Recently, Nintendo has been releasing announcement trailers for the next game in their Zelda franchise.

Omega Force has developed the Nintendo Switch game Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which acts as both a sequel to the 2014 Wii U title Hyrule Warriors and a prequel to the 2017 Switch launch title Breath of the Wild. 

This game will cover the events that were previously only mentioned in flashbacks in Breath of the Wild, detailing the fall of Hyrule. This is a great idea. The flashbacks, explaining what happened in the past, hinted at a great story, since the flashbacks showed so many emotional scenes, meaning that if there was ever a prequel to Breath of the Wild, those would be the perfect events to cover. 

In addition to retaining the same gameplay from Hyrule Warriors, it also retains the same cel-shaded art style from Breath of the Wild, which was a great choice considering how good Breath of the Wild looked, a neat combination of amazing looking visuals, great color choices, and large-scale environments. This is very different from the grounded realism of Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and Twilight Princess, all of which have aged not so well, and not too different from The Wind Waker and Skyward Sword. More often than not, cartoony graphics tend to age better than realistic graphics do. This will seriously benefit the game because usually, dated graphics tend to really lower the emotion of a story, like in Sonic Adventure for example. If the graphics last for a long time, so will the emotion of this game’s story.

Not only that, but the game will also have voice acting, just like Breath of the Wild. That is awesome since the lack of voice acting in previous Zelda games, especially Hyrule Warriors, was really glaring considering the standards of other adventure games released around their respective times, although Link looks like he’ll still remain silent, which, just like in Breath of the Wild, which is really pointless since Link is no longer an avatar character. 

In previous games, it made sense for Link to not talk since it was meant to feel like the character was the player, the “Link” between the game and the player, that’s why you could swap out Link’s name for your own name, which isn’t possible for Hyrule Warriors, Breath of the Wild, or Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Even then, in The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword, and even Hyrule Warriors, Link showed actual emotions. In Breath of the Wild, Link felt like the most wooden character since his incarnation in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask with him not speaking or showing much emotion and it could really ruin the emotion of certain scenes where Link was interacting with various characters, characters with whom Link was supposed to be friends with and yet it felt like he had no connection with them whatsoever, the kind of connection that would be there if Link just talked. That same issue looks like it will also apply to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity as well.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is set for release on the Nintendo Switch on November 20th, 2020, so here’s to hoping that the game is a great one.