Thursday, February 18, 2021

Nintendo Direct February 2021 Roundup

Mythra on Hyrule Temple

Now this is what I call a satisfying Nintendo Direct... Pyra / Mythra for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was already a good start. I'm not a fan of Xenoblade (yet), but these two ladies have been on my list of likely characters for the DLC, where the only surprise is that they've put Rex aside completely. But I don't mind... Quite the opposite!

Then we finally got the confirmation that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will get DLC later this year... Much later in fact, with two packs hitting in June and November. This will give me plenty of time to grind with all characters for those "new challenges" and "newly added challenging enemies".

As expected, there weren't any news about the 35th Anniversary just yet. I assume that this is going to happen later this year, maybe around E3 in June, when the first Age of Calamity DLC gets released and we'll probably learn more about the sequel to Breath of the Wild.

Still, we did get some Zelda news this direct with the announcement of Skyward Sword HD, which will be released on July 16th, alongside a special pair of Joy-Cons. I've been expecting this title for so long, it's actually surprising that I didn't have this on my list yesterday, but this was because I was putting this into the category of potential 35th Anniversary stuff. However, Twilight Princess HD also wasn't part of the 30th Anniversary, so this is history repeating itself and makes sense overall.

Speaking of Twilight Princess HD, I still think it's possible that we will be getting some sort of collection as part of the 35th Anniversary later this year, featuring both The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD, but maybe also the Nintendo 64 Zelda games.

But overall it sounded like the sequel to Breath of the Wild won't come out this year, which is why we're getting the obligatory filler title(s). This could truly be history repeating itself from 2016, where we've spent the 30th Anniversary with an HD remaster and new content for Hyrule Warriors throughout the year, before Breath of the Wild got released in early 2017.

I will write dedicated posts about all of these announcements later today... But now I need to catch some sleep, so good night!

1 comment:

Marandahir said...

Yeah, now I'm guessing we'll get a Zelda 35th Anniversary direct in July, to remind people of the 1st wave of Age of Calamity DLC, and hype up SS HD, and then announced Zelda Collectors Edition HD (OT/MM/WW/TP), and finally give us a 2nd teaser trailer for Breath of the Wild 2, announcing the release date for February 2022 - just barely enough time to still count as part of the 35th anniversary.

Oh and the Splatoon 3 teaser? They never said on Switch. I would NOT be surprised if Breath of the Wild 2 and Splatoon 3 are both set to be Switch Pro semi-exclusive games, to be released in 2022 too, in the same way that some Zelda games have unlocked other features when you play them on more powerful hardware (like the Color Dungeon in LADX, or the Advanced shop in Oracles).