Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment will let us visit the new Hyrule in its founding years, long before the Great Calamity first struck 10,000 years ago. And while there are some concerns about experiencing the same Hyrule for the fourth time, this could be actually quite exciting.
It already was interesting to see the Hyrule from 100 years ago in Age of Calamity, where places like Hyrule Castle, Hyrule Castle Town, various villages or the Great Plateau can be experienced before they get ruined (or while they get ruined), at least to some degree. But it was still the same Hyrule overall, where nothing much else has happened over the 100 years after the Guardians had laid everything to waste.
This will be very different in Age of Imprisonment, where we're looking at the late era of the Zonai and their culture. Hyrule Castle sits in the middle of the Great Plateau, next to a very different Temple of Time in the Garden of Time. And that's where most of the memories in Tears of the Kingdom have taken place. There are also some at the Forgotten Temple and of course the place where the final confrontation takes place, what eventually will become Ganondorf's sealing grounds. According to the Master Works book it is the Temple of Light, a place that never was fully seen in a Zelda game... so far.
What's also a mystery is pretty much everything else. The Goron, the Zora, the Rito, the Gerudo... we have yet to see how their homes have looked like in the ancient past. And just like Hyrule Castle, it's certain that these places will have looked very differently, offering you an entirely new experience. The overall geography of the map might be the same, but what can be found in this version could all be completely new. The team working on this game has a lot of creative freedom, simply because we have seen so little.
On top of that (or more on bottom) we also have the Depths, which were this huge mystery in Tears of the Kingdom that never really led anywhere. Maybe there will be some remediation to that, showing us more of the mining operations down there and maybe shining some light on what this place used to be. For example, we could learn more about the Bargainers. And maybe such insights may not be restricted to cutscenes this time...
If you watch the trailer closely, you will certainly notice one particular moment that stands out. It's where Zelda is following Queen Sonia and King Rauru through the Garden of Time, after she was found by the both of them. This is not a cutscene, so you're actively following them as the player. But this isn't your typical Warriors fighting scenario either.
It's too early to say and we have to wait for more material, but it's possible that this game will offer "interludes" in various places, where you can walk around and talk with people, just how the modern Fire Emblem games like to do it. You probably won't be able to freely explore the ancient in Hyrule in its entirety, but there could be a number of places that act as a "base", where you can interact with your allies in different ways – first and foremost the Great Plateau with the ancient Hyrule Castle and Temple of Time. But it's likely that such a thing will be also possible in Zora's Domain, for example, or the Forgotten Temple.
And if this was the case, then this would already offer a huge selling point over Age of Calamity. Imagine if you could have done this in that game. If you could walk around Hyrule Castle as Link, talk to Zelda and her father, and so on. This would have been amazing. Well, let's not jump to conclusions here, but it would certainly be interesting to look at the ancient Hyrule in other ways than just cutscenes and battle scenarios.
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