Saturday, October 31, 2020

Age of Calamity: Rampaging Guardians


The second scenario in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity at the "Breach of Demise" puts a corrupted Guardian in pursuit of Link, Zelda and Impa, like in a good Halloween movie. And it doesn't even stop at obstacles like fortified walls, where it just rips right through them.

Well, the AI isn't perfect, far from it, where it can spend half an hour fighting the same Hylian Captain for some reason. It's kind of ridiculous how you can simply block its beams with anyone without fearing harm. And it's also weird how the Guardian is suddenly gone at the beginning of the mission, where your team starts at a closed gate, which probably wouldn't have stopped the thing, if his other actions are any indication...

But in the least the Guardian gets portrayed like major threat in the mission. However, it gets a little bit overplayed how dangerous a Guardian really can be by tanking the thing crazily before the scripting allows you to defeat it normally. And this will probably change later in the game.

Well, in Breath of the Wild the Guardians also only really felt threatening early on, where they basically become pushovers later on. And that's really part of the game, the progress of becoming stronger, which will probably be true for Age of Calamity as well. It's still nice to have the Guardians introduced in such a fashion.

And this might remind you of something... The very first time Nintendo ever showed us a Guardian:


Remember this? At E3 2014 Link got chased relentlessly by a Guardian that came out of nowhere. It even destroyed a bridge, before Link could cross it. In the final game they weren't as relentless and they certainly couldn't destroy bridges or other major structures in the environment. So, it's nice to see that this finally came to fruit, even if the graphics aren't still as beautiful as the tech demo from over six years ago...

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