I’ve gotten a bit further in Echoes of Wisdom now, far enough that I’m no longer travelling in disguise (which also apparently means being able to unlock additional outfits, as well as the “special” clothes given to the “Priestess of Legend”). What strikes me is that the entire game feels like someone was told to make a Legend of Zelda game where Zelda is the protagonist but the only stuff they can reuse from previous games is the names of specific characters. We’ve got plenty of familiar faces (Zelda, Link, Impa, the King of Hyrule, and even the bipedal pig/moblin version of Ganon) and even a few less familiar and interestingly odd choices from past games (Such as Dampe being an inventor now, rather than a gravedigger, and Lord Jabu-Jabu who is just sort of there, eating people again), but the power left behind by the three goddesses, in three parts, is called the “Prime Energy” rather than the Triforce or sacred stones or medallions or whatever else has popped up as some kind of source of power in the Legend of Zelda games. Which is to say that it isn’t strange that there’s a new kind of power in these games, just that it feels so strange for them to basically describe the three pieces of the Triforce but never actually call it the Triforce. Really, the whole game feels like it’s a shade off from what I expected. Not in a negative way. In an “uncanny valley” way. It feels like a Legally Distinct Legend of Zelda game and I can’t understand why they might have made something like that.

It is possible it feels this strange and off-beat because it is a combination of elements from several different types of games. We’ve got the cartoon-y style of recent handheld remakes of older games, we’ve got iconic items from recent mainline Zelda games, we’ve got characters (and versions of characters) from all over the history of the Legend of Zelda franchise, and we’ve got the same sort of “explore as you want” ethos of the last two main-line Legend of Zelda games (Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom). All mixed together in the first game to feature Zelda as a protagonist. It is probably just a coincidence, as the game attempts to pay homage to past LoZ games while also grounding itself in the world that has been developed over the course of so many games, but there’s so many attachments and similarities to recent games that I find it difficult to actually focus on the game I’m playing rather than the games I’ve played in the past. I constantly feel like I know what is supposed to come next but then it never arrives. Something similar but just different enough to not be the same shows up instead. It’s the video game version of walking down the stairs and trying to take a final step down that doesn’t exist because you’ve reached the bottom before you expected to. Maybe some of this weirdness will fade as the game goes on, but I find it difficult to truly believe that thought because of just how many similarities there are and how they’re just off a step from what I expected.

For instance, the map HEAVILY resembles the map from A Link To The Past, but only in incredibly specific ways. In A Link To The Past, there’s no ocean access to the south. Sure, there’s a whole area of large lakes and offshoot rivers that don’t really go anywhere, but that lake is already there in, exactly where you’d expect it to be if you trimmed off the bottom row of the map in Echoes of Wisdom. Yeah, there’s Gerudo in the desert to the southwest, but there’s also that same shrine you eventually go to, once you can translate the text on the stone, to gain access to the second Sacred Stone temple, exactly where it would be if you trimmed off the bottom row of the map. There’s death mountain, the rivers full of river zora to the east, the little ledge where Link’s house would be, and even a small glade created by a ring of trees with a stump in the middle of it. So much of the map in Echoes of Wisdom resembles the map from A Link To The Past, at both the micro and macro scale, that it feels weird that the resemblance isn’t CLOSER. I constantly feel like I should know where everything is because of all these landmarks I’m so familiar with, but I never actually do know because a lot of these landmarks don’t show the way to the same places they used to. I’m not getting lost or anything like that, I just keep feeling like I should be on my way to some place that often winds up not existing the way I expect it to.

Another note of less eerie similarity is the music. All of the music in the game is amazing (I even turn up the volume on my stereo to hear it better), but there’s a lot of themes and motifs from previous Legend of Zelda songs in the soundtrack for this game. Most of the time (and I say “most” here because I haven’t listened to all of the music and frequently get too caught up in the game to always pay close attention to the soundtrack, so I can’t say “all”), a song features a theme or motif that suggests you’re about to hear a new take on a beloved classic, but then the song shifts in a way that echoes the song you were expecting while still being it’s own perfect bit of music for whatever environment or situation you’re in. I’ve never once found myself listening to a song and thinking that I wished that the song I’d expected had played instead. I will say that this does contribute to the weirdness of the other elements of the game, since I keep hearing bits of the music I’d expect to hear associated with those characters or the places I feel like I should be going, but this choice feels incredibly intentional in a way that the others don’t.

Which, to be fair, could just be my sleep deprivation. This could all be an intentional echo of previous Legend of Zelda games in a way meant to highlight the themes of this particular game since the things you create to move around and engage with the world are called “echoes” and the giant monsters you’re fighting are also apparently echoes. This could all be on purpose! I think the music might be the only one that actually nails the mark without treading into Uncanny Valley territory, but maybe this is all supposed to feel weird. Maybe the strangeness is intentional. Maybe I’ll get deeper into the game and discover everything was supposed to feel like a strange echo of something familiar that I’ve never played before. Time will tell, of course, but I’m starting to worry that this is going to be another situation like my experience with Sea of Stars: a lot of potential with some cool through-lines that ultimately falls short in the later half of the game. I mean, at least I’ll still be able to enjoy Echoes of Wisdom even if it doesn’t actually play out the “all this weirdness was on purpose!” thing.