Nintendo has a busy holiday season ahead of it, as it prepares to release Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Kirby Air Riders, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. But none of those games are what I’m looking forward to playing on my Switch 2 most this fall. Instead, that honor goes to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. I can’t wait to see what it does with the Zelda universe.
Announced back in April as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive and launching on November 6, the upcoming action game turns Zelda into Dynasty Warriors and acts as a story expansion for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It will show us the Imprisoning War that’s referenced in that game, a conflict that had the heroes of Hyrule fighting to stop Ganondorf’s rise to power. It’s fertile ground for an action-heavy Hyrule Warriors game to cover, but it’s bound to bring up mixed feelings for those who played the series’ last game, Age of Calamity. That installment has been criticized since its release for delivering a copout time travel story that didn’t deliver on its promise to extend Zelda canon.
Though I can understand that perspective, it’s that bold approach to storytelling that has me excited to see where Age of Imprisonment is going. That’s because, for my money, Age of Calamity quietly tells the best Zelda story the series has to offer.
If you only view a video game narrative as a vehicle for lore, I can understand the disappointment with Age of Calamity. The story kicks off in the middle of Calamity Ganon’s warpath described in Breath of the Wild. Upon hearing Zelda’s cries as she vows to protect her people, a tiny Guardian manages to escape through a portal to the past and is taken back to a pre-Calamity version of Hyrule. It alerts Link and his cohorts that Ganon’s reign of terror is coming, kicking off a plan to find four champions who can pilot war machines, the Divine Beasts.
It’s a screwy setup that flies in the face of established lore to tell an alternate universe story. In Breath of the Wild, we know exactly how the war goes and what fate awaits the champions. Age of Calamity pretends to go along with its Rogue One setup, sending you on what will no doubt be a suicide mission. That’s not how it goes down. Age of Calamity fully rewrites history in a way that left players at the time feeling cheated.
If you don’t come to stories for consistent lore, though, Age of Calamity’s liberal historical retelling becomes far more compelling. The story isn’t about a giant demon war; it’s about Zelda. Hyrule’s princess gets the lead role here, as she struggles with the news that destruction is coming to her kingdom. It’s her sole duty to protect Hyrule, and she is shown that she will fail to live up to that stressful task. Her insecurity flares up as a result, as she desperately tries to put together a plan to save the day when she knows she is fated to fail.
That creates the framework for a surprisingly personal character study. Zelda isn’t presented as a fearless hero here like Link so often is in the mainline series. She’s a frustrated woman who feels like she can’t live up to expectations. It’s all amplified by the fact that she’s surrounded by Hyrule’s most powerful champions. She feels inadequate next to them, and she fears that her shortcomings will be the very thing that gets them killed.
Those emotions are cleverly reflected in the way Zelda actually plays. Most of the roster’s playable characters have your typical Dynasty Warriors moveset. They swing some kind of giant weapon with little effort and can take out hundreds of enemies in one fell swoop. Zelda is clumsy by comparison. She’s all about summoning magical items, which haphazardly materialize in front of her. It’s still effective enough, but you can see her insecurity over her power manifest in the way crates and bombs awkwardly spill out in front of her.
All of this guides Age of Calamity towards a conclusion that’s more interested in telling a story about Zelda than existing as a tidy lore snippet. In its most empowering moment, Zelda works up the power to save her allies in a deadly battle. She gets an entirely new move set from that point forward, a devastating magic kit that arguably turns her into the roster’s most powerful hero. It’s genuinely moving, finally letting the Zelda series’ namesake character show why she’s a legend.
I enjoy the fantastical stories that the Zelda series tells well enough. Twilight Princess has its share of cinematic moments that stick with me and Breath of the Wild impressively unravels an epic tale through quiet mystery. But few Zelda games actually feel like they’re about much of anything. They’re insular fables about Hyrule and its empty conflicts. They’re vague enough to project political meaning onto, but you’ll have to work hard to get there. Age of Calamity is an exception to that rule, telling a story about overcoming insecurity in the face of impossible odds and rising to a potential you fear you can never reach.
I’m not expecting Age of Imprisonment to hit those same highs, especially if the team at Koei Tecmo’s AAA Games Studio ends up using this game to address criticisms of the last game. But I’m willing to follow them down the rabbit hole once again in hopes that they’ll once again have more to say about the heroes of Zelda as they face off against Ganondorf. Heck, maybe the Demon King himself will get that treatment, giving us a story about a Gerudo that is rejected by his own people. There’s meat on those bones and someone needs to chew it if Nintendo is going to leave it lying out there.
