GAMES - New 'Legend of Zelda'

"The Coolest Thing About The New 'Legend of Zelda' For Wii U" by Erik Kain, Forbes

Nintendo had a good showing at the Game Awards Friday night.

The company won Developer of the Year, took Best Fighting Game for Super Smash Bros. and Best Racing Game and Best Family Game for Mario Kart 8.

But perhaps the very best moment for Nintendo at the award show was the extended gameplay footage of the upcoming video game, The Legend of Zelda—the first new game in the franchise to hit Wii U.

You can watch that footage yourself right here:

The game looks lovely, and the big open world is full of promise.  I can’t wait to how the designers of the carefully designed Zelda franchise handle a truly open-world.

But the coolest thing we saw—to me at least—was the way the game handles horseback-riding.

As Link rides about Hyrule on the back of his longtime equine companion, Epona, he can do so “hands-free.”  Link, and by extension the gamers who play Link, can trust in the horse to keep riding without having to steer.

Epona will ride around trees because “real horses don’t run into trees very often” producer Eiji Aounuma remarks to Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto.  It’s one of those funny, obvious observations that makes so much sense but isn’t really evoked in game design at all.  In some games it’s hard not to run your horse into trees and other obstacles.  In Nintendo’s hands, horses don’t just run into trees because gamers can’t steer.  Horses, thinking beasts that they are, run around them.

This frees up Link to fight—with sword and bow—and so forth.

The other neat thing about horseback riding in the new Zelda game is Link’s ability to leap off of Epona and slow down time midair.  We saw a CGI animation of this in the game’s reveal trailer.  Now we see that it’s an actual gameplay mechanic, not just a flashy, cinematic CGI moment.

If the care going into Link and Epona’s traversal options is any indication, we’re looking at something very special in the Wii U’s first new Zelda title.  It must be getting harder and harder to not own this console.