Zelda Dungeon’s YouTube Crew Discusses the Echoes of Wisdom’s PAX Demo
Posted on September 05 2024 by Sean Gadus
The Zelda Dungeon YouTube team is back with a major Echoes of Wisdom episode. In this new episode, Gooey, McKenna, Corey, and Nico are joined by Zelda Dungeon Editor-In-Chief Rod Lloyd to discuss his hands-on experience with the recent Echoes of Wisdom demo. A fifteen-minute timed Echoes of Wisdom demo was available at the Nintendo Booth at the gaming event PAX West; the event took place between August 29th and September 1st in Seattle.
In this exciting video, Rod and the crew have a wide-ranging discussion about Echoes of Wisdom based on his time with the demo. One of the major points that the crew discusses is the widespread use of the Echo mechanic in the game. In the demo, there were a variety of different Echoes for the player to experiment with, including pots, crates, beds, and Zols. Rod notes that Nintendo seems willing to give the player a significant amount of Echoes to experiment with early on in the game. Each Echo has a casting cost, which limits the number of Echoes that the player can summon at one time.
One question that the crew still has about Echoes of Wisdom relates to the menus for organizing and using Echoes. The game has a simple quick select menu for Echoes, or the player can pause the game to scroll through the full list of Echoes; these limited options raise concerns about whether finding a specific Echo will be a cumbersome process once the player has captured a large amount of Echoes. Likewise, while Hero Mode is confirmed for the game, it is unclear if the mode will be have to be unlocked by the player or if it will be available immediately. The PAX West Demo makes the difficulty option available from the start, but it is unclear if that will carry over to the retail launch.
The Zelda Dungeon crew also discusses how Echoes of Wisdom appears to be a fusion of the top-down gameplay of previous Zelda games like Link’s Awakening (2019) and A Link Between Worlds, with some of the design philosophies seen in Tears of the Kingdom. Echoes of Wisdom has a dedicated jump button like the Nintendo Switch open-world Zelda games, and Princess Zelda has a free range movement in the new game. The free range movement is a departure from Link’s Awakening (2019) which uses eight-directional movement.
Additionally, the team speculates on whether the game will allow players to tackle some of the dungeons in any order, similar to A Link Between Worlds and Breath of the Wild. Gooey, McKenna, Corey, Nico, and Rod reflect on whether Echoes of Wisdom could be a type of return to form for traditional Zelda puzzle solving and dungeon crawling. While there may be more than one solution to many of the puzzles in Echoes of Wisdom, the simpler top-down spaces in the game may help the game retain the “eureka!” moments that fans have come to expect from previous Zelda puzzles and dungeons.
In addition to the video discussion of the demo, a written preview about the Echoes of Wisdom PAX demo will be posted tomorrow.
What do you think of the Echoes of Wisdom demo? What questions do you still want answered before the the launch of the game on September 26th? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Sean Gadus is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon. His first Zelda game was Ocarina of Time, and he loves all of the 3D Zelda games from 1998-2011. He is currently replaying the narrative ghost story Oxenfree, and taking his first stab at playing Dark Souls. He wants to help build a kinder, more compassionate world. You can check out his other written work at The-Artifice.com.
