E3 - The Legend of Zelda First Look & Media

One of the main aspects of Nintendo's media briefing this morning, to no surprise, was the still-untitled Legend of Zelda game for the GameCube. After a movie trailer-esque trailer highlighting the game, Shigeru Miyamoto himself demonstrated one of the areas in the game.

Several new elements about the game were revealed, as well as items. Some enemies now drop their weapons that Link can pick up and use. In the area shown, Link picked up a wooden club. In addition to being used as a weapon, the club can also be lit on fire with a torch, and used to light another torch (or anything needing lighting it would seem), similar to the Deku Sticks in the Nintendo 64 games.

Using dropped weapons appears to be needed sometimes, as a dropped sword (one bigger than Link's short sword) was required to get past a barricade in the cave.

The enemies also dropped odd sphere-like objects that changed colors, although their use is still a mystery.

A new tool was revealed that Link uses, in the form of a grappling hook. Similar to the Hookshot in the previous two games, a red dot shows the player where exactly they are aiming with it. Upon pressing the button, Link throws a hook at the area, and we assume he can then climb across the rope (throwing the rope was shown, but nothing regarding further use).

The playable version of the game, to be on display starting tomorrow, is promised to have four areas, in addition to the Dragon Cave shown today. Come back tomorrow for impressions on all the areas, gameplay, and maybe those weird multi-colored spheres.

For now, we have 7 brand new screen shots, and 2 equally new pieces of artwork for the game.


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Updated:
05.21.02 - 6:12 PM
Chronologist