It’s been a little while since I wrote about video games, huh? My most recent one at this point was my two-part review of 'Cassette Beasts'; I’m still pretty happy with that one, and developers Bytten Studio have gone on to some big things with the game since then (including multiple updates, an entire multiplayer mode, some DLC, and even a BAFTA nomination). I’ve actually been working on a lot of video game pieces in the time since then, but it can be slow-going.
It probably doesn’t help that what I’m covering in those pieces are indie games, and those can bring special challenges. Since they aren’t as big, you do kind of have to introduce people to the game to some degree, which is kind of its own art. Some of them are small enough that they won’t have much attention, and I want to do them justice since they might not get all that much coverage outside of that. But even the ones that get more attention, I’d like to do more than just give a recap and a basic recommendation; I want to bring something unique to the discussion, y’know? That in and of itself makes for more effort, and on top of that, I can feel a little out of practice sometimes.
Instead, I figured I’d do something a little easier, to sort of work my way back up to those pieces. See if I can kind of shake off the rust a little. What if I covered a single, bigger game, something that I didn’t really have to explain or contextualize, and only tackled a few things rather than feeling the need to delve into every part of it?
So to that end: ‘Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ came out last year, and I had a pretty good time playing through it! It’s more or less a perfect attempt to bring the more open-world feeling of “Breath of the Wild” to the 2D Zelda format, which is a wild achievement in game design that breaks the traditional format open in some interesting ways. Nintendo once again tapped Grezzo to develop this one, and they bring back the toybox art style that they used in the ‘Link’s Awakening’ remake from back in 2019. It’s still gorgeous, and I’m so glad that there’s now an original game in the series using that look.
I’ve wanted to see a game with playable Zelda for ages now, but I had always kind of taken Nintendo’s explanation of (paraphrased) “we want a game that stars Zelda to play differently than the games starring Link” to be more of an excuse for why it hadn’t happened yet. But the Echoes system is actually a fascinating choice, and I enjoyed it a lot. Scouring the map for every possible item to copy felt like an interesting twist on the traditional Zelda hunt for items, especially since some of those new echoes ended up granting you movement options that opened up the map.
And unlike with traditional Zelda items, it was sometimes a fun and almost random discovery to make that connection (in contrast with the older games, which sometimes telegraph things a bit by putting the important items in dungeons and then forcing you to use them to get through the dungeon’s obstacles). Sometimes I wouldn’t even realize that one echo could solve a specific puzzle until I saw someone discuss it online, and in every case, I had used a totally different set of options to conquer the puzzle in my own way. And on top of the wealth of solutions for problems, simply looking for enemies to copy and then use in combat or movement almost gave the game the feel of a Collectathon platformer or Monster Tamer game, which was another fun realization.
Also, one weird thing about the differences in gameplay is that this game has a dedicated jump button, which might not seem like a huge deal, but ends up totally changing how the game feels. As is, most 2D Zelda games either lock jumping behind an item that gets used for specific obstacles (like the Roc’s Cape) or don’t bother with it entirely. But a lot of challenges here revolve around scaling uneven terrain or crossing pits, which usually involves building things out of your echoes to help you get around with your often-insufficient leap.
Even outside of those specific puzzles, you find yourself bouncing around a lot just to traverse basic parts of the map. Like I said, it might sound minor if you haven’t tried it, but in the moment, it actually does make the game feel like a true Platformer, which is a weird thought. Most Zelda games don’t feel like that, certainly not most of the 2D top-down entries; on the flip side, I can’t think of too many other Platformers that have based themselves around a top-down approach, either. It makes sense, because that can be a really awkward vantage for things like gauging depth or height for your jumps. But the design team really made it work here, despite this kind of being a new approach without much of a history to refer back to. It’s actually a little shocking how natural it feels, and how well it works.
In spite of all of that, there was still one major complaint that kept nagging at me as I played: the map. I think that for Top-Down A-A games (or whatever you want to call this genre), a big part of the game’s quality is the map design. And I’m pretty vague on what I mean by that, because I genuinely don’t think there’s a totally-wrong approach; different game’s maps are going to need different things.
Actually, that might be the problem here, “different game’s maps are going to need different things”. Because the map in ‘Echoes of Wisdom’ is pretty heavily based on the map from ‘A Link to the Past’. And don’t get me wrong, Hyrule in ‘A Link to the Past’ is pretty great, as far as TDAA maps go, even three decades later. With a variety of dungeons to hit, biomes to explore, roadblocks to open up, secrets to find… it basically does exactly what you’d want for the genre, and there’s a reason it did a lot to codify the tropes in this type of game.
