Despite the phenomenal success of both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, developers at Nintendo still have a special love for the 2D-style games from the series past. In fact, this year’s top-down Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom may have convinced them that there are still new ideas worth exploring in future 2D Zelda games.
Nintendo producer Eiji Aonuma helped oversee Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s development in partnership with outside studio Grezzo. He recently told the BBC that it can feel impossible to do anything new with the 2D Zelda format, but they ultimately found a way in the 2024 spin-off about Zelda cloning objects to solve puzzles.
“And so this game made me realize that there’s still a lot of possibility for these top-down Zelda games as well,” Aonuma said. While nothing is set in stone, it sounds like the team hopes they can continue a dual approach to developing Zelda games in the future. “And so we will also have those dynamic 3D Zeldas as well,” he told the BBC. “But in addition to that, we’re also hoping that we can continue with these 2D top-down Zeldas.”
Ever since the era of the original Game Boy, the adventure games have been on dual trajectories, with console versions pushing the boundaries of 3D exploration while the portable ones explore new 2D mechanics. The Nintendo DS and 3DS eras especially were full of multiple projects, but as the company’s development pipelines converged with the Switch, which functions as both a handheld and a home console, it’s felt like the 2D side of that equation has languished a bit.
Prior to Echoes of Wisdom, the multiplayer spin-off Tri Force Heroes was the only new original 2D Zelda in the last decade. Link’s Awakening in 2019, which Grezzo also worked on, was good, but still just a remake of an existing Zelda. Echoes of Wisdom, on the other hand, introduces entirely new mechanics in addition to making the franchise’s namesake actually playable for once.
Nintendo recently confirmed that the game has already sold 2.5 million copies in its first month. Hopefully that means we won’t have to wait another 10 years for the next new 2D Zelda game.