Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment story and character predictions
The big Nintendo Switch 2 presentation in April announced a ton of new games: Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, Kirby Air Riders, plus new trailers for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokemon Legends: Z-A. Lost in all the hype was Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, which just about flew under the radar in comparison to the Direct’s big reveals. In a similar vein as Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Age of Imprisonment is meant to serve as a direct prequel to Tears of the Kingdom. We don’t really know much about the game otherwise, but we figure it’s a good time to make some story and gameplay predictions before it releases later this year. We’ll be discussing spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom and Age of Calamity, so keep that in mind before you continue.
First, Age of Imprisonment should be a big technical upgrade over Age of Calamity. That game ran very poorly, especially in multiplayer. But now that the genre has a stronger Nintendo Switch to run on, we’d estimate that the performance will be much better. A 60 frames per second warriors game on Nintendo Switch 2 sounds excellent – we don’t have any specific details about how the game performs, but “better than Age of Calamity” seems like a safe bet.
In terms of the characters we’ll see, a few of them appear confirmed: Zelda, Rauru, Mineru, and the four original Sages. In Tears of the Kingdom, the four original sages are nameless and wear masks that resemble the Divine Beasts from Breath of the Wild. We’d expect Age of Imprisonment to give them names and make them playable for the very first time. That said, there aren’t many other obvious character picks. Many of the characters playable in Age of Calamity simply aren’t around in the distant past seen in Age of Imprisonment: Rhoam, Purah, Robbie, and possibly Hestu aren’t even born yet. Plus, Sonia is killed, according to the memories from Tears of the Kingdom, and that’s where things start to get iffy.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity claimed it was a prequel to Breath of the Wild before it released, but it actually wasn’t. The game starts out as you might expect, with Calamity Ganon awakening and forcing the four Champions into action. In Breath of the Wild, all four Champions are killed by Calamity Ganon’s underlings. But in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, time travel shenanigans happens and all four Champions (Mipha, Revali, Daruk, Urbosa) are saved by their future counterparts (Sidon, Teba, Yunobo, Riju). From this point on, Age of Calamity is no longer a prequel, it’s now an alternate timeline. Together, Link, Zelda, and the Champions band together to defeat Calamity Ganon before it kills everyone. At the end of the game, Sidon, Teba, Yunobo, and Riju are returned to their own time period.
According to an official description for Age of Imprisonment, the game is a “canonical tale”. That would mean no time travel shenanigans, but it would also mean no Link – and do we really think they’re going to release a Legend of Zelda game without Link? They’ll almost certainly find a way to make him playable in the game, even if it’s some kind of Link apparition rather than the real character. In Tears of the Kingdom, Link sends the Master Sword to the past for Zelda to recharge. That would also mean that Zelda would turn into a dragon in Tears of the Kingdom and presumably lose her playable status, which doesn’t sound quite right to us – though maybe that’ll happen after the ending of the game?
In terms of the game’s story, there’s definitely some potential. That said, we got a general gist for it in Tears of the Kingdom, so we’re hoping for plenty of new cutscenes and not just ones reused from Link’s memories. It would also be nice to get some lore to fill in some plot holes from Tears of the Kingdom. For example, Rauru greatly underestimated Ganondorf’s threat level, which eventually led to Sonia’s death. We also never got any explanation on how Link’s arm is restored at the end of the game or exactly how Zelda is reverted from a dragon back into a human – these two inconsistencies could easily be explained with a line of dialogue or two. We could also learn about the Ancient Hero, who appears to be a Zonai or perhaps a Zonai-Hylian mix. He’s referenced in Tears of the Kingdom via the Ancient Hero’s Aspect, which is a unique set of armor.
Some more information about the Secret Stones would be interesting too – or, maybe, we could possibly see Farosh, Dinraal, and Naydra as humans before they became dragons. That would be a solid idea for three additional playable characters as well. One more odd story point: in Tears of the Kingdom, Sonia tells Zelda she is her direct descendant. But Sonia is killed during the Imprisoning War, which means she must already have a daughter. That’s another potential idea for a new playable character, which helps round out the game’s roster.
What do you want to see from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment? Are there any obvious character picks that we missed? What do you expect from the story? Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments down below.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is on track to release this winter. You can check out the official page right here.
