E3 2016: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild revealed

June 15, 2016

Nintendo has demonstrated The Legend of Zelda Wii U / NX at their E3 2016 Nintendo Treehouse event.

Officially titled The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the game is arguably one of the more ambitious titles to come from Nintendo in recent years. The demo showed Link being awaken by a voice (with real voice acting) in The Shrine of Resurrection.

As you leave the shrine there are apparently no tutorials. You’re left to explore on your own, with game feature a massive open world. To give you an idea of the scale, the demo lasted approx. 3 hours and Nintendo stated they had only explored 1% of the map.

Link has a few new abilities – for the first time in the series Link’s jump is controlled by a button. Link can also climb any surface, providing his stamina meter doesn’t run out.

The weapon system has also changed. A majority of weapons will degrade and be destroyed over time, and each weapon will have its own attack power stat. Enemies will have varying amounts of HP, which you can see in advance before attacking them.

Hearts will no longer appear in the environment. Instead, Link must now hunt, cook and eat to stay healthy. The environment can affect his health too, with the demo featuring a moment where he begun to shiver in the cold and took damage before putting on a warm piece of clothing.

The Wolf Link Amiibo from Twilight Princess HD was also shown. In Twilight Princess HD the Amiibo records the amount of hearts you have remaining from The Cave of Shadows challenge. If you then tap the Amiibo on the Wii U Gamepad while playing Breath of the Wild, Wolf Link will enter that game and assist with attacking enemies and collecting food. Once Wolf Link’s hearts deplete, he will disappear. If you haven’t completed The Cave of Shadows challenge, Wolf Link will spawn with three hearts.

Breath of Fire amiibo

Finally, three Breath of Fire Amiibos will be released. These include Link Archer, Link Rider, and the Guardian, which is the mechanical being from the first teaser trailer. Their functionality is currently unknown.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is slated for release on Wii U and NX in 2017.