Recently I’ve been thinking about what the next Zelda game could be, plus I’ve been playing a lot of Elden Ring, and it feels like the Legend of Zelda series could learn a few things. Today I’m going to continue looking at what the next Zelda game could be, and some inspiration it could find in Elden Ring.

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Recently I’ve been looking at the next steps for the Zelda series, and I covered that extensively in the last video, you can check that out by clicking the link on screen, I’d love to get your thoughts and ideas. Some of the comments on that video drew attention to some of the great aspects of Elden Ring, which is good timing because I have been playing that a lot recently.

Breath of the Wild did a fantastic job in re-inventing the series. By the time we got to Skyward Sword fans were calling out for something new, and Breath of the Wild was that breath of fresh air that the series needed. Tears of the Kingdom then followed, and while it was a great game in it’s own right, interest fell off pretty quickly when compared to Breath of the Wild, which managed to maintain interest for years after it’s release.

Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki said in an interview with Xbox Wire Japan

“I don’t think we took specific inspiration from any particular game, but I’ve personally played a lot of open world games that are considered classics of the genre, and I’ve been influenced by all of them. These include The Elder Scrolls series, The Witcher 3, and more recently The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”

Lets have a look at what the next Zelda game could learn from Eldin Ring

Dungeons

One of the main pieces of feedback I am hearing related to the next Zelda game is better dungeons. Many people want classic style dungeons, but still with that open-world feel for the overworld. What defines “classic dungeons” most likely varies from person to person. Personally I didn’t like the dunegons in Breath of the Wild, they were too similar. Some of the dungeons in Tears of the Kingdom were better, for example The Wind Temple, but they are still not up to the standard of say dungeons in Ocarina of Time. They need to be better, and there needs to be more of them.

Going back to the question of what Zelda could learn from Elden Ring in regards to dungeons. In Zelda dungeons have felt quite separate from the game world you inhabit. It varies from game to game in the Zelda series, but dungeons have felt very separate from the overworld. In Elden Ring dungeons and castles loom large inthe overworld. They are these huge structures that look terrifying, you know something is going to be in there, and once you get into these structures you aren’t going to be dissapointed. Stormveil Castle is a good example, it looms large over Limgrave, just getting into the castle is an ordeal in the firstplace have to go through the skillcheck of Margit, then you have to battle your way through to Godrick the Grafted, another tough SOB if you’ve only just started them game and you’re under powered.

Zelda dunegons are separate all together. In Breath of the Wild they take the form of the Divine Beasts, you discover them, they are buried in the ground and then you have to find your way in. But once you get in there they have their own map, they are their own area, normally large puzzles. Elden Ring dungeons are these huge mazes, filled with enemies and loot. Tears of the Kingdom did some work to improve this, with the Wind Temple above the Mountain in this huge storm, but still you don’t get a sense of this huge dungeon waiting to be explored.

It’d be good to see Zelda dungeons integrated into Hyrule, you can clearly see them when you exploring the overworld, have NPCs talk about the dungeons and build them up. Hyrule Castle in Tears of the Kingdom is a step in the right direction, but one isn’t enough.

Exploration

Exploration in Breath of the Wild was pretty revolutionary. The combination of the climbing and the glider allowed us to see something in the overworld and then go to it, even that mountain in the distance there. Then in Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo added the sky islands and the depths, entirely new layers in Hyrule to explore, even if the sky islands were lacking in coverage and the depths ended up being reptitive.

My issue with exploration in Tears of the Kingdom was you could build a simple Zonai machine to skip exploration. The hover bike was quickly discovered and that then rendered ground exploration almost redundant. I could simply build a little machine and fly anywhere I wanted. In Elden Ring you have Torrent. You can’t climb, you don’t have a glider. You have to navigate the world and be careful for large drops because of the fall damage. You don’t have a glider if things go badly wrong.

Much like in open-world Zeld games, in Elden Ring if you see something in the distance you can go to it, but you can’t fly there or glide there, you have to navigate the ground, and deal with whatever you find along the way. In future Zelda games I don’t want the ability to skip exploration, if you provide me an easy way to do something in a game I am going to do it.

Enemy levels

Enemies in Elden Ring don’t scale with the player. In Tears of the Kingdom as Link became more powerful, so did the enemies. In Elden Ring the starting area is easier, and as you explore you can find areas you simply shouldn’t be in, and you know about it quickly.

