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Last year?s Nintendo press conference was possibly the most memorable E3 conference Nintendo has had to date, and it all went out in a bang with the unveiling of a new Zelda game for the Nintendo Gamecube. The trailer showed a new world which was more realistic than the previous Zelda: Wind Waker, and was something that Nintendo fans had been clamoring for ever since the first trailer of Wind Waker was released showing the game?s new cartoon shaded look.
Fast forward to this year?s E3. The anticipation was very high. Only a handful of new screenshots and information had been released since that surprising trailer was shown a year ago. Like usual, information on this new Zelda game has been pretty tight until now. Gamers were waiting for something, anything to be shown about this new Zelda game. That?s when Nintendo announced that the new Zelda game would be playable on the show floor at E3, and unveiled a few new trailers showing off the new game?s theme.
If you walked anywhere near the Nintendo booth at this year?s E3, you would notice a very long line that literally wrapped around the booth. Gamers waited in this line for upwards of two to three hours, just to get a glimpse of one game - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Around 20 people at a time were led into the exhibit to play Twilight Princess, and Nintendo themed the rear part of their booth especially for the game.
As you first walked into the exhibit, there was a mock forest, with several kiosks for you to play the game on. I got in about 5-6 minutes of playtime here in what appeared to be a village scene, where Link was wearing a strange set of clothes (not his normal green tunic). As I progressed through the demo, I realized that the control style was based very closely to that of Wind Waker, so players of that game will not have to do much to adapt to Twilight Princess.
The town level was called Toaru Village, and is supposedly a village that is close to Hyrule. This is where our hero Link starts out. Link, like in Wind Waker, doesn?t don the clothes of a hero right from the start, but in the beginning he just works for the ranch in town. However, circumstances eventually lead our hero out of this town and towards the kingdom of Hyrule, changing his life forever.
The next part of the exhibit was a dungeon themed room, where there were skulltula (spider creatures from the Zelda universe) crawling on the walls, and even a stalfos roaring at you from behind the dungeon?s bars. The Dungeon part of the Twilight Princess exhibit was easily larger than the forest room, and contained a large television monitor that played a few new Twilight Princess trailers continuously. The demo contained in the dungeon section was, what else, in one of the many dungeons to be featured on the new game. In the level that I played, there seemed to be all of the classic puzzle and exploration elements that are standard in the Zelda series.
In the dungeon demo, you could use a weapon that is new to the Zelda series, called the Gale Boomerang, which summons a tornado that follows the boomerang around. This seems to be only one of several new weapons that will make their debut on Twilight Princess. You also met a monkey that helped you on your quest, and allowed you to reach places that you couldn?t reach on your own.
I would have to say that, overall, I am quite pleased with the path that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is taking. Because of the darker tone that the game takes when compared to other Zelda games, it is quite apparent that this is Eiji Aonuma?s pet project (he did, after all, head off the development of Majora?s Mask, and this game has an even darker theme than that one, it would seem). There will be many more surprises around the corner, and many new things to explore in Zelda: Twilight Princess. If all goes well, this new iteration of Zelda will be released in October of this year for the Nintendo Gamecube. |
