Games Inbox: What Legend Of Zelda game will be next?

The Tuesday letters page laments the slow but inevitable death of GAME, as one reader looks forward to Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree.

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Return to Hyrule
I’m intrigued by the thought of what the next Zelda game will be, since we know it won’t be a mainline sequel, since they were taking five years or more even back in the day of Ocarina Of Time. Twilight Princess or The Wind Waker ports are the boring and most probable answer but even if they’re literally the next ones there’s still got to be multiple new games between them and the new sequel.

I would welcome more remakes, as I thought Link’s Awakening worked well and any of the top-down games will be fun to see in a similar style. I’ve seen some people suggest a 3D remake for A Link To The Past but I’m not sure how that would work given how dense (and perfectly designed) that map is.

I’d definitely be up for a Wind Waker extended edition but I think the boat has sailed on that one (see what I did there?!). I would also be interested in some more smaller, more experimental games. Perhaps something in the style of Bowser’s Fury, which was bundled with the remaster of Super Mario 3D World.

I could see that as being how they introduce the idea of a playable Zelda and see how people take to that. Interesting stuff, I think, but I doubt any of it will be revealed this month.
Wendel

The people have spoken
Sad to hear about the end of GAME’s reward points system, which is surely the final step before the whole company is shut down. Maybe they’ll keep it going as a website but at that point why not just buy from Amazon instead?

It’s nobody’s fault. I don’t think there’s anything particularly incompetent about GAME leadership, their problems are simply that most people buy digitally now and even when they don’t they buy online, who needs a high street store? Or even one inside another shop?

If they still did second-hand games I think there’d be more of a reason to keep them going but even that was only going to deny the inevitable. As usual, convenience has triumphed over consumer benefits and while I’m mad about it I also realise there’s nothing I can do about it.
Corston

Tragically uninteresting
I didn’t watch the PlayStation State of Play until today and now I wish I just hadn’t bothered at all. I knew it was going to be a disappointment, but it was even worse than I thought. I didn’t realise Concord was literally half of the whole thing. That made it even worse, knowing that Sony thought everyone was going to be excited by it.

Generic doesn’t even begin to describe how boring it looked. And the whole skit in the diner, or whatever it was supposed to be, was awful. It wasn’t even painful, it just wasn’t funny. Not in a way that’s embarrassing or interesting just bleh.

See also A Game Changer For Oil Trading

And then when they showed gameplay that was just as bland predictable, like someone took all the first person shooters from the last 10 years, but them in a blender, and puked them up over the screen. Just tragically uninteresting stuff. PlayStation is truly lost.
Sharpie

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Big and small world
In response to the Reader’s Feature on game length, at the end of the day it’s about choice. I ploughed Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom for 200 hours, then moved to three relatively short games: Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown, Metroid Dread, and then Metroid Prime Remastered.

Following this I have just began Kingdom Come: Deliverance (yes, I know it looks like in some areas they filmed it using a Maris Piper on the Switch), which I believe will keep me going for at least 100 hours. And guess what? I’ve loved having the choice. For me I like the odd big game interspersed (Tears Of The Kingdom, Breath Of The Wild, The Witcher 3) with some shorter fare (those mentioned above and my annual play through of Alien Isolation, the best Switch port ever).
James Monnelly, Channel Islands

Poor show
Just when you thought 2024 couldn’t get any worse for gaming we get the non-event of Sony’s latest State of Play and now an admission that this year’s Summer Game Fest is going to be a dud too. Hopefully it’ll be better than PlayStation but they’re still clearly setting us up for it not being anything major.

Maybe Xbox can take advantage and have more to show off but while I expect it to be the ‘best’ of the bunch I still don’t think it’ll have much in the way of new announcements. It’s not even reasonable to expect Nintendo to steal the show, since they’re just treading water until the Switch 2.

Truly, the video games industry has met with a terrible fate.
Mimic

Slowing down
Although it’s good news to hear Naughty Dog is working on multiple single-player games I have to question when exactly any of them are going to come out. None of them have been announced yet, and probably won’t be this year, which means the earliest you could expect one to be out is late 2025 at the most – more likely probably 2026.

I looked it up and Neil Druckmann is 45 and he’s made a grand total of seven games, and only two in the last 10 years. By the same age Steven Spielberg had made 18 movies as director and despite being 77 he’s made six films in the last 10 years, plus dozens of producer roles.

Video games don’t just take too long to make, they’re draining the lives of developers away, to the point where someone that’s been in the business basically all of their working life has still only made a handful. No wonder he doesn’t want Naughty Dog to just be The Last Of Us factory, he doesn’t want that to be the only thing he does either.

That’ll be one reason why he put a stop to that Last Of Us Online game and I bet he resented all those pointless remakes too. If only every developer had as much power as he did, maybe things would be better overall for gaming – instead of everything worrying about what the shareholders will think.
Cody

Cold reality
I initially pre-ordered the PlayStation 5 VR2 set but cancelled the order after realising there were not many decent games available.

Has the situation changed now? I’m thinking of buying it cheaper – second-hand – but it’s still expensive and after Horizon, Resident Evil 4, Rez, Moss, and maybe Star Wars: Squadrons, what else is there?
Rave

GC: More than a year after launch, Sony still hasn’t announced a new first party title for it. There are plenty of good games, with Skydance’s Behemoth and the new Alien game featured during last week’s State of Play, but we’d struggle to recommend it for anything close to the official asking price.

Be prepared
So we’re in the correct month for the Elden Ring DLC and boy the anticipation is at its zenith! A whole bunch of gamers on various streaming channels, and me as a normal gamer, are making sure our character is at the right level and ready to take on the next adventure in The Lands Between.

I have, as usual, been getting up to a decent level in lore knowledge. I often wondered what some of the map drawings were all about and we may see what those sailing ships will be all about as the Shadow Of The Erdtree trailer has alluded to these in some of the background scenery in the footage.

There are some epic lore videos on YouTube by SmoughTown, VaatiVidya, and The Tarnished Archeologist, to name a few, and it’s all thanks to Hidetaka Myazaki being so utterly cryptic with his storytelling!

Seriously though, he’d give David Lynch a run for the money in working out what the entire plot or symbolism is all about. Which is fine by me as I love all that stuff. Watching Twin Peaks with more things explained through lore videos makes a heck of a difference, as I have a limit as to what I can do on my own!

Reading Lokey’s books like Abyssal Archive and Demonic Archive, explaining the Dark Souls trilogy and Demon’s Souls, has been eye-opening for sure. The YouTube channels mentioned above fill in the gaps and gives answers to questions I did not know even had questions, just like Twin Peaks!

The difficulty level the DLC will be at is going to be fun, as the bosses look awesome and rock solid. Of course, the levels and game world look amazing as usual.

I will continue to inspect the items, clothing, building engravings, and statues to see if I can work out the whole truth before an expert archaeologist explains the historical and cosmic links for me! Either way, role on towards the end of June – definitely no summer drought in this household for sure.
Alucard

Inbox also-rans
I can’t believe it but the Sora amiibo is in stock now on the Nintendo Store, after writing in yesterday to say I hadn’t seen it in stock yet! If you search for ‘Sora’ on Nintendo Store it says it is out of stock but if you click on the Sora item photo and go through to the actual page it is in stock! Time posted: 12.03pm BST. Hope the reader can get the amiibo now.
Andrew J.

GC: You’re very kind to keep an eye on it for him.

Just realised we never saw either of the two new PlayStation CEOs in the State of Play last week. Does that mean they’re never going to appear in public, just their underlings? That’s no way to run things.
Focus

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

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