It doesn’t take a keen eye to see that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom builds off of the Link’s Awakening remake from five years ago, but whether it’s an improvement over its predecessor could be a more contentious point. Like the original Link’s Awakening, the remake showcases the Zelda formula at its best, delivering classically great dungeon and puzzle design while exploring its own setting and tone. I’m already loving Echoes of Wisdom more, however, and something that didn’t really click for me in Link’s Awakening is actually part of what’s winning me over this time around.
From my perspective, the Link’s Awakening remake faced an uphill battle from the get-go, as bringing an 8-bit game back to life is never an easy task. Finding a way to replace classic pixel art isn’t easy, and remasters that make the attempt often fall flat with artwork that looks cheap and silly compared to what came before. To its credit, the shiny 3D modeling of the Link’s Awakening remake is gorgeous, but I’d still make the argument that the simplistic, arguably unattractive style of the original game is the better way to play.
Link’s Awakening’s New Art Style Doesn’t Quite Suit It
Exceptionally Charming Graphics Aren’t As Evocative
Zelda games can often feel like familiar comfort food, but Link’s Awakening is weird, and that’s always been a defining part of its identity. While the defining influences for the Zelda series as a whole are classic fantasy and Shigeru Miyamoto’s own childhood explorations, Link’s Awakening took some of its cues from Twin Peaks. There’s something about the dream-like island setting that isn’t quite right, and the sparse visual style of the game gave that weirdness a chance to settle in the mind and grow, filling in the gaps where the pixels faltered.
The Link’s Awakening remake doesn’t overwrite any of this, but at least for me, it does make it harder to get sucked into that reality. On paper, the way the art is translated to 3D is exceptionally loyal, from trees that retain their same squat proportions to miniature houses that are bigger on the inside. The effects of that conversion can best be described with one word, though — cute. Fantastically, wonderfully cute, no matter how much fog might drift through a forest. And that’s just not what I want to get out of Link’s Awakening.
I don’t mean to disparage this approach, because I do think it’s quite nice to look at, and it easily puts most other remasters of classic games to shame. It’s just evidence of the struggle of re-interpreting older graphics, where the imagination did the work in constructing something more vividly real out of a simple template. A more controversial example can be found in the remastered GTA Trilogy, where cartoon renditions of PS2 characters fall closely in line with their original looks but fail to evoke the convincing figures that the older low-poly models did.
Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom Is The Perfect Application
A Toy Box Style For A Toy Box Game
Echoes of Wisdom, co-developed by the Link’s Awakening remake studio Grezzo, carries on the same charming aesthetic. This time, however, I’ve found myself thoroughly loving it, and it’s not because of any significant overhaul. The context is the key. While making Link’s Awakening bright and plasticky didn’t do any favors to its atmosphere of unease, the style makes perfect sense for Echoes of Wisdom, which feels more like a romp through an overstuffed toy box than a venture into the strange unknown.
Take the trees, for example, which are once again lined up in uniform, squat rows. On the Game Boy, this was an inherent limitation, and the Link’s Awakening remake rendering it faithfully didn’t convey a feeling of getting lost in the woods in the same way that either the original game or something like Ocarina of Time could. In Echoes of Wisdom, however, trees are a common platform surface like anything else, and Zelda can jump between bounded areas by simply building a few steps to the treetops and walking on over.
Echoes of Wisdom
also opens up the fun of omnidirectional movement, while
Link’s Awakening
appropriately locked Link to the eight-directional movement of the original.
The modular nature of the style also works exceptionally well when it comes to echoes. With its roots in the sprite-based layout of Link’s Awakening, individual items fit neatly into blocks, and the clearly defined distinction between a table that takes up one square and a bed that takes up two is one of the core tenets of using echoes. The angled top-down perspective, meanwhile, adds a layer of verticality that a fully two-dimensional top-down game couldn’t support, opening up a much wider array of possibilities for traversal, puzzles, and combat.
Echoes Of Wisdom Delivers On Zelda’s Visual Evolution
It’s Been A Long Time Coming
I’m also happy that Echoes of Wisdom isn’t resting on the laurels of the Link’s Awakening remake, carving out enough of its own visual identity despite the obvious similarities. Entering random buildings and homes is a huge point of appeal for me in any game that allows it, and I especially love Echoes of Wisdom‘s interiors. From the classic simplicity of Link’s own home to Zora houses that feature diving spots underneath wooden slats, there’s an exceptional level of thought and charm packed into every corner.
In some ways, Echoes of Wisdom‘s visual payoff feels like a long time coming. The franchise has been using 3D rendering for the top-down games since The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS, and I was never quite sold on the approach as a follow-up to the peak of Zelda pixel art. A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game that, like Echoes of Wisdom, makes great use of perspective, but its world also frequently looks bland compared to the detail bursting at the seams of the pixel art in The Minish Cap.
Matching the gorgeous visual style of the Link’s Awakening remake with a game that perfectly suits it in tone and gameplay delivers the complete package, and I, for one, am thoroughly satisfied with the results. Although I’d like to see more Zelda games with rich, evocative atmospheres in the future, Echoes of Wisdom isn’t going for that, and its approach makes sense according to its aims. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a smart evolution of a great remake that I never quite loved, and it somehow feels like the experience that the style was always made for.
