Echoes of Wisdom is More BOTW Than BOTW Was (2024)

Summary

Echoes of Wisdom carries over numerous elements from the Wild Era games, from its larger overworld map to its emphasis on complex combat systems.
Echoes of Wisdom's emphasis on its physics engine is extremely reminiscent of the 2D tech prototype the Zelda Team created to test BOTW's own physics engine.
Echoes of Wisdom bridges the gap between classic 2D Zelda and BOTW, giving it the opportunity to fix aspects of the Wild Era games that fans felt were lacking.

As Princess Zelda gazed over the Kingdom of Hyrule from a cliffside in the initial reveal trailer for Echoes of Wisdom, Zelda fans couldn’t help but recognize this as a not-so-subtle nod to the opening sequence of Breath of the Wild. In the context of a game like EOW, that reference is of great significance. Upon the release of BOTW in 2017, Zelda series director Hidemaro Fujibayashi noted how, with that game, “breaking the conventions of the Zelda series was a goal from the very start.”

The conventions of Zelda were undeniably changed forever with BOTW, but longtime fans have still held out hope that the next 2D top-down Zelda game would be a return to the traditional gameplay style they’d grown to love. In the announcement trailer for Echoes of Wisdom in Nintendo’s June 2024 Direct, Zelda series Producer Eiji Aonuma made a strangely familiar statement. “We wanted to create a new gameplay style that breaks conventions seen in past Legend of Zelda games with a top-down perspective.” Echoes of Wisdom is the new 2D Zelda fans had been hoping for, but just like BOTW, it’ll be anything but conventional.

Similarities to BOTW & TOTK Abound in Echoes of Wisdom

EOW is Just as Much a Successor of the Wild Era as it is of Classic Zelda

Why Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Won’t Suffer From Tears of the Kingdom’s Biggest Problem

Tears of the Kingdom’s emphasis on creativity had unforeseen effects on its gameplay, but Echoes of Wisdom is taking a more traditional Zelda approach

While Echoes of Wisdom is firmly situated in the top-down perspective like the 2D Zelda classics, its gameplay mechanics seem to have far more in common with BOTW & TOTK than they do with Link’s Awakening or A Link to the Past. In fact, despite this version of Hyrule bearing a close similarity to ALTTP’s version of the map, Echoes of Wisdom’s map is far larger. The exact size hasn’t been revealed, but fans have already recognized how the map was expanded in all directions from what ALTTP had.

In exploring such a huge version of 2D Hyrule, EOW reequips players with many of the same tools that BOTW provided them with. Players can ride a horse to travel this huge map more quickly and even discover waypoints that allow Zelda to easily fast-travel just as Link could in BOTW. There’s even a quest log that appears quite similar to BOTW’s, consisting of an overarching main quest and several side quests for players to complete. It’s still unconfirmed whether Echoes of Wisdom will be a true open world like BOTW was, but the sheer size of the map alone already puts every other 2D Zelda to shame.

Its huge overworld aside, Echoes of Wisdom has a lot in common with both BOTW and TOTK in terms of its gameplay mechanics. The most obvious is Princess Zelda’s Bound and Reverse Bind abilities, which are clear offshoots of Link’s Ultrahand and Rewind abilities from TOTK. Even Zelda’s new Echo ability leans heavily into the sense of freedom in creativity that was a central philosophy of TOTK’s gameplay style. If that weren’t enough, even the UI of the Echo ability is a near one-to-one rehash of the UI for Fuse and Autobuild in TOTK.

“The inclusion of the ability to lock on to enemies suggests that EOW’s combat may be more intensive than any 2D Zelda before it.”

Echoes of Wisdom is a Polished Recreation of the BOTW Tech Demo

Breath of the Wild’s Earliest Incarnation was a 2D Prototype Similar to EOW

Echoes of Wisdom is More BOTW Than BOTW Was (2)

"In a way, this makes EOW an even purer version of BOTW than BOTW is."

You Should Play This Classic Zelda Game Before Echoes of Wisdom

Echoes of Wisdom is setting the stage for a return-to-form for traditional Zelda, making the retro Zelda classics more relevant than ever.

Following the release of Breath of the Wild, Nintendo released a three-part series of YouTube videos detailing the creation of the game. In the first video, subtitled “The Beginning”, the developers detail how they first built up to BOTW’s advanced physics system. The Zelda Team first built a 2D prototype to test their ideas, which closely resembled the original Legend of Zelda for the NES and used the same sprites. Using this simplified demo, the team tested out how doing things like cutting down trees to use as logs or pushing objects with wind using a Deku Leaf might look.

“The playstyle that’s now implemented in Breath of the Wild initially resonated with our staff partially because they experienced it onscreen in that simple 2D prototype.”
Hidemaro Fujibayashi

This early 2D prototype was a huge jumping off point for the developers in making BOTW what it was, with Fujibayashi even noting how much it “resonated” with the staff working on the game. Anyone who watches those early tech demos will immediately see similarities between them and what became Echoes of Wisdom. Echoes of Wisdom's heavy emphasis on its physics engine and open-ended freedom are extremely reminiscent of what the Zelda Team was trying to accomplish with the early BOTW 2D tech demo. EOW looks like the developers simply took that 2D prototype engine and put the sprites from Link’s Awakening on top.

