Triforce Heroes: New Japanese Trailer Surfaces
Platform: 3DS
Release Date: October 23rd, 2015
Developer: Nintendo
Author: J.M
Omne trium perfectum.
A new Japanese trailer for the upcoming 3DS game The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes dropped earlier this week. The trailer gave an in-depth look at various aspects of the game, including hero stacking, communication icons, and costumes.
Triforce Heroes, a pseudo-sequel to Four Swords Adventures, is a game in which three Links have to work together solving puzzles and dungeons in order to defeat the evil mastermind, whose crime was: to force the princess of the land to wear a very unflattering brown leotard, which has been magically glued to her. One would think that this isn’t a reason the King would scramble to gather all the heroes of the land. But alas! This kingdom is very fashion-orientated, and having a member of the royal family cursed to wear an incomplete tanooki suit is apparently as bad as it gets. Naturally all three Links show up, each claiming to be the one true Hero, but it is revealed to them that they will have to work together and learn the power of the Totem if they wish to succeed.
Oh, the humanity!
The Totem is an ability which allows the three heroes to stand on each other’s shoulders and form a stack. The trailer showed off a multitude of ways in which to use this ability: from stacking up to defeat a Deku scrub on top of a tree, to dropping off heroes at various altitudes to stand on different switches, to throwing a bomb to the top of a tower to hit an orb. A darker side to this ability was also shown, as it seems that the hero on the bottom of the Totem is in full control of where it moves, making it quite possible to step off the edge of a platform, leaving your teammates to smash the angry emote as the three of you plummet down into pitch blackness.
Speaking of emotes, communication in Triforce Heroes will be conducted by “Communication Icons”: a block of eight buttons that will permanently be on the bottom touchscreen. The buttons include an array of emotes, including “Over here!”, Link giving a thumbs up, to my personal favourite, Link cheering, complete with pompoms. The artwork on the icons is charming, and it’s easily discernible which button means what. It’s a good workaround to having voice chat, which would feel out of place in a whimsical Zelda game.
Link’s New Voice
Another aspect of the game that was revealed were the costumes. It appears that players can find bolts of fabric in their dungeon delving. Bring this fabric back to the town’s tailor, and you can make nifty costumes. Cooler still was that some of the costumes will have practical effects in the game itself: wear a Zora outfit and you’ll take to water like a fish, wear a Goron costume and lava won’t damage you. Other outfits were on display as well, and it will be interesting to see if all of them will provide some game-changing abilities.
It appears that Link likes to cosplay as Rosalina at cons…
Triforce Heroes seems to thrive off the multiplayer aspect of the game, but do not fret if you cannot find two other people to cooperate with, as the single-player mode was presented as well. While playing the game by yourself, two scarecrow heroes will appear with you. Each scarecrow will remain stationary, but you can “soul transfer” between each one. Need to defeat that Deku scrub on the tree? Stack the scarecrows on top of you, swap to the top-most scarecrow, then shoot the Deku scrub with a bow. Admittedly this does seem a bit clunky, and it’s yet unclear if the difficultly of the boss fights will scale to accommodate the reduced speed and firepower. It should also be noted that there is no way to play with two players; it’s either all for one, or one for all.
It will devour your soul…
