Age of Calamity: Guardian of Remembrance Revealed

Cerainly, the most important reveal for Zelda fans in the newest Nintendo Direct was the "Guardian of Remembrance" DLC wave for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which will already be released on October 29th and not in November, as announced earlier this year. You can watch the new trailer on Youtube and these are the key facts:

• New Story - Battle for Kakariko Village, Battle for Goponga Village, and more
• New Stages - Coliseum, and more
• New Playable Character - Purah & Robbie, and one more
• Added actions for existing characters
  

We're a little bit smarter than we used to be back in February, when the Expansion Pass got first announced, but there are still some mysteries about this, where probably there will be another trailer before launch to show us more. Like, we still don't know what these new actions for the characters are going to be.

 

New Battles / Stories

Overall the trailer confirms that this is going to be a story expansion with some additional major battles that take place at various points in the main story. Those will probably unfold as some optional key points, similar to Cia's and Linkle's Tales in the first Hyrule Warriors, but the narrative isn't really focused on a single character this time.

We can see how Terrako gets taken over by Calamity Ganon at the Coliseum. We can see how Link trains Zelda to use the Master Cycle Zero. We can see little Sidon being brave once again. We can see Vah Rudania towering over Kakariko Village. We can see Urbosa's troops coming to the aid of King Rhoam. We can see how Robbie and Purah are preparing something with a blue flame. And we can see a follow-up to the cliffhanger that left Kohga and Sooga at the mercy of Astor.

It's really all over the place and that's awesome, because it gives all the different characters a chance to shine once more in these new chapters.

New Stages

Unlike the first Hyrule Warriors, the main campaign of Age of Calamity rarely ever re-used existing stages for new story battles. And when it did, the stages were visually altered and even extended. It seems like the DLC is following this trend, where the new stories also come with new stages, which is very awesome and exciting, because the first Hyrule Warriors didn't do this for any of its DLC.

Here is what has been shown so far:

• Coliseum
• Goponga Village
• Kakariko Village
  

There are probably more, but it's hard to tell from the current material. Of course it's possible that they will re-use some of the old stages as well, maybe give them a slightly different look or maybe not. For example we can see a new cutscene with Revali at the Lost Woods, which might hint at a new battle unfolding there.

Anyway, so far the Coliseum was only used for Challenges, where those all took place inside an Ancient Shrine. So, it's nice that the real place finally makes it into the game, which always has been predestined for some battles. And we can probably expect that these new stages will be used for some additional Challenges as well, where the inside of the Coliseum is of course perfect for some intense combat.

And to actually see Kakariko in the game almost feels surreal, because this place has been completely avoided by the main story. Hateno Village was historically unscathed by the war and it makes sense that they want to keep it like that, but it's nice to see that at least the Sheikah village is going to make it into Age of Calamity.

A Hylian village on the other hand will be featured with Goponga, named after the swamp in Link's Awakening. There were only few remains of this village in Breath of the Wild and it will be interesting to see how this looked like originally. A similar place would be Deya Village to the west of the Dueling Peaks, which makes you worry that they might not go into the full potential with of all of this. But let's see.

Update: Zelda.com actually confirms Lanayru Road as yet another stage. Whether this is actually separate from Kakariko Village or just a different name for the same stage remains to be seen. It would be another great location from the game, however.

New Characters

This part of the announcement was relieving and disappointing at the same time... Now, the first wave of DLC, "Pulse of the Ancients", put such a huge focus on Robbie and Purah that it felt really weird that Koei Tecmo didn't make them playable at the time. And this had the fans certainly worried, even though these two seemed like the most obvious character choice for the DLC.

But now it's finally happening and they are actually a duo character, which was a common suggestion among fans. They probably would have worked on their own as well, but it does make sense for these two characters to work together, where this will certainly become one of the more quirky movesets.

The main reason why they've kept this for now is probably to give them a proper story chapter where the two Sheikah scientists are forced to take action themselves, instead of relying on the other heroes. This way they also get some nice cutscenes and more attention, which probably wouldn't have been possible in the first DLC wave, which was all about adding more Challenges to the game. That's why we had Battle-Tested Guardian as a bonus fighter there, instead of these two. So, it all makes sense, even though these characters would have been a better fit for the first DLC pack.

It would be interesting if their ZR ability let you swap between the two. But from the footage it looks more like Robbie is doing the hard work, while Purah does some Sheikah tech magic from the sidelines. But it's too early to say anything about their moveset so far.

The disappointing part about all of this is that there is only one character left, which also seems somewhat odd. The first DLC wave added three new movesets and you would expect them to follow this trend in the second wave for at least one more character. Plus, with a total of 21 characters the last guy or gal or whatever will be an offshoot on the last row, making the roster look kind of lacking at the end.

So, who will this last character be? A popular suggestion was Kass as an additional time traveling story, but if this were the case, they would have teased this in some form for sure. And it also doesn't seem like they are going to do villain scenarios this time, like they did with Ganondorf and Cia in the first Hyrule Warriors. If any villains become playable in Age of Calamity, it's because they have joined the good guys in some way or form. With that in mind, this puts Astor and Harbinger Ganon out of the picture and effectively leaves us with only this guy:

Sooga. It has to be. He is the most badass villain sidekick in the Zelda series, where Koei Tecmo managed to surpass Volga, and it was already disappointing that he wasn't playable in the base game. If there is only one character left, it has to be him.

The trailer even shows us more of the battle of Kohga and Sooga against Astor, so this seems like a safe bet. In the main story this was left as a cliffhanger, where we didn't know what happened to Sooga afterwards. But he appears in the second credits as part of the good guys, so he definitely survived. And a new story chapter could tell us what happened, while also making him playable. Sooga for the win.