We’re feeling all of the emotions right now because the mysterious Legend Of Zelda: Breath of Winter for the Wii U and Nintendo NX game that Nintendo has been teasing finally has a full-fledged trailer. On top of that, we finally have an English title of the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Based on how breathtaking the footage was, the title certainly fits.
A gorgeous open world Legend of Zelda game, that’s the dream and Nintendo has made it a reality. There’s a huge sense of openness to the game, missing from the previous generation. There’s a sense you can walk off in any direction, enter whichever dungeon you’d like and do whatever you’d like including venturing into high level areas to get your butt kicked.
In the three minutes of footage that was shown off, we see gorgeous rolling hills in the peaceful kingdom of Hyrule but a flash of lightning reveals ruin. We’re guessing that Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild takes place after the events of Twilight Princess and it’s most likely he’s searching for Midna.
As shown by the state of the Master Sword in a state of disrepair. Not housed on a pedestal in what we can assume is the overgrown Temple of Time we can see that the hilt is rusted and the blade is fairly chipped.
Going back to the gameplay, more so than any Zelda game since Zelda II, Breath of the Wild feels like an adventure governed by stats. We see Link with a variety of weapons and armour and from the E3 showfloor we’ve learned that the game has a forward moving time mechanic with one second in real life equaling one minute of game time.
You are constantly collecting new outfits and weapons, all of which have stats an interesting departure from the previous Legend of Zelda games. We can see in the trailer Link carrying a spear, a bow and he’s even decked out in armour at one point.
In addition to keeping an eye on all your equipment there is also a survival mechanic to Breath of the Wild. Health is still measured by little hearts but now instead of cutting grass and breaking pots, you’ll need to eat to replenish health. As shown in the trailer you’re able to cook food as well and discover new recipes.
The game also displays a gauge to monitor Link‘s body temperature. If you go somewhere cold the meter will drop into the blue until you’ve found a heavier shirt you’ll start losing health. All this as well is correlated with dealing with weather changes, you can set fire to cook food, but if it rains it will put the fire out.
“There’s a lot of things you can collect in this game, whether it’s food, clothes, weapons,” Franchise Head Eiji Aonuma said “So in past Zelda titles we put all of that under the umbrella of ‘item.’ We separated that out in this one. And in terms of items that are necessary to solve puzzles, that you kind of get early in the game. And then you can actually later upgrade those.
It’s not clear how much structure Breath of the Wild will have. The talk of dungeons implies some sort of progression, but Nintendo reps continually emphasize that you can access a lot of the game in any order, so long as you can survive. There’s still no exact release date on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild but we do know it’s launching next year most likely in conjunction with the Nintendo NX.