In early summer of 2014, Nintendo announced a new Zelda game for the Wii U, its most recent gaming platform. In 2015, the game was delayed. The year is 2016, and Zelda Informer recently released an article teasing avid and impatient fans that E3 is going to be the moment they've been waiting for.
When the teaser trailer was first released, producer and manager of the Zelda series, Eiji Aonuma, hinted in an interview that the protagonist seen in the trailer may not have been Link. After a massive outburst of excitement, Aonuma chalked it up to a rumor and left it at that.
The new game has already been confirmed to be open world, a feature never found before in previous Zelda titles. While there was a shared understanding that future players may spend their afternoons trying to cut all the grass, the open world concept did spark a lot of excitement.
After waiting through Hyrule Warriors and several other Zelda spinoffs for the Wii U, Nintendo has finally pulled through—we only have to wait two more months. According to "reliable sources" from Zelda Informer, the game may feature several other new features to Zelda games aside from the open world: voice acting and gender selection. Maybe Aonuma wasn't joking after all.
It begs several questions: Will Link finally speak? Or does Nintendo plan on preserving the voyeuristic tradition that allows players to interpret Link as they see fit? Will we still see classic Zelda locations, such as Kakariko Village or Zora's Domain? How will these areas be woven into a world that is designed to be seamless?
Nintendo is taking a pretty risky gamble here in bringing unfamiliar territory (literally) to the Zelda series, but if we've learned anything from Zelda's past successes, change has never deterred how well-loved the series is. With each Zelda game, there is always something new to expect, and with that, there is always something new to enjoy.
While we've seen explicit statements that the classic Ocarina of Time is being used as a root for the new release's creation, there are also elements of Twilight Princess intertwined into the production. The new open-world concept is proof in itself. Twilight Princess utilized Western-style features of gaming, which did stir some controversy, open-world gaming is more heavily developed in Western games, but that will not likely discourage any excitement or impatience.
Here's the trailer for the long-anticipated game. It can't get here soon enough.
