Nintendo’s previous trailer for The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom was the first of theirs I know of to end on a cliffhanger. It established there are purple rifts tearing Hyrule apart, Zelda leaped into one, and then the preview ended. All questions were answered today as Nintendo’s new preview picks up directly where that one left off.
When Zelda enters rifts she steps into the Still World, the phantom zone where pieces of Hyrule are suspended in midair. This includes the civilians (most crucially Link, and Zelda’s father) and if Zelda doesn’t hurry and heal the rifts, they’ll all fade away! The Still World has a higher emphasis on isometric platforming than the overworld, and you’ll have to use the puzzle-solving tricks and powers you picked up there to traverse it. The Still World also appears to be where all the dungeons are. Entering is mandatory.
Some of you who saw the spell-casting, enemy-possessing, puzzle-solving method Zelda uses to fight adversaries wished out loud they could just use a sword. If that was you, you’re getting your wish…sort of. Somewhere in the game, Zelda will find a “mysterious sword” embedded in the rock, and when she pulls it out, she becomes a glowing blue swordfighter, with a convenient Hylian Shield appearing out of nowhere.
The game doesn’t want you to rely on this, it wants you to think creatively and come up with different solutions to your problems…so the sword form has a time limit. You’ll be given a meter and when it depletes completely, you can’t use the sword anymore. You can recharge the sword by collecting little glowing blue bits floating around the Still World.
Oh, and to the surprise of no one, Dampe is in the game! This time, he can build mechanical wind-up variants of the enemies in the overworld. If you wish, you can have them fight for you, but they will break apart eventually. Since Zelda can collect and generate enemy servants herself, this feels a bit redundant — perhaps there’s an advantage to using the Dampe versions that isn’t obvious right now.
It won’t be long until we can try all this out for ourselves…The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom launches on Nintendo Switch September 26.
