The Nintendo Switch launch date is about two months away and Nintendo has released many new trailers to get people hyped for the console. The franchise I care most about and will be the launch title is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There is a lot of new information to gleam from the trailer so let me dive in:
Voice Acting
The most surprising aspect of the trailer is we hear voices of characters speaking. At 1:17 in the trailer, we hear the first ever spoken voices in a modern Zelda game (CD-i Zelda games are a joke). Finally after years and years of all characters being silent except for grunts, Zelda characters will be voices. We also hear Zelda speaking near the end of the trailer as well as a Goron & the Deku Tree. Finally the King of Hyrule says to save his daughter. If Nintendo is smart, they will keep Link the silent protagonist.
Large Environments
The trailer shows off impressive scale very much like Shadows of the Colossus and Skyrim. Link is climbing the side of a mountain, running through snow and harmonizing with grassy fields. The world layout looks very much like classic Zelda games with similar elements moved around or remixed. I saw a new looking Gerudo Village & Death Mountain
Orchestrated Music?
I’m holding my breath that all the music in the game will finally be orchestrated. Koji Kondo working on Twilight Princess had wished to orchestrate the entire game but instead they went with synthesized music. Skyward Sword still sounded like high quality midi tracks. Can Nintendo finally invest the money to do the soundtrack right after so many other professional orchestras have covered their music.
Ganon is Back & So is Princess Zelda
The calamity Ganon is back. At 2:02 you can see Ganon’s purple ghostly form capturing Castle Hyrule. We also see the Deku Tree at 2:12 in front of the Master Sword grove. This is important as there as many Zelda games where they introduce new villains or characters to smoke screen it was really Ganon all along. Thank you old lady in the trailer for not beating us around the bush and hiding the villain behind general darkness in the world. It’s Ganon and fans know he must get a taste of the Master Sword.
100 years ago something happened. What happens next for Link? We’ll find out March 3rd, 2017 as the Nintendo Switch is released
