'Echoes of Wisdom' Preview: Zelda leads a new spin on an old world

The announcement of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom might be the biggest surprise of the gaming year — provoking tearful reactions, hours of video commentary, and numerous articles about the long-awaited ascension of Princess Zelda from support player to leading lady.

Now, after playing about 80 minutes of the game at a New York City preview event, I can also confirm that Echoes of Wisdom, out September 26, flips both mechanical and narrative scripts. Like last year’s Tears of the Kingdom, the game provides ample new tools to experiment with a familiar setting.

Princess Zelda, Pokémon trainer, occasional Swordfighter

In a series that has long balanced tradition with innovation, Echoes of Wisdom is the most significant revision to its classic, top-down gameplay since 2013’s A Link Between Worlds. Where that 3DS title allowed players to acquire Link’s gear (hookshot, bow, hammer, etc.) in a non-linear order, Echoes (almost) entirely ditches the typical arsenal.

Enter the titular echoes — copies of objects you’ll collect around the world. I started my hands-on demo in a prison, locked away by a wicked imposter king. While I could only summon three items at a time (you can later discover more slots), I quickly slipped my captors by arranging beds to climb over obstacles and crates to box in patrolling guards.

After slithering through the sewers, Zelda disguised herself in a cloak Link left behind and began her incognito quest. Townsfolk believed her to be the cause of mysterious purple rifts that opened across the land, swallowing loved ones and blocking pathways across a classic 2D landscape that resembles the map from 1991’s A Link to the Past. Here, the game opened up — and so did the echoes.

You don’t just copy items — you can clone defeated enemies as well. I frequently summoned swarms of bat-like Keese to harass adversaries while I conjured and catapulted rocks from a safe distance. Eventually, I stumbled upon a seed-shooting helicopter plant, bested it, and then deployed it not only for aerial bombardments but also to traverse previously unreachable areas.

These echoes combine with other powers to solve puzzles in dizzying ways. After jumping into a rift myself, the game introduced me to the Bind and Reverse Bind abilities, which allowed me to leash an item or enemy to follow my movements or vice-versa. I used it to tether myself to moving platforms in the dungeon’s frequent side-scrolling rooms that reminded me of Link's Awakening and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

Speaking of Link, the big surprise of the preview came after I beat a shadowy version of him and unlocked a “Swordfighter” form that allows Zelda to attack directly, at the cost of a gradually depleting energy meter. It’s the converse of the magic Link spent to cast spells, and the game lets you use it so infrequently that you’ll likely have to dispatch most enemies through echoes and other means.

A new legend

Nintendo had me play through the introductory prison break, an early dungeon, and a small patch of the game’s (relatively open) world. I have only one gripe: You’ll switch between echoes through a long line in a pause menu, akin to the Fuse power interface in Tears of the Kingdom. I quickly tired of scrolling and relied on sorting items by “Most Recent” and “Most Used,” consigning other handy echoes to oblivion.

However, this annoyance hardly diminishes the achievement Echoes of Wisdom is shaping up to be. While the game’s story appears to be a simple inversion of the “Knight saves Princess” trope, its mechanics add astonishing depth and variety to a decades-old formula. Where Tears of the Kingdom felt like a triumphant end of an era, Echoes of Wisdom may well be an understated but confident start of something new.