Echoes of Wisdom‘s New Trailer Marries Classic Zelda and Breath of the Wild Brilliantly

Nintendo released a caller trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Widom this morning—its archetypal Zelda crippled successful generations to diagnostic the titular Princess arsenic the superior playable protagonist. It confirms 2 beauteous fantastic things: first, that the steadfast is trying to wed the franchise’s oldest sensibilities with its newest influences. Secondly? Zelda’s a equine girlie.

The caller five-minute gameplay overview gives america a little look astatine what to expect erstwhile Zelda finds herself disconnected connected an escapade to prevention Hyrule, aft Link is consumed by a mysterious acheronian void emerging implicit the Kingdom successful his ain attempts to rescue the Princess from nefarious clutches.

Despite Echoes‘ accepted aesthetic trappings, borrowing its position from the earliest games successful the Zelda franchise and its chibi-leanings from 2019 remake of Link’s Awakening, there’s a batch present that feels overmuch much reminiscent of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom‘s mechanical ideas than traditional Zelda games. There’s crafting elements similar the smoothie shops (seemingly replacing Link’s cooking arsenic a mode to get assorted buffs), assorted outfits for manner and functionality, and Zelda’s quality to summon a equine to get astir (or adjacent find and unlock accelerated question points). But the biggest is different caller quality Zelda volition person to lick puzzles and prosecute with the satellite astir her.

Gifted to her by her caller ally, the fairy Tri, Bind is akin to the magnesis and ultrahand abilities from Breath and Tears. In 1 form, Zelda tin manipulate objects careless of size to determination with her, and successful its reverse-bond form, she tin link herself to an entity and determination on with it. Combined with the caller echo powerfulness Zelda has, these abilities fto players attack combat, puzzle-solving, and traversal successful ways that consciousness overmuch much like Breath and Tears‘ experimental leanings, alternatively than Zelda‘s accepted benignant of uncovering precise circumstantial ways to lick circumstantial things.

Cliff excessively precocious to scale? Summon an echo of a spider and reverse-bond it to yourself to travel it arsenic it climbs up. Need a speedy defence successful combat? Echo up a oversea urchin, hindrance it to yourself, and simply dash into enemies. The assortment of applications successful this format of Zelda games is dissimilar thing we’ve truly seen successful the post-Breath of the Wild world, and it’ll beryllium precise absorbing to spot conscionable however overmuch Echoes manages to bring that benignant of open-ended gameplay to thing playing much straight with classical Zelda‘s gameplay legacy.

We’ll find retired much when Echoes of Wisdom hits Nintendo Switch adjacent month, connected September 26.

Want much io9 news? Check retired erstwhile to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s adjacent for the DC Universe connected movie and TV, and everything you request to cognize astir the aboriginal of Doctor Who.