Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Link's Awakening Remake: New Piece(s) of Heart Spotted!

GameXplain has released a new gameplay recording from the E3 demo of Link's Awakening. In there they've managed to go past the Tail Cave to show a little of what's beyond the Mysterious Woods.

There they take a look inside Mr. Write's home and Dampé's Shack, where the latter isn't ready to arrange the Chamber Dungeon just yet. But they also go to the small ledge at the foot of the Tal Tal Mountain Range just north of Mr. Write's home to listen to the incredible music of the mountains.

This has always been a special spot, because it let's you take a sneak peak into the final area of the game very early on. You won't get up there until you're on your way to the final dungeon, where it all comes back full circle. It's a special feeling, once you finally arrive on the upper end.

screenshot of the west Tal Tal Mountain Range

But as you can see in the screenshot above, they've also added another element to this area: a Piece of Heart. It's on the ledge that lets you drop down a little bit more to the east.

This is where you end up, if you go to the western half of the mountains without the Mirror Shield and that's a nice consolation price. You can go there as soon as you get the Hookshot, where now you will be able to find a total of two Pieces of Heart there, where an early tour might be actually worth the trouble.

However, there is another Piece of Heart visible in the footage, which wasn't as easy to spot before. It's south of the Dampé's Shack in the northeast corner of the Tabahl Wasteland:

part of a screenshot of Dampé's Shack, where you can see a Piece of Heart at the lower border

During the Treehouse Live footage you could already get a glimpse of it, but this fully confirms that there is indeed another Piece of Heart there. And this is an excellent spot as well, because this used to be an otherwise empty area.

Though, with this addition you can quickly get two Pieces of Heart in a row here, unless they somehow changed up the area and walled it off with boulders or even trees. From the footage it seems like there are many more of these skeleton trees than there used to be. Maybe you need the Power Bracelet to even enter the area. You also can't get to the east of the Witch's Hut now without the Power Bracelet, so they might have changed this.

Anyway, with that we already know of three additional Pieces of Hearts (the third one is in the Trendy Game), where there is also lots of potential in other places... Here are some ideas:

  • Additional reward in the Seashell Mansion.
  • As reward(s) in the Chamber Dungeon.
  • New seaside fishing minigame.
  • Somewhere on the Rapids Ride.
  • From the hidden Zora in Animal Village.
  • From a new cameo character in Animal Village (e.g. Isabelle from Animal Crossing).
  • Sunken somewhere around Martha's Bay, if you now can spot sunken Heart Pieces.
  • In the cave north of Mr. Write's house. The original version only had Rupees there.
  • Somewhere in the east half of the Tal Tal Mountain Range.
  • Sold later in the Shop.

We are already looking at three additional Heart Containers with these suggestions. Three more to go... Though, it's reasonable to assume that we'll also get full Heart Containers in certain spots, e.g. from the boss in the Color Dungeon or clearing a boss challenge in the Chamber Dungeon.

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