Horse

Summoning your horse in Elden Ring is much easier than recent Zelda games. In Elden Ring you have a summoning whistle and it appears immediately, often whisking you away from trouble quickly. In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom you have to find a horse, take it to a stable, register it, then you whistle. IF it’s close by then it will come to you, but if could be far away. My relationship with Torrent in Elden Ring is much more memorable because I only have one single horse. Yes, I can have multiple horses in Breath of the Wild and name them whatever I want. But I would prefer a single horse. Looking back at Ocarina of Time, I remember Epona. I don’t remember any of the horses I named in Breath of the Wild, even though I could carry that horse over to Tears of the Kingdom. In the next Zelda game I’d prefer a single horse, ideally Epona, and I’d like it to be much easier to summon.

Fear and risk

Elden Ring is a scary place to explore. When you first start out in the game you are under level, even the most basic enemies are a challenge and discovering new areas can be terrfiying with the huge rabid dogs, or massive crows that fly in from the sky and kill you. You’ll be exploring and something will jump out from behind a door and stab you in the back. There’s an element of risk to the game and you can feel it when you discover new placed. For example, you can find teleporters in Elden Ring, and immediately get thrown into Caelid, somewhere you are not supposed to be and there’s a huge dragon on the bridge, or this massive angel looking thing with a HUGE sword. You know you aren’t supposed to be there.

Breath of the Wild did a decent job with this. Guardians made the overworld a scary place to explore, they added an element of risk. Tears of the Kingdom removed Guardians and the world felt much safer. Yes, we had the gloom hands, and they in themselves are scary, but I didn’t have that sense of risk when exploring Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom. In the next Zelda game I want that sense of risk and fear added back into exploring the overworld.

Combat

It’s tough to compare the combat in Zelda games to Elden Ring, given Elden Ring is leagues in that department. One immediate thing that jumps out from Tears of the Kingdom is the lack of fluidity in combat. I would find myself in menus, breaking the flow of combat and taking me out of focus. In Elden Ring this can’t happen because the game isn’t paused when you open up a menu. The element of risk is removed from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom combat given you can teleport away at any time, but in Elden Ring there’s no escaping the battle that easily, unless you ride off with your horse.

While I do’t expect Zelda games to reach the heights of Elden Ring combat, I do think Nintendo could push their audience a little more. I think the Zeld audience could take it and would appreciate a more intricate battle system, as well as a better flow for combat. Removing the constant pausing and chances to teleport away would be a good start, but I’d be interested to hear what you think could improve combat.

No weapon durabiity

Weapon durability has been a huge part of the feedback from the Zelda community. Nintendo did attempt to address it with Fuse in Tears of the Kingdom, however, weapons could still break. Personally I’d prefer no weapon durability, and a focus on finding great weapons that I can carry throughout the game. I’d like to see Zelda move away from the weapon durability system all together. While I get this promotes exploration, I want to have a more in depth relationship with my weapons. Picking up something, using it a few times just to throw it away isn’t memorable. Picking up my Bloodhound Fang, while fighting in an underground jail in Elden Ring is memorable. While I could use this weapon the whole game, I don’t because there are better designed weapons out there.

Magic Meter

Modern Zelda games don’t have a magic meter, where as Elden Ring does. Past Zelda games have dabbled with a magic meter and I’d like to see this come back. We have magic rods in Zelda, but I’d like to see them step up the magic a notch. There’s nothing better than applying fire to a blade in Elden Ring before going into battle.

While I do think Zelda could learn a few things from Elden Ring and Souls games in generally, they are by no means the perfect game. The fact that Elden Ring learned a lot from Breath of the Wild is great, and I’d like to see Nintendo get a little darker, push their audience a little more in combat, add some risk back into the games, and finally do away with weapon durability.

From the community

@darkdragonmedeus705

Some more variety of enemies and fewer outside of duplicates; I don’t mind duplicates existing, but would prefer that even if duplicates were treated as merged with originals about there being more than 100 different types of enemies.

Three different difficulty settings could be an improvement for sure. But still like it if it is still difficult early game even on easiest difficulty. A Dread mode for a future Zelda title would be awesome.

@GamingReinvented

Better enemy variety would be a good one I guess. Older Zelda games got the variety better and Echoes of Wisdom is seemingly going in a good direction again, but the variety of enemies in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is utterly paltry compared to those in From Soft’s games, even if their AI is pretty smart. Honestly, I think most people would rather have a wider range of visually and thematically distinct enemies than a small range of ‘intelligent’ and complicated ones, since it makes the world feel more interesting than it does when you encounter the same three species in every corner of the map.…Read more

@galaxsija4591

More respect for the lore! and charge a fair price for your game… When you compare TOTK at $70 to Shadow of the erdtree at $40… there is a lesson to be learned. Respect your audience. I have lost a lot of respect for nintendo tbh after TOTK. Sure, focus on interesting gameplay mechanics, but not at the expense of the overall experience.

Let me know in the comments what you want to see from the next Zelda, and let me know if you’ve played Elden Ring and what Zelda could learn from it.