The Legend Of Zelda Wii U: 5 Things We Learned At E3

5. It's Inspired By The Old Games

At the start of his talk, Nintendo's group manager reiterated his previous promise that the new Zelda title would look back on the series' heritage and draw on the many, many titles that have carried the name since the original NES game that saw release way back in 1986. From the brief snippet of gameplay we got towards the end of the video, we definitely got a sense of what he was talking about. The new game has all the hallmarks of the series, especially since Ocarina of Time on the N64: there's a blonde, pointy-eared hero riding a brown horse through some gorgeous fields against a mountainous backdrop, and there's a fantastical enemy chasing after them. What Aonuma was mainly getting at when talking about the original game, however, was how technology has actually restricted the games as it's become more advanced. In the NES game you would go anywhere you wanted from the off, although it's dangerous to go out alone, and you should probably get better equipped before straying into the game's more dangerous areas. Since then, though, the developers have had to put up artificial barriers to stop you advancing to parts of the story that weren't supposed to be played yet, illustrated by the interminable boat trips to nowhere in the Gamecube's Wind Waker.