Nintendo Is Onto Something Special With The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Me, my eight-year-old, and my four-year-old were all equally charmed by our time sampling Zelda's first solo adventure.

Sep 04, 2024

“I want the bed!!!!”

These were the first comments out of my eight-year-old’s mouth as we walked up to a kiosk at PAX to play Nintendo’s upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, a new Zelda-centric entry in the series where Hyrule’s long sidelined princess takes center stage. In Echoes of Wisdom, Zelda has some Tears of the Kingdom-like abilities, as she can summon certain objects (and enemies) in the world to use as tools and allies.

Pots? Yep. Trees? Yeah. Blob? Sure. Boulder? Absolutely. The list goes on and on.

And that list is full of funny oddities, including beds that Zelda can summon with her wand. You use beds as platforms, or you stack them on top of each other. There’s probably many ideas that I, and probably Nintendo, didn’t even consider. In a great touch, you can sleep in the beds and (slowly) replenish health! The game is riffing on the player-centric creativity Nintendo’s leaned into with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom but aimed in a different direction. Unlike Princess Peach: Showtime!, Echoes of Wisdom does not feel targeted at younger audiences—but it doesn’t alienate them.

You can watch a trailer for Echoes of Wisdom, which releases on September 26, below:

When Echoes of Wisdom was first announced, my daughter gasped at the reveal, and started began wondering if the game’s puzzle-centric mechanics would be too much.

“You can help me,” she told me, as we watched the trailer. I nodded back at her.

At PAX, I was able to do just that.

A kind person at Nintendo snuck my family into the company’s demo area, where, at first, all four of us were assigned a demo station for Echoes of Wisdom. Shortly, I realized that wouldn’t work, because my four-year-old would need more help, as she barely understands a controller, and my eight-year-old would benefit from the time I’d spent playing the game a day earlier. (I’ll sprinkle in details of my time with it, too.)

To Nintendo’s credit, a nearby representative insisted it was possible for my four-year-old to have a good time, but I already felt bad we’d skipped the very long PAX line!

When I discovered Echoes of Wisdom would be about “learning” objects and enemies, putting an emphasis on smarts over swinging a sword, I figured the player’s vocabulary would be reasonably limited, at least early on. But if the 15 minutes my daughter spent with the game and the 90 (!) minutes I spent with it are any indication, Echoes of Wisdom will be positively overflowing with possibilities for the player. By the end of our mutual play sessions, Zelda’s inventory sported more than a dozen options, and more than once, Nintendo emphasized the game’s map was large and sprawling.

Truth told, it looks like the options will be more akin to an encyclopedia.

This also leads to a formidable amount of player choice.

During my time with Echoes of Wisdom, I became obsessed with deploying the game’s cute bat creatures, called Keese, to fight enemies. In Echoes of Wisdom, there’s no cooldown on what Zelda can summon, but each summon costs a certain amount of power. Early on, summons only require one or two points, and they scale in terms of cost, especially if you’re trying to drag a tough enemy into the world. It’s also clear Zelda will get access to more power as the game goes on, though unclear how much.

Look, I loved the idea of these scrappy little gremlins pelting enemies over and over.

I ended up “using” (i.e. spamming) the Keese to take down a formidable a mini-boss and when the fight concluded, a Nintendo representative looked over, chuckled, and said “Do you want to know the intended way to beat that?” Now, they were quick to emphasize “intended” does not mean “only,” which is how Echoes of Wisdom speaks to a Minecraft-era design philosophy we’ve seen woven into other recent Zelda games.

(It turns out I’d just learned a new mechanic in the game, then forgot about it because I was too busy helping my bat friends defeat someone they had no business fighting.)

Related, one of my daughter’s favorite things at PAX was a game called MakeRoom:

I skip character creators in games and/or choose random. My daughter spends most of her time in the creator and gets lost in the options. One of her favorite games a few years ago was Unpacking. It’s not a surprise, then, that while the “point” of Echoes of Wisdom might be to figure out why Link disappeared and the people of Hyrule are falling into odd purple portals, my daughter wanted to “build a cute room for Zelda.”

Which is how we ended up chasing the bed down in this very short demo.

I had a full 90 minutes with Echoes of Wisdom, in which I poked and prodded at the many abilities to assess their possibilities and explored a dungeon, while my daughter only had 15 minutes, and spent the entire time sprinting towards…a bed. Look, it’s important for children to apply their own pace to problem solving and avoid pressure, but when I would notice she was stuck in the demo, I’d kneel down and ask “Hey, is it more important to solve this, or is it more important to find and build Zelda’s bed?”

Bed always won. Which is how we eventually ended up with this triumphant video:

Echoes of Wisdom is approachable for kids, but it does not speak down to its audience. I’d call it “kid compatible”? It’s going to be a game that works across a variety of ages, and does not, at least based on the few hours I spent with it, feel like it will be lacking depth for adults, either. And by emphasizing creativity over controller skills and finger dexterity, it looks like there’s an opportunity for different ages to find their own fun. I don’t anticipate my eight-year-old being able to beat it on her own, but on the flight home, she was already talking about other ways she wants to use the objects when the finished game comes out later this month. The game left a huge impression.

And while Echoes of Wisdom is beyond my four-year-old, my wife and youngest daughter had blast while they were playing it. (Excuse the shoddy blurring below!)

For her, getting around the guards in the introduction was her goal—and they did it!

When my 90-minute demo wrapped, I went “aww.” When my oldest daughter’s 15-minute demo wrapped, she went “aww.” When my youngest daughter’s 15-minute demo wrapped, she was sad they did not reach the bed. We were all left wanting.

Finally, my daughters were allowed to buy one item while at PAX. Guess what my youngest, someone who’s been Princess Peach obsessed since the day she laid eyes on her, wanted to get? A Princess Zelda plushie. She held onto it the whole way home.

On Monday, she was having trouble sleeping, so we took a break, and she asked me to print out a Princess Zelda coloring page. Right next to the paper, being used as a reference model to make sure the colors were accurate, was that PAX Zelda plushie.

When Nintendo introduced the game to me, the company referred to Echoes of Wisdom as a “mainline” Zelda, not a spin-off. (What that means for the timeline, who can say?) That feels important to message in both presentation and substance.

Echoes of Wisdom does not feel like Nintendo, after years of begging and speculation, trying to quiet fans desperate for a playable Zelda. This game is important. It’s a milestone. Putting Zelda on the box is a big deal. And unlike Princess Peach: Showtime!, which was a neat idea that sadly did not come together in terms of being a great game, it appears that Nintendo has built something special with Echoes of Wisdom.

Zelda deserves this. So does every kid—and adult—that’s waited for this moment.

In a few short weeks, we’ll find out for sure. But so far…so good.

Nintendo Is Onto Something Special With The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Me, my eight-year-old, and my four-year-old were all equally charmed by our time sampling Zelda's first solo adventure.

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