Mysplaced Copying Link's Awakening

Mysplaced has been all the rage on social media today, which is an indie title presented in IGN's Rogue Jam. You can watch a small preview on Youtube and by doing so you will immediately notice how the game has simply copied the art style and core gameplay of the Link's Awakening remake, while it's non-linear and comes with some mechanics of its own.

It's like they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And this looks so beautiful that it makes me want to play Link's Awakening on the Nintendo Switch again. More importantly, this makes me want to play remakes of the Oracle games in the same art style sooner than later. If GREZZO is not up for the job, then maybe Nintendo should just hire the two indie developers behind this project, who call themselves Clear Sky Games, because they pretty much nailed it...

Looking at this footage really made me fantasize about how the Oracle games could look in the same style. Take for example this windmill:

There was a windmill next to Horon Village, at the Eastern Suburbs, in Oracle of Seasons, where you meet Guru-guru. This one:

This really could be taken to the next level in a remake, imagine the whole upper area as one giant windmill structure. It could look absolutely fantastic.

Mysplaced also has winter themed areas, where seeing the different seasons in Oracle of Seasons in this art style would be a dream. Just imagine these little, snowy dioramas. Though, it makes me wonder how they are going to pull off the switching seasons between the areas in a remake, since you should also have the continuous scrolling and not some screen borders.

I suppose, it could work similarly to going into the foggy Mysterious Forest, where you can see from the outside that the area is different and then it morphs the visual style once you enter it. They could even use such a remake to properly showcase the madness of having all these shifting seasons right next to each other in ways that simply weren't possible on the GameBoy Color...

Anyway, since Twilight Princess HD is seemingly out of the picture for this year, I keep seeing mentions of the potential Oracle remakes for 2022. And while I would absolutely love to be wrong here, I feel like it's a bit too early for those, especially since GREZZO was hiring for some other project just last year. The timing would be absolutely fantastic, though.

Tantalus Currently Not Working on Twilight Princess HD

With the delay of the sequel to Breath of the Wild to Spring 2023, it seemed like a no-brainer that Nintendo would want to port over The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD to the Nintendo Switch, so that Zelda fans would get something in the year 2022. However, you might already have had your doubts, because this wasn't announced right away together with the delay and Nintendo has a lot in their pipeline for the rest of the year with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, and new Pokémon games.

Now, Tom Crago, the CEO of Tantalus Media, was asked in a podcast whether Nintendo has approached them for such a port or not, where the answer was a straight "no". See NintendoEverything for the full story.

Tantalus has made both Twilight Princess HD and Skyward Sword HD, where they seem like the obvious choice for the job. But of course The Wind Waker HD was made by Nintendo themselves and there is no need to remaster anything in this case, so they might just work on this in-house. However, Nintendo should have all hands full with the sequel to Breath of the Wild, where you would think it's best to let an external company do the job once more.

What would be important about such ports is that they get the same frame rate power-up as Skyward Sword HD, where the game runs now in 60FPS without any noticeable drops. This was still an issue with both The Wind Waker HD, for example during battles on the ocean, and Twilight Princess HD, for example in the swamps of Faron Woods. If they get ported over to Nintendo Switch, there will be no excuse for this at all after the smooth Skyward Sword HD, so simple ports wouldn't cut it.

And naturally, if only Nintendo were to work on such ports, we couldn't expect a remaster of Link's Crossbow Training as part of the collection. And we all know that this would be the true star. Well, not really, but it would make for an excellent extra, same as Bowser's Fury with Super Mario 3D World.

Breath of the Wild 2: Voice Actor Spoilers

An Italian voice actor has revealed something interesting about his latest work for the sequel to Breath of the Wild. The poor guy is probably in trouble now for breaking some NDA, but the damage is done, so let's talk about the dropped info a little bit and do some speculation. Spoilers ahead, stop reading here if you don't want to know anything that hasn't been officially showcased.

So, the voice actor in question is Pietro Ubaldi, who has been voicing Daruk so far. And not only will he return in his role for the sequel, he will also voice one of Daruk's ancestors, who is apparently more serious. He doesn't recall the name of the ancestor, but clarifies that it's not Darunia.

That the Champions may re-appear isn't all that surprising, since Nintendo has been pushing these characters ever since the release of Breath of the Wild. It could be in the form of additional memories from 100 years ago, where I personally doubt that the events of Age of Calamity will have any impact on this game, so we're still dealing with the original timeline for Breath of the Wild. It might also be that their ghosts appear to you again, where you could learn additional things from them.

It's already questionable how they will handle the different Champion abilities, like Daruk's Protection. Having them from the beginning of the game may be too much, but removing them entirely would be a shame, so eventually you will have to re-learn them or something like that. Technically, you can beat Breath of the Wild without ever acquiring a single one of these abilities, so it doesn't even have to be explained why you don't have them anymore.

Now, Daruk's ancestor is a different story. And this immediately brings us to the Calamity Ganon tapestry from Breath of the Wild:

image source

Link's new design in the sequel, which got shown so far whenever he is in the sky, is clearly inspired by this tapestry. And this already led to a variety of different theories. Are we playing two different Links? Or does the Link from Breath of the Wild simply get the appearance of his ancestor? Are the sky islands over the current Hyrule or are they something from the past?

Maybe it's both, where I personally still like the theory that these islands are the Sacred Realm, which can take many different forms, though this one is so far the closest to what the "Golden Lands" have been depicted in A Link to the Past. But it may be that we are going to meet the ancestors of the Champions in this Sacred Realm, where it's still connected to the time of where they have first battled Calamity Ganon.

If the game really were to partly take place in that era, via time travel or other means, this would bring back the Divine Beasts, Guardians, and Sheikah Towers, where from the rest of the footage it doesn't seem like Nintendo wants to revisit any of that. It also wouldn't be very interesting, because we already have been dealing with the Sheikah technologies in two different games now and the sequel still takes place in the same Hyrule.

It would be interesting to see the original Champions, however. Since Link's Sacred Realm design is based on the tapestry, it's likely that the Champion ancestors' designs will be heavily inspired by that as well. Daruk's ancestor for example appears to be much slimmer than your usual Goron. The Zora Champion appears to be female, but more prideful than Mipha. The Rito Champion looks interesting, because it's essentially two in one, a little bird inside a larger figure. It could be that this is either a young Rito, who uses some sort of wing suit, or it's a duo of parent and child, like Teba and his son, Tulin. In any case, I would like it if the ancient Rito Champion is a female character, like Medli, because this would balance things perfectly.

Anyway, this reveal is one more thing to be excited about. Hopefully, we will find out more about the sequel in about a month from Nintendo themselves.

Source: Lega Hyrule via NintendoLife