Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is less than two months away from launching, and fans have been eager to see more of Nintendo and Koei Tecmo’s surprise prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Luckily for them, Koei Tecmo made good on its promise to show off gameplay for Age of Calamity at the Tokyo Game Show, sharing several minutes of live footage.
The TGS livestream that took place today expanded upon the initial announcement from earlier this month. Along with revealing a new trailer for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the developers from Koei took the opportunity to share additional details regarding the game’s pre-order bonuses and the fact that Breath of the Wild’s Champions will be playable this time around. However, the real meat of the stream was the roughly 14 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay, featuring an armor-clad Link as he leads the Hyrulian army into battle in Hyrule Field.
Being a Hyrule Warriors game, the hack-and-slash action follows a similar pattern of mowing down hundreds of enemies and capturing bases strewn across the map, but the footage shows how the game will utilize Link’s abilities from Breath of the Wild to spice things up in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Here, Link can be seen charging through enemies with a shield-surf attack, slowing down time while in mid-air to fire off a barrage of arrows, and using the Sheikah Slate to throw bombs from a distance. Intriguingly, a lot of this happens in what appears to be a bustling town, offering a neat glimpse at Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule before it was devastated by Ganon.
While Link’s gameplay was the main focus, the footage also shows off gameplay of Impa, Age of Calamity’s newest playable character. As brief as her gameplay is, it does a good job of making Impa stand out from Link, showing off a more agile, ninja-like moveset that includes the ability to create shadow copies of herself. Additionally, the Koei developers also showed off a cutscene with the egg-shaped Guardian that has appeared in promotional art for the game, which seemingly causes a Sheikah Tower to rise out of the ground (a scene the developers refrained from explaining).
Overall, the footage gives a tantalizing tease of how the game will benefit from Breath of the Wild’s world and mechanics. Chances are it won’t answer every question fans may still have about Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, but on the plus side, producer Yosuke Hayashi said another livestream will take place tomorrow, September 27, and provide additional new info on the game.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will launch on November 20 for the Switch.