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Hours of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gameplay footage from E3

Link inside.

A few hours of archived The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gameplay footage from yesterday's Nintendo E3 Treehouse live stream are now available. The footage gives an appreciable indication of what the bold new open-world role-playing game will be like to actually play.

Many of the things Tom talked about in his The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild preview are seen in the video. We see Link running, climbing and hang-gliding around a vast, green open-world, where he shivers in frozen regions if he's not dressed appropriately. I really like that idea! No silly bikinis for Link.

The open-world RPG trappings of other games are obvious, but they're new for Zelda, generally. There's freer looting and customisation than in other Zelda games, so Link will swing axes and clubs and even loot what looks like plate armour. Knight Link! But Breath of the Wild is also distinctly a Zelda experience, with arrows above heads and the kind of discoverable abilities that open entirely new strategical possibilities for how you play. You can create wind to spread fire in certain directions for instance.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a Wii U and NX game and is due for release at some point next year. Given that, there's a strong chance Zelda could be an NX launch title in march.

The gameplay isn't continuous in the video below but is fairly consistent from 1hr30 onwards.

Watch on YouTube

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