Age of Calamity @ Treehouse Live October 2020

Today Nintendo streamed Treehouse Live for October 2020 with some new gameplay for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, showcasing Urbosa, Zelda, Link with a two-handed weapon and some more of Impa. We also were able to take a look at the Gerudo Desert stage and the main map for the game, where both confirmed a couple of suspicions about the game.

The Gerudo Desert stage is huge and the Gerudo Town is only a tiny part of the entire stage. That's actually quite impressive and much larger than the battlefields from the first Hyrule Warriors. There is also a much bigger attention to detail, where everything looks like it was taken directly out of Breath of the Wild, even with added details on top with all the villages and places that aren't ruined yet.

The main goal of the story chapter is to defeat Master Kohga, so whoever took that title 100 years ago is confirmed for this game. It's not a big surprise and the question remains whether he will become playable in the end or not, because so far it looks like you will only be able to play as the good guys this time.

In Gerudo Town there was also a nice discovery in form of a Korok, so this collectible feature has been confirmed in the way we expected it to work. I wouldn't even be surprised, if there were 900 in total again.

The most interesting part about the stream, however, was the main map. Unlike Hyrule Warriors, there won't be separate Legend, Basar and Adventure Modes, instead everything has been combined to one giant map, where you access the story chapters, but also play side-quests or visit merchants or use materials:

And this is sooooo smart, I love it! Things that were super trivial in the first Hyrule Warriors, like unlocking a new move for a weapon type, all now have these little stories to them and are all part of one large world. It just makes everything feel more relevant and connected and not like you're grinding through countless discount missions.

The "Challenge Battles" from the Adventure Mode, where you have to defeat 1000 enemies or so, are also integrated into this, so you'll have a nice mix of following the story and playing side missions. In the example here Link was training his two-handed sword style against Hylian soldiers and Daruk at Lon Lon Ranch. Yes, at the Lon Lon Ranch, which we finally were able to see before it was destroyed and which looks remarkably similar to the one from Ocarina of Time.

There also don't seem to be any ranks, like "S", "A" and "B", but I could be mistaken. I would like to see those gone, however, because the arbitrary requirements like "don't take more than ten hearts of damage" were always annoying. In this there are even "Sacrifice Strong Attacks" that consume a part of your life energy, where it would be really silly to have these strictly limited due to some artificial achievement. The ranks also made having many hearts and healing items completely useless, which hopefully will be different for this game...

Well, materials you collect can be used to trade for stuff (like new combos) or to cook recipes, which give you helpful effects for one battle. The materials and recipes seem to be taken out of Breath of the Wild, much like the weapons, where you seemingly can have a limited pool for each character. There is no distinction between weapon types, it's just that different weapons will lead to different play styles, which is actually the same as in Breath of the Wild with its three main weapon types. The number of weapons you can have for a single character might be increased with the Korok Seeds again, I suppose.

As for the new movesets that they've shown today, they did confirm that Zelda is using the Sheikah Slate as her main weapon in addition to using the Runes like everybody else. And it looks crazy... The Special attack where she uses the Sheikah Slate Camera was really funny!

Urbosa is pretty impressive as well, where you have a lightning gauge that you need to charge. But all the flashy lightning attacks really help to set her apart from Link's one-handed sword gameplay.

But I have to say, all of this looks extremely well done. As much as I loved the first Hyrule Warriors, this Warriors game puts it to shame. It's on a whole other level!

What might not be on a whole other level is the number of playable fighters, however. They've shown us seven so far and it's questionable how many more there will be. This might even be it... But I still hope that we will get Hestu, King Rhoam, Robbie and Purah.

 

PS: I fully understand that in these times events like this are done remotely, with people streaming from their home. That's cool and I'm in full support of this, but in the least you should get your employees proper microphones. The one woman was very hard to understand and it felt super unprofessional.