Nintendo announced Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity today, and its reveal trailer indicates that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Zelda will finally be a playable character. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out back in 2017 and is hailed as one of best games in the prestigious Nintendo series. A sequel for Breath of the Wild was announced last year at E3, but still has no official release date with only a single teaser trailer for fans to obsess over.
The first Hyrule Warriors game was released in 2014, and it covered a myriad of games in the Zelda franchise, jumping between art styles and offering tons of different playable characters. It combined the lore, art, and world building of The Legend of Zelda with the renowned gameplay of Dynasty Warriors, and it received solid critical acclaim. Zelda is a playable character in the original Hyrule Warriors four times including Hyrule Warriors' own Zelda, Ocarina of Time's Sheik, and Wind Waker's Tetra/Zelda.
Nintendo dropped a reveal trailer for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity today, complete with in-engine gameplay footage and a fast-approaching release date - November 20th of this year. The trailer advertises thatmore information about it will be later this month on September 26th, but one of the biggest takeaways is that it will star Link, Zelda, and the four Champions introduced and slowly fleshed out across The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wilds' far-removed plot, which is set 100 years after Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, making it a Breath of the Wild prequel. Most striking is that Zelda not only plays an understandably central role in the upcoming game's plot, but appears to be a playable character, spotted in the trailer using Sheikah Slate abilities like Stasis to fight enemies rather than take them head-on.
Several characters are shown fighting the different evil forces behind the fall of Hyrule, including Mipha battling a corrupted guardian, Urbosa surrounded by Yiga clan, and most excitingly Princess Zelda freezing a charging Lynel using the Sheikah Slate. The roster for the game has not been confirmed, but the trailer seems to show that all of Zelda's champions, including Link, and Zelda herself, will playable characters. Many fans have hopes that Zelda will a playable character choice in Breath of the Wild 2, but for now they must be excited to see her in action in Age of Calamity.
With no real release date for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 in sight, many Zelda fans have been twiddling their thumbs since the remaster of Link's Awakening, which came out a year ago. So to have a Zelda game, albeit a side franchise, announced and released two months later is very exciting news. There has also been a lot of excitement around Zelda's 35th anniversary, which is coming up this next February, after Nintendo's enormous wave of release announcements and festivities for Mario's 35th anniversary. It is a great time to be a Nintendo fan in general, and a Zelda fan in specific.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will be available for Nintendo Switch on November 20, 2020.
Source: Nintendo