And maybe there’d be some joy in revisiting it 32 years later for Zelda’s first big outing, letting the designers play around with your expectations and such… except that they already did that a decade ago, with ‘A Link Between Worlds’ on the 3DS. It was actually one of my initial gripes with that one at the time too, although it actually kind of grew on me over time for a few reasons.
But even setting the specific reasons it grew on me in ‘Link Between Worlds’ aside, that’s kind of a trick you only get to play so many times. Breaking it out for the twenty-year celebration can be neat; doing it again just ten years later feels lazy. Especially because that initial twenty year gap had a ton of other 2D Zelda games in between (releasing alongside some 3D ones, too), most of which had their own spin on the world map. Meanwhile, the main focus in the ten years since ‘Link Between Worlds’ has been almost entirely the 3D games, with the only top-down games in the meantime being the ‘Link’s Awakening’ remake and the overworld-less ‘Triforce Heroes’.
It’s a shame too, because I actually like a lot of the world map in ‘Echoes of Wisdom’! The big new thing that they bring to the table is that the map actually pushes beyond the borders of the map from ‘Link to the Past’; you get an expanded desert to the west, a large bay to the east, swamps, foothills, expanded mountains, some new settlements… it’s some interesting variety, feels like some natural extension to the original template, and I just generally loved exploring these bits around the edges! I just… wish there was more of it.
My initial diagnosis of the problem was one of familiarity, and I was hardly alone in this. I saw several other commentators saying that it gave the game a feeling of “I’ve already been here”, which ruined the feeling of exploration. I do think that captures a lot of the issue. The Zelda series (and especially the 2D games) never used to have a problem moving out of Hyrule to give you new lands to explore, but lately they’ve locked themselves to that one land, and it feels like they’ve tried to be consistent about its layout between iterations, when they used to be a little more open to tweaking things.
There’s a story element to setting ‘Echoes’ in Hyrule yet again, despite the recent over-focus from the series (“Why would Zelda, Prince of Hyrule, be somewhere else?”), but that ultimately feels like a copout. You can make the story whatever you feel like, you don’t “need” to do anything.
But even if you take that as a given, I think there is still something of a lack of imagination here. Really, I think there were small things you could do to help alleviate that over-familiarity, even without really changing the base “Link to the Past” map layout. Like, if you just rotated it 90 or 180 degrees? At the very least it would be enough to make things look different, and that plus the expanded border areas might give the game’s world a more distinct feel, maybe shake returning players out of their stupor a little. A new perspective really can change the feeling of things sometimes, to a surprising degree.
But after thinking about the issue a little more… I also don’t know if it’s just about distinctness? Making up a new region or flipping the Hyrule map are shortcuts to that end, but I can also imagine a version of ‘Echoes of Wisdom’ that uses the ‘Link to the Past’ map template and still stands out more than this one.
I think the first problem is one of expectations; I spent a good chunk of ‘Echoes’ expecting to unlock a second map, and when that didn’t happen, I just felt kind of disappointed? This is really where I think inheriting the legacy of “Link to the Past’ and “Link Between Worlds’ cuts against it the most, even more than the familiarity. Both of those games used a mid-game twist where you get a second map to explore, an alternate-dimension version of the base Hyrule that follows the same broad strokes, but has a lot of its own surprises to find and corners to explore. It’s a creative way to make a game bigger, essentially doubling the gameworld for significantly less work on the developers’ end.
Any time I felt in some way disappointed by some chunk of the ‘Echoes’ map, a small part of my brain would say, “Oh, I bet once I unlock this game’s version of The Dark World, this will become more relevant.” And the twist is… there just isn’t a second map, those corners really are just empty. The expanded edges of the map are what’s supposed to be what makes up the overall difference. It… might be a net gain, just on sheer quantity of area? I can’t actually say for certain, but regardless, the un-twist of “there isn’t a second half” still ends up making it feel a little smaller.
Adding to the problem, the game does still have an alternate dimension that you regularly access in the Still World. But that ends up only serving as the setting for all of the dungeons rather than a second overworld. It’s a shame too, because the Still World is visually striking and a good setting. I was a little excited to see what connected those dungeons should it become the game’s second map, but the ultimate answer was “nothing”; jumping into a Still World portal wound up being functionally the same as walking into the front door of the old dungeons. Going back through Hyrule was the only way to get from one to another. I don’t know, maybe I just shouldn’t have automatically expected Yet Another Dark World to expand the game…
But at the same time, perhaps this is part of the problem of setting a third game on this rough map, and then on top of that, immediately re-introducing the plot point of “another realm intersecting with Hyrule, which you can travel to”, something that both earlier games at least hid for a few dungeons. I don’t know if there’s any real way to actually signal “I swear we won’t do the same twist yet again, this isn’t a misdirection, we actually are doing something entirely different this time” to the player with that set-up, but I also don’t know that they try very hard to do that.
