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Nintendo details Zelda: Twilight Princess HD gameplay improvements

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Nintendo has a number of major changes in store for its upcoming HD revamp of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, resulting in a streamlined experience that eliminates many of the flaws present in the game’s original 2006 release.

Among other tweaks, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U makes in-game transformations less time-consuming, and reduces the number of quest items in specific cases in order to improve the overall pacing of gameplay.

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Nintendo outlined its many planned improvements for Twilight Princess HD today, including the addition of an all-new “Ghost Lantern” item that makes the original game’s infamous Poe soul-retrieving quest less tedious. When equipped, the Ghost Lantern will glow when any Poes are nearby, reducing the amount of exploration and guesswork that the quest normally entails.

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Many moments in Twilight Princess require protagonist Link to transform into his wolf form – a process that previously involved talking to partner character Midna and navigating through a dialogue sequence before every transformation. In Twilight Princess HD, players can instead tap an icon on the Wii U’s GamePad to instantly transform with no delay.

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The Wii U GamePad also aids in equipping items, as players can now assign inventory slots and navigate maps using a touch-driven interface. In addition, Twilight Princess HD offers off-TV play that displays all in-game action on the GamePad itself.

Twilight Princess HD additionally increases the limit on the amount of currency that players can hold at any given time, addressing a common complaint with the original game. Rupees earned from treasure chests can now be collected regardless of whether players have reached the maximum amount of on-hand currency, eliminating the need to maintain a mental checklist of treasure chests that were abandoned throughout the quest.

Other planned additions for Twilight Princess HD include a Hero Mode that doubles the damage players take from enemies and eliminates health drops, making for a more difficult quest. Players can create an even more difficult experience for themselves by scanning a Ganondorf amiibo figurine during gameplay, further increasing the damage they absorb during gameplay.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD launches exclusively for the Wii U on March 4th.

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Danny Cowan
Danny Cowan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…
10 minutes of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay is coming. Here’s how to watch it
Link fights a giant golem in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

After years of trailers that only tease bits and pieces of what we can expect from the next mainline Zelda game, Nintendo has announced a 10-minute deep dive into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hosted by Eiji Aonuma. As this gameplay presentation will likely feature the most info we've gotten about Tears of the Kingdom since its 2019 announcement, Nintendo fans will want to tune in. If you haven't heard of this new gameplay video before or are just wondering when and where you should tune into it, we've rounded up all of that info here for you.
When is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's gameplay presentation?
This gameplay showcase for Tears of the Kingdom will be released at 7 a.m. PT on March 28. The presentation will last "roughly 10 minutes," according to Nintendo, and it should be available to watch for free afterward.

How to watch
This deep dive into Tears of the Kingdom gameplay will be released on Nintendo's official YouTube channel. We'll embed the video below once it is live. Of course, you can also expect an article highlighting any of the big reveals during the gameplay presentation here on Digital Trends.
What to expect
Nintendo will release 10 minutes of Tears of the Kingdom gameplay in a presentation hosted and narrated by Eiji Aonuma, producer of The Legend of Zelda series. While the game was announced over three-and-a-half years ago and has received several trailers, we still don't quite know how its moment-to-moment gameplay works and just how much it differs from Breath of the Wild.
https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1640353190414565378
As such, it seems like the main purpose of this presentation is to give players a clear idea of what to expect from Tears of the Kingdom ahead of its May 12 release on Nintendo Switch. Hopefully, we'll learn more about the floating islands in the sky that players can explore and the vehicles we saw Link controlling in the game's last trailer. Regardless, this gameplay showcase is shaping up to be quite revealing and exciting.
Though the announcement only mentions gameplay, there's always a chance we see some special edition hardware revealed at this too. A special Switch OLED model or Joy-cons designed around the game seem likely and we could see something like that here.

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Link waving in Wind Waker HD.

As we approach the final days of the Wii U’s life span with the impending eShop closure, I’ve been reflecting on my time with that system. Although it’s considered a low point for Nintendo, the Wii U and 3DS era was when I truly became a fan of the company, closely following every new announcement and release. I enjoyed many great Nintendo games on Wii U, like Super Mario 3D World and Xenoblade Chronicles X. Still, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD is the Wii U game I still come back to the most.

Maybe it’s because I got the Wind Waker-themed Wii U that included the game as a pack-in, but I fell in love with the HD remaster. Not only did it show off the console's power with gorgeous updated visuals, but it fixed a couple of issues with the original and used the system's GamePad seamlessly. On top of that, it's a charming and surprisingly bold game that still stands as one of the best games in the series 20 years after its North American release on GameCube.

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Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years. 
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"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." 
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?  
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision? 
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
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