Following the recent previews and what Nintendo has showed us of Echoes of Wisdom so far, we have a nearly complete picture of how the beginning of the game is going to look like, up until and including the first dungeon, the Suthorn Ruins. It's all quite linear and tutorialized, so let's go through everything step by step. Most of the information collected in here comes from the previews by Good Vibes Gaming and Zeltik, as well as the gameplay footage provided by Nintendo Life.
Needless to say, this post will contain spoilers for the beginning of the game. If you want to experience everything first-hand yourself, don't read it!
You start the game by playing as Link in the Suthorn Ruins, where you have the Swordman's Blade, the Hylian Shield, and a bow in your inventory. You fight your way to Ganon and defeat him, in a mission to save Princess Zelda, which is a very strong opening for the game – it starts there where most other top-down Zelda titles end.
After his defeat, Ganon's trident makes the first rift appear, which takes away Link, but he uses his bow to free Zelda from the crystal that has her captured. This is where the player takes control of Zelda and will be playing as her from then on.
The rift swallows the Suthorn Ruins and you have to flee with Zelda out of the dungeon. You end up on a ledge south of Lake Hylia, which is where the game's title appears and you get a first look at the new old Hyrule. Two Hylian guards find Zelda and bring her back to Hyrule Castle.
There she meets her father, the king of Hyrule, as well as Minister Sadari and General Ugi. A rift opens in the throne room, however, and the king gets swallowed by it as he shoves his daughter to safety. The minister and general try to help him, but get swallowed as well as a result.
They are then replaced by evil doppelgangers, where the evil king orders the guards to lock Zelda away in the dungeon. This is where she first mets Tri and obtains the Tri Rod, giving her the ability to create echoes of objects around her.
In a classic stealth section, you will have to get past by some guards without being noticed. For this you will learn the table, box, and vase echoes, which you can use in different ways to achieve your goals. For example, you can throw vases to distract the guards or hide inside them, similar to the barrels in The Wind Waker.
Afterwards, you will meet with Impa, who takes out some guards for you. She also hands you the disguise, which is the same cloak that Link has been wearing in the beginning of the game. This activates the spin for some reason, which you can use to cut grass, but it won't hurt enemies.
You move on to another section in Hyrule Castle's cellars, where you learn the bed and the decorative tree, your first echoes to give you double the length or height. You need to use them effectively to get around the room with its high shelves.
Finally, you end up in a yard of Hyrule Castle, where you can enter a well. This leads into the "Royal-Family Shortcut", the first side-scrolling section of the game. Afterwards you have another sequence where you need to run from an expanding rift, which puts you into a water stream.
You end up on Suthorn Beach, a mostly isolated area in the southern edge of Hyrule. Here you will encounter your first two monsters and learn their echoes: a Zol and a Sea Urchin. You will also find rocks here, which you can use to throw at them.
From there you will enter the Beach Cave, another side-scrolling tunnel section, which leads to Suthorn Village, a Hylian settlement. You can buy a Piece of Heart there and talk with the villagers, which reveals that this is actually Link's hometown. Zelda doesn't know who Link is, though, confirming that this doesn't take place after some an already existing Zelda title.
You can even find Link's house, which has some neat details in it, like an owl statue or a spare hat. And now you can break his pots for a change.
The road north of the village, leading back into the central Hyrule, is blocked off by a rift, so you have to proceed into the Suthorn Forest. You can find some caves there, teaching you the Ignizol and Caromadillo echoes, which come with new utility. You can set things on fire and break through enclosed rows of boxes, which you normally couldn't get through inside the side-scrolling tunnels.
There are also enemy camps found in Hyrule, where you have to defeat all monsters to open a chest, just like in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In these camps and the forest you will find your first stronger enemy, the Moblin, taking up two triangles.
After going through the forest, you will arrive at a rift that you can enter. This takes you into "Stilled Suthorn Forest", your first taste of the Still World. You will find a petrified person from Suthorn Village, who was taken by the rifts, and traverse the platform-like terrain. Tri says that it and its friends can restore things back to normal. And it also senses one of its friends nearby.
You will also fight the shadowy enemies here for the first time, which cannot not be used to learn new echoes.
Finally, you will enter the game's first proper dungeon, the Suthorn Ruins. You will immediately learn both Bind and Reverse Bond, which you can use to move around objects and enemies alike. This lets you move the giant boulders out of the way, a common obstacle within the dungeon.
In the dungeon's tunnels you will also learn the Strandtula echo, a new version of the Skulltula that will create a spider thread above it whenever summoned. You can climb on that strand and use it to reach heights more easily. And this is yet another new ability essentially, giving you access to places that you couldn't reach before... At least not as easily.
You can also find the Heart Pin as a first accessory, which makes hearts appear more often. And you will first encounter Darknuts as a stronger enemy, using up three entire triangles as an echo, your current maximum. So, overall you get a great sense of progression while playing through the dungeon.
Later on you will run into the mini-boss: Link himself, or a dark doppelganger version of him. This will be the toughest challenge yet and score you the Mysterious Sword, unlocking the Swordfighter Form. This lets you destroy the dark cobwebs found around the dungeon, as yet another new means of progression, where this is essentially the main item of the dungeon.
Eventually, you will find and fight the boss of the Suthorn Ruins, the Seismic Talus, which does have a purple orb as part of its body. It's likely that this orb is connected to Tri's friends and maybe even the game's primary key item early on, where there seem to be three of them, judging by the inventory. (It's even thinkable that each of them will give you a new ability for the X button, like Tri's Bind.)
Anyway, this is where the previews end and we don't know yet what happens next. But in other footage from Nintendo we can see on the map how the Suthorn Forest is fully restored later on and that the Suthorn Ruins can now be found on the overworld, so that's without a doubt the main goal of going for the dungeons: to restore Hyrule to what it was before.
However, if the Still World will be gone eventually, it makes you wonder how you will replenish the energy needed for the Swordfighter mode later in the game. Either there is a different way or there is always one last part of the Still World left, like Hyrule Castle... This could become quite inconvenient, however, so there is likely something that we don't know yet.
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