But even if that had found some way to tell you that this wouldn’t be happening… I think the real issue with the base “Hyrule” map at the core of ‘Echoes of Wisdom’ is that it actually feels like an afterthought, despite being at the center of the game’s world. And that’s actually the exact opposite of the feeling I got with ‘A Link Between Worlds’.
I actually was initially very skeptical when ‘LBW’ pulled this move, but as I said earlier, it grew on me for a few reasons. The first was a realization that I had while playing; I hit the Dark World and immediately beelined for the same things you would if you were playing ‘Link to the Past’, because I kind of assumed it was being very derivative out of laziness. And at a certain point, I realized that I actually didn’t need to do that, because ‘Worlds’ specifically made a point of letting you tackle the Dark World in a more open-ended way. Whereas most Zelda games (including ‘LttP’) forced you to take a specific order, ‘LBW’ essentially throws you into the Dark World and says “go nuts, there are no wrong answers”. That unique approach certainly took some of the edge off a lot of my initial hostility.
The second big reason was the last time I replayed ‘Link to the Past’, about five years after ‘Worlds’. There were several moments where I found myself trying to go somewhere and realizing that the ‘Link Between Worlds’ map had actually overwritten my mental map of the game in some areas. Together, those are some pretty compelling cases for re-using the Hyrule map; it highlights the unique spin on game design ‘Link Between Worlds’ was doing, yet they also made enough updates that the new game could stand out next to the classic.
Unfortunately, just highlights that ‘Echoes of Wisdom’ really didn’t have an immediately obvious reason like this to re-use the map. You can comb the open world for echoes, but that still doesn’t really open up new sections of the map (a few of the big echoes that do that are locked behind dungeons or story beats) or change the game’s progression. At most, you find a few new things that will let you open a few more puzzles and side quests, or make combat slightly easier. It’s not nothing, but it’s nowhere near the big reframing that ‘LBW’ had.
But the bigger problem might be that ‘Echoes of Wisdom’ just didn’t really do anything with the reused sections of Hyrule. While ‘Link Between Worlds’ was putting dungeons in most of the same spots as ‘Link to the Past’ and relied on things like recontextualization and reordering, ‘Echoes of Wisdom’ mostly does nothing with those key spots, in favor of shunting major developments out to those new fringe territories.
You can count the exceptions on one hand. Hyrule Castle moves from a key dungeon spot to a recurring hub for story beats (along with a big mid-game dungeon-y moment), which makes sense given Zelda’s starring role. But a lot of those moments also spill over into the surrounding Hyrule Castle Town, which wasn’t in either ‘Link’ game, instead getting back-adapted from other entries in the series; arguably, this makes it more in-line with those new edges of the map than anything else. The Eastern Palace moves from the first dungeon to an optional puzzle side quest, which is actually a lot of fun and probably the highlight of returning locations. The Lost Woods equivalent gets to serve as a penultimate set-piece and also holds a small end-game side quest (although you also have no real reason to explore it before those late-game moments). ‘Echoes’ has two main mountain locations across its northern border that each take some elements from the ‘Link’ games’ Death Mountain area, although neither is an exact match, so it’s hard to say whether either should really count as a returning location rather than part of the new territory.
That’s… basically it? Maybe one or two dungeon entrances barely slip into the old borders, but even then, they’re almost always opened by completing story events in the adjacent new regions anyway. Kakariko Village has gone from the only major town in the game to the least impressive or relevant of the game’s handful of settlements. Lake Hylia has a fairy fountain that grants you some upgrades, just like the last two times, but anything beyond that is largely gone this time around. Similarly, there’s a house in the approximate location of the recurring Witch’s House that sells different upgrades as part of a new mid-game side quest. Both of those are at least something, although they hardly stand out.
The lone house in western Hyrule also returns, having been upgraded to a full ranch with a few optional quests, and you can hit it pretty early on to unlock one of the game’s fast travel options, a horse that can dash across the plains. That actually kind of highlights how empty the middle of the map is though; it’s perfect for dashing through the plains of Old Hyrule from one point of interest around the borders to another, but becomes more limited in utility once you hit those new territories with their waterways and hilly terrain. You can dismount on the way if you see a cave or something to grab, and there are some puzzles around those moments; there’s a decent number of each with your traditional Zelda rewards like heart pieces or optional gear.* But in the end, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Old Hyrule (outside of the Castle) is mostly just a place to go through rather than a place to go to.
