The Wind Waker HD Announced

Beautiful. And I saw it coming, already one and half years ago! While I expected at the time that they would simply upscale The Wind Waker for the first big HD remake on the Wii U, I didn't imagine it to look this beautiful.

Don't get me wrong, the graphical enhancements on these pictures seem to be quite simple, not to say cheap. But they know how to cover this and the lighting looks very beautiful.

But I'm more excited about other changes. Ever since the game was released, it was critized for its lack of content, especially on the dungeon side. They could add more islands and dungeons to make the remake really worth getting.

And I expect the Tingler Tuner to be turned into something a lot more useful. On the GameCube you needed the GBA for it and it was only useful to annoy the player. If Zelda is really getting a new coop approach, enhancing the Tingle Tuner might be the first step. Of course it should use the GamePad (while the normal player uses the pro controller) and have more functions than just dropping bombs on the player. Detailed HD maps at least. Of course this doesn't have to be a coop mode, you could use the Tingle Tuner on the touchpad while playing the game normally with the Wii U GamePad.

There's one more thing that's crossing my mind: the 2nd Quest. Originally you and Aryll would get a different outfit, you would keep your figurines and start with the DX Pictobox, treasures chests are sunken at different places and you were finally able to read Hylian. While this is nice, the 2nd Quest could be so much more! First start amping the difficulty. Double damage and no hearts like in Skyward Sword's Hero Mode. Maybe also mirroring the game like in Ocarina of Time 3D Master Quest. Make changes to the dungeons. I previously also talked about, how the treasures are at different locations in the Japanese version. There you are following a chain of treasure charts to get one of the Triforce charts, while you get some of the Heart Pieces in dungeons. They could use the western version of the treasures for the main quest and the Japanese version for the 2nd Quest.

And there's the boss challenge. Well, considering that you can always battle most bosses again in Ganon's Castle, a boss challenge mode might be overdoing it, but it still might happen. Also, the Wii U GamePad is pretty perfect for taking pictographs for the Minintendo Gallery.

Well, there are many possibilities with this remake and I'm really excited about this. However, not excited enough to buy a Wii U. Unless they release a special limited Wii U with it, I'm going to wait for the brandnew Zelda game until I buy the new console.