A new Legend of Zelda game for the Wii U was announced today during Nintendo’s E3 Digital Event. Director, Eiji Aonuma, spoke about the game for the live stream presentation and showed off one of their most iconic franchises in High Definition for the first time.
Aonuma said “revisiting the conventions of the Zelda series” is the overall premise in creating the new title. He then spoke about the original Zelda games and the free roaming feeling those game created. Unlike the illusion of a large world in the newer 3D games, he says that this game is returning to the “wide world”of the earlier entire of the franchise. Basically the character can tackle the game in whatever way they choose to depending on “where the player wants to go.”
“We couldn’t create such a wide world like this in the past,” he says pointing to the first video image of the game. “As far as what you can do with such a vast field to explore, as soon as those boundaries are removed, it means you can enter any area from any direction.”
He says that there will be a push for a freedom of non-liner game play and the story won’t hold restrictions for the player through a narrative followed in a specific order.
The game’s first image was show with a green screen behind the director. To make it a clearer in the mind, one describe it as a more colorful Skyrim setting. Aonuma defined it as “quite peaceful.” A large vista showed mountains off in the distance and Link gazing into the open world on top of a mountain. Bright colors showed off the a blue sky, tall red wood tress, boulders and clouds that surpass the graphics and art design of previous title.
After this long shot of a possible area of an early over-world, a short clip shows a robot ball type enemy chasing Link. A horse runs with Link on its back away from this robot creature. The creature is shooting a lazer beam from the top of its head. Link’s horse runs across a bridge but does not make it after the creature breaks the bridge with its long robot claw like arm.
Instead of the typical green outfit, we see a young adult Link, in a blue shirt and ponytail, pull out an arrow. The arrow forms a blue mechanical tip and shoots off camera. Several arrow shots before this are similar to rocket launchers.
The game has an art style close to Skyward Sword released in 2010. Although the forest setting is familiar territory for the Zelda series, the enemy and weapons are very new and fresh. Still, very little information was said and more will be here before the 2015 release date.
Check out the trailer below. Photo from PC Mag.