in the darkest corner, and the sitting chairs around a cosy fire in the centre. It’s like perfecting your Animal Crossing house, but across the whole of Hyrule.
There’s potential limitations to this. We don’t know how many objects Zelda can place at any time. We don’t know if those items continue to exist once you leave the screen. But in a post-TotK world, our imaginations are running wild. It’s worth remembering that this is a smaller team with a smaller budget – don’t let your expectations get out of hand.
However, this is a magical series with a history of innovative mechanics. I don’t know whether we’ll be able to place three objects in the world or three million, but either are equally as likely. The former ramps up the difficulty and makes puzzles more head-scratching. The latter inspires creativity, from Animal Crossing-like decorating to towering creations to overcome puzzles in innovative ways.
Whatever the case with Echoes of Wisdom, I’m excited for it to get into fans’ hands. I’m excited to blow the dust off my Switch and get replicating, but I know there’ll be clever people online who craft even more exciting creations.
These communities are the epitome of the connections that gaming can create. Players who spend dozens of hours working out how to build a walking, fire-breathing Godzilla in Tears of the Kingdom and selflessly publish the blueprints online for others to follow. Players who create a wrestling promotion in their Animal Crossing home and encourage visitors to take part. The thousands of Skyrim mods available free of charge. These kinds of situations remind me of the forums of old, of how players collaborate in collective art to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
There’s no way that the devs of either game – or any, for that matter – know exactly what fans will do when they get their hands on a game. From mods to unique combinations, release day is a multimillion-person playtest, and the results are always surprising.
This collective creativity, the innate ability of gamers to test every possibility of any mechanic, is likely what drives developers at Nintendo or Grezzo (who are presumably working on Echoes of Wisdom) to make such open-ended mechanics. Games are playgrounds, and no series understands that as much as modern Zelda. Apart from maybe Animal Crossing. Now we get to see how the two interact.
