The big gameplay gimmick of Donkey Kong Bananza is going to be his ability to freely tear through the ground. You can punch tunnels and fully explore the underground below you, like Minecraft on steroids. This has caught my attention, because this a mechanic I expected to see in an upcoming Zelda game.
In the developer interviews for Tears of the Kingdom, it was revealed that Aonuma wanted the player to dig underground in Breath of the Wild, which the developers didn't want to implement. This led to the caves in Tears of the Kingdom, but those won't let you dig freely. There are designated chunks of rubble that you can clear out, which makes exploring the caves more like a chore than some satisfying discovery.
After I was finished with Tears of the Kingdom, I kept thinking about what the next the open world Zelda could do to be more fun. I was going to write some of these ideas down on this blog, but sadly I didn't find the time yet... And one of them was to bring back the transformation into the different species, just in an open world setting. You would be able to freely explore the skies and the oceans as a Rito and a Zora respectively, once you've obtained the ability to turn into them. And for a Goron I thought it would make the most sense to bring back this digging idea from Aonuma. Let the player mine through the ground wherever they want to discover underground caves.
But looks like they've given this idea to Donkey Kong instead, he's even a miner now in this game. And don't get me wrong, it's fantastic to see new takes on classic characters. Nintendo shines with fresh ideas and this is something completely new for the Donkey Kong franchise, but it also feels like a great fit. And the whole digging mechanic looks like a lot of fun.
At the same time I'm a bit disappointed that I'm not looking at Goron Link doing all this. Of course, this doesn't have to be exclusive to Donkey Kong, there still could be a Zelda game in the future with a similar ability. Just not in the near future...
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