Nintendo
“The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom” will be released on Sept. 26, 2024.
CNN
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Nintendo has presented a new surprise to fans – a new Zelda title, in which gamers will finally be able to take on the role of the main princess of the legendary fantasy series.
Nintendo has sold more than 140 million copies of Zelda since the first version hit the market in 1986, making it one of the most successful franchises in gaming history and delighting multiple generations of fans across a variety of consoles.
The new game, “The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom,” will be released on the Switch console on Sept. 26, according to a statement from Nintendo.
The many versions of the games typically revolve around the heroic elf Link, who spends most of his adventures trying to rescue Princess Zelda, who is often kidnapped or mysteriously disappears.
But this latest release will be female-led.
“This time, Link has disappeared. Now Princess Zelda has to take on the role of the protagonist,” Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma said in a video released by Nintendo.
Gameplay footage released by Nintendo shows that “Echoes of Wisdom” looks similar in both style and substance to 2019's “Link's Awakening,” a top-down perspective puzzle-based platformer that features a cute cartoon design and is itself a reboot of the 1993 Game Boy classic.
Zelda teams up with Tri, a mystical fairy, and together they use magical powers to create Echoes, which Nintendo describes as “mimics of things found in the environment.”
“Recreate those echoes whenever you want to solve puzzles and defeat enemies,” Nintendo said in its announcement.
“Use the echoes of water blocks to reach new heights, build bridges from old beds, throw rocks at enemies – or find your own creative combination of echoes to work your way through,” the company said.
The Zelda franchise has long been praised for its entertaining puzzle-solving and groundbreaking gameplay, encouraging players to explore at leisure and tackle problems in a variety of ways.
Open world gaming has become a prominent feature of recent titles, and 2017's “Breath of the Wild” has become one of Nintendo's most successful and critically acclaimed titles.
Last year, the sequel to the game, “Tears of the Kingdom,” sold 10 million copies in just three days.
The release of the new Zelda game is the second surprise announcement made by Nintendo in recent weeks.
In early May, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said the company plans to release a follow-up version of its popular Switch console by March 2025.
The announcement was welcome news for fans who had been pondering the possibility of a potential successor to the 7-year-old Switch for years.