Monday, September 9, 2024

Echoes of Wisdom ~ Automatons

screenshot of Dampé in his shack

Dampé returns in Echoes of Wisdom in a new role: he's now a mechanic, crafting so called Automatons. This will be his seventh Zelda game and he is now only one appearance behind Impa, who will be featured for the eighth time. Already with the Link's Awakening remake I talked about how Dampé is on his way to become a rising star, and Echoes of Wisdom will certainly add to this, because again he has a very important role in the game.

This time he makes "Automatons" for you, which we've already seen before. They are mechanical versions of enemies with some crazy effects, e.g. an Octorok that shoots a lot of rocks in quick succession. They are an alternative to echoes, so they are also summoned with the Y button and selected by pressing left on the D-pad.

a Tektite automaton jumping high with a fiery trail, like a rocket

If they get destroyed, their icon will turn red, meaning that you won't be able to use them again or for a while. It's probably some sort of cooldown, but since they are much stronger, there needs to be a limitation. With echoes you can just keep summoning them, but this won't be the case here. How exactly this works, we don't know yet.

It appears that you will need to first learn the echo of an enemy, before you can get the automaton version. So, you show an enemy to Dampé and this will inspire him to craft a new "clockwork gizmo" based on it.

I like how the music in Dampé's shack is inspired by the one from Link's Awakening. Even though composer Ryō Nagamatsu has left Nintendo, it's good to hear that they carry on his style musically, because he did a great job for the series.

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