[E32014] The Legend of Zelda for Wii U Annouced With Trailer
Legend of Zelda has always held a top spot for many gamers, and it doesn’t look like the series has any intention of slowing down or losing their reputation as one of the biggest names in fantasy RPGs. Last year, Nintendo announced a new Legend of Zelda title, the first one made just for the Wii U. This year’s E3 has given us more information about it, and folks, it’s gonna be a doozy.
We were told back in January 2013 when the game announcement was first made that the new game would “revisit the conventions of the old Zelda games.” Now, we know what that means.
People who have played Zelda titles should be familiar with the flow of the games made after the developers switched to 3D polygon graphics; they have large maps that can be explored, but the areas are limited at first until they open for the storyline. The storylines were fairly linear, with the player having to advance through plot/area points A, B, and C in order. The original Legend of Zelda game had a more open world, in which the player could explore and go through areas in any desired order. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker made an attempt at an open world by stitching together multiple areas on a big map, but still had a linear pattern to the order in which you could visit certain areas and dungeons.
The new Zelda game, which still has yet to be named, will be set in a vast, fully-explorable open world. The dungeons and areas can be visited in any order, and the player can wander the entire map, even visiting far-off mountains in the distance, without any borders or restrictions. As my wife puts it, the game will play like “if you combined Zelda with the open-world style of Skyrim.”
It also looks like the game will take advantage of the Wii U’s better graphics capabilities (compared to the Wii) since the trailer shows individual, moving blades of grass, clouds, several columns of rising smoke, and moving people in the distance. Take a look at the trailer below:
[youtube id=”XZmxvig1dXE” width=”600″ height=”350″]
As a side note, in the short time since this video has been available, an interesting theory has also started its plague-like spread on internet forums. Some fans are saying that the blonde character in the trailer isn’t actually Link, who has been the featured character in every game thus far, but a descendant of Link, or even Zelda herself. This rumor stemmed from a quote from game producer Eiji Aonuma, who responded to a question asking why Link wasn’t wearing his iconic green outfit by saying “No one explicitly said that that was Link.”
Even though we’ve only seen a teaser for the game, it just may be shaping up to be the best game in the series.
