New Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom makes Zelda playable

A brand-new Legend of Zelda game has been announced, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and it will make the titular princess finally playable in a mainline game for the huge Nintendo franchise.

The new Legend of Zelda game was announced on June 18, 2024, with a trailer published by Nintendo. The game leans much closer to the old-school Zelda graphics style than it does Breath of the Wild. In the trailer, a 3D-rendered Link makes his way through a stylized dungeon to free Zelda from Ganondork yet again. The twist comes as Link is sucked into a dimensional rift created by Ganon's defeat, but not before he frees Zelda from her cage inside a strange crystal. As Link disappears and Zelda runs to safety, the timeless formula of Zelda games is clearly about to be reversed.

After so many times of waiting for her Triforce counterpart in Link to rescue her, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will see the Hyrulian princess take center stage in her own game. This top-down, old school Zelda homage takes equal parts of the games new and old and tries to meld them together into a cohesive new gameplay experience. Zelda won't be walking around swinging a sword. Instead, she'll be using her new companion, a fairy named Tri, and her new weapon, the Tri-Rod to create and manipulate objects around the world using something called "echoes."

This is reminiscent of the new Tears of the Kingdom crafting system, incentivizing creative combinations and thinking. You're not just limited to objects like ice, beds, or rocks, either. You can create echoes of monsters and more around the world. This installation looks to add brand-new creative systems to ensure a completely different gameplay experience for almost every player who approaches a problem.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will be available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch. It will launch on September 26, 2024. The trailer seems to be a whimsical, heart-filled journey that we've come to expect from the Legend of Zelda games, with some interesting new systems and mechanics to make Princess Zelda feel very different from her sword-swinging partner.