In a way, this makes EOW an even purer version of BOTW than BOTW is. Whereas BOTW took this 2D tech demo and applied it to a huge, 3D open world, EOW simply gives players a polished version of that demo, with the added bonuses of TOTK-style abilities and Princess Zelda in the protagonist role.

What Echoes of Wisdom Needs to Improve on From BOTW

Echoes of Wisdom Has to Have Proper Dungeons and Progression

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Echoes of Wisdom is quite clearly a 2D top-down Zelda’s version of BOTW. It’s a game that breaks the conventions of every other top-down game, while also applying the lessons the Zelda Team learned from its two latest 3D releases. In applying those lessons, though, the Zelda Team will need to do more than simply give players a new TOTK in a top-down perspective. There are a number of places where the Wild Era stumbled that Echoes of Wisdom has the chance to improve.

While the return to top-down Zelda is exciting for fans, it’s not just the camera perspective that longtime fans of the series love about 2D Zelda. The biggest departure BOTW made from the classics is the utter absence of dungeon crawling. While BOTW technically had dungeons in its Divine Beasts, the similarities between their puzzling, their atmospheres and their bosses made the Divine Beasts disappointing for fans of the classic Zelda dungeons.

TOTK’s dungeons improved on some of these aspects of BOTW’s dungeons with more unique themes and better boss battles. However, it still wasn’t quite enough to stretch that itch for fans of the classics. Dungeon crawling was a central part of the series since the first game. They were the places where players spent the majority of their gameplay experience, and where they faced their greatest challenges. The majority of the Wild-Era’s puzzles show up in the games’ shrines, which serve as mini dungeons that don’t hold the same air of intrigue traditional Zelda dungeons did.

“It's interesting when I hear people say [they prefer the old entries] because I am wondering, 'Why do you want to go back to a type of game where you're more limited or more restricted in the types of things or ways you can play?”
Eiji Aonuma

Unfortunately, actual dungeons have still not been confirmed in any of Echoes of Wisdom's trailers or the official website. This only serves to increase fan's concerns further. If EOW does have proper dungeons, they would automatically raise the difficulty of the game beyond what it was in TOTK or BOTW. It would also potentially give players another aspect of 2D Zelda that they’d been missing: a linear sense of progression.

In the Wild Era games, the main source of progression in the game is Link’s increasing strength as players complete more shrines and upgrade weapon equipment. This makes progressing in the game more about grinding than about actually completing the storyline. In past games, players slowly grew in strength with each completed dungeon, gaining new items in their arsenal, heart pieces for added durability, and unlocking new areas of the map as they went.

Echoes would do well to follow the lead of the original TLOZ for the NES more than BOTW in that department. While 1986’s The Legend of Zelda was still a mostly open world that gave players access to the majority of the map from the outset, the only way to enter most dungeons was to have the necessary item from a previous one, thereby opening the overworld for exploration while still making players incrementally discover how to move forward.

Echoes of Wisdom May Bridge the Gap Between Classic and Open-Air Zelda

EOW Could Finally Make Sense of BOTW & TOTK's Timeline Placement

Echoes of Wisdom is More BOTW Than BOTW Was (5)

What Did Each Zelda Game Do Best?

From quirky gimmicks to industry-wide innovations, The Legend of Zelda franchise has a lot of amazing details and features across all of its entries.

In providing players with a top-down game with BOTW-inspired physics and TOTK-style abilities, EOW is truly bridging a gap that was too wide to cross by fusing logs with Ultrahand. It’s more than just gameplay, though. Many fans have theorized that EOW’s story could lie at the middle point in the timeline between BOTW and the earlier games. This is evidenced in the existence of both the River Zora and Sea Zora, who seem set to settle a conflict between their two tribes. If the two groups were to come together at some point, it could lead to the unique form of the Zora seen in BOTW.

Echoes of Wisdom continues to break conventions – not only the Zelda franchise but the video game industry as a whole. The top-down action-adventure genre was something the Zelda series helped invent, and that means all of the expectations that come with that gameplay style as well. Echoes of Wisdom promises players can explore that same kind of classic Zelda world but with the twist of the kind of freedom that Breath of the Wild’s physics system introduced. Of course, that has already led to contention among the fandom, as many players see Echoes as the final signifier of traditional Zelda being dead forever. In a way, they're right.

Despite being in the top-down perspective, Echoes of Wisdom is decidedly not a traditional-style Zelda game. However, it's not quite a Wild Era game either. By virtue of simply being a 2D top-down Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom already breaks the conventions of the Wild Era titles. Just when fans thought they had the Zelda series figured out, and that they would never see the series stray from the open-air formula, Echoes of Wisdom subverts expectations again. There's no denying that BOTW and TOTK caused a rift to open between the fans of traditional Zelda titles and those of the newer, open-air style of gameplay. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will allow players to dive into that rift headfirst when it comes out for the Nintendo Switch on September 26.