*This does actually bring up one other thing the developers could have possibly highlighted by reusing the map: that this game is much more about platforming than any of its predecessors! As mentioned, a lot of new territory is built around navigating those types of challenges, with a lot of elevation changes and such. However, since Death Mountain was replaced by two new summits, that does mean the biggest source of elevation changes in ‘Link to the Past’ is gone in favor of those new, bespoke areas.
What’s left? Well, you can now hop the cliffs that separated biomes in the original map, and there might be a small reward or two to find up there if you do so. But once you’ve found all of those, there’s little reason to go back since you unlock the fast-travel warp pretty early on, and that’s just quicker. They pull similar tricks across the rest of the map, but it’s largely been made into plains; the more common experience is seeing a chest or heart piece on a ledge or treetop or stone pillar, stopping to find a way up there, then moving on. It’s not bad, but still hard not to feel a little underwhelmed that it rarely amounts to more than that. Off the top of my head, I don’t think any of the caves or prizes you might discover in these parts ties into the story, they’re just little power-ups or other things that will get you towards 100% completion.
The one real exception is, again, the Eastern Palace; you actually can tackle it early if you know it’s there or stumble upon it while exploring the right corners, but they redesign the area to make it easy to miss the main path to the entrance (and even if you’re a returning player, it might seem like the kind of thing you can put off looking for and just forget about while you’re exploring the story content in the new lands). You’re more likely to see the temple exterior or the bluff it sits upon for the first time when it’s overlooking you from a hillside that you can’t really scale (especially not early in the game), tantalizingly just out of reach. It’s a good moment of payoff, and I wish they had tried something like that with more returning landmarks!
I think that’s ultimately why the map feels off; why exactly did we bring all of this back if it’s mostly just going to serve as bare connective tissue between the locations you actually want to focus on? I suppose it’s not terribly far of from the hub-and-spoke model of the original ‘Link to the Past’, with the castle at the center, and some less-bustling areas getting you to the eight points of interest around the map’s edge… except now, the (approximately) eight points of interest are just pushed even further out, with the original locations mostly just sitting empty in the same place they used to be*, for you to pass en route to the actual interesting stuff.
*It’s hard to say without a direct comparison, especially since the overworld is seamless here rather than needing to scroll at boundaries like it used to (which is also why it can be tricky to know at times where the old edges were exactly). I actually think they did shrink the original map a little bit to make it a little less tedious to get through? But I can’t prove it, and ultimately, every environment from the original has been recreated to give you the sense it’s just as big.
Overall, I did really like ‘Echoes of Wisdom’, despite how negative this has sounded. I just think that the map matters a lot in this genre, and it’s probably the biggest thing holding this game back from being one of the top tier entries in the Zelda series; everything else was stellar, basically exactly what I wanted out of this. And it’s kind of a complicated issue, at that; part of the reason I wrote this was that I’ve kind of just been picking at this topic in my mind ever since finishing the game, trying to figure out if there was a way to salvage the idea, or if it was a bad idea from the jump, or if maybe I was just missing something altogether.
Really, the original map is still generally solid underneath; there’s a reason Nintendo keeps reusing it in these games, after all. But that reuse also means that it just feels kind of tired at this point, and that feeling just kept hitting me and weighing me down every time I had to venture out of the new territories. I wish they’d be more adventurous overall, and let Grezzo just radically remake Hyrule’s layout (none of Zelda’s minor lore is that important, really), or set a game in a new land entirely, something built from the ground up to work with the rest of the game’s design.
But failing that, I still think there were ways they could have achieved that goal a little better in ‘Echoes’. I have no idea if Nintendo is interested in bringing back Grezzo for another Zelda game (in the same toy art style, or otherwise), but ‘Echoes of Wisdom’ seems to have sold well in addition to being a good game on the whole, so it seems very possible. Should they get another shot, I hope they’re given total freedom to build the game world from the ground up (even if, or perhaps especially if, that means the series leaving Hyrule for the first time in ages).
Hopefully now that I’ve got one in the books, getting the next video game piece completed will be a little easier. No guarantees on what specifically is next, but the worst-case scenario will be my Start of 2025 Playlist going up at the end of the month. If you’d like to be notified when that goes live, you can join Out of Left Field’s mailing list below. As a reminder, it’s a separate list from the one I use for baseball articles, so you’ll need to sign up again even if you’re on that one. But just like with the Hot Corner Harbor one, I only use it to send anything when a new article is out, so no worries about getting spammed.
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