'The Knightling' Takes Inspiration From 3D Zelda In A Promising Debut Trailer

Looks like a duck face, is it meant to be?

There have been a few similar games that got my hopes up but then disappointed. But this does look promising.

I'm interested!! I don't love the idea of characters that we're supposed to care about but never see the faces of. But, we'll see!

I anticipate indie games filling the empty space left by OOT era 3D Zelda games, and was hopeful that this title was attempting such a thing. I’ll need to see more before I commit to being interested, but this is an impressive trailer!

Looks pretty, but not going to lie....
I hoped from the description it was going to scratch the old style 3d Zelda itch that Nintendo has left behind rather than the one they are satiating.

@ScalenePowers
Haha wow very similar minds going into this 🤣

The shield mechanic has great potential, especially if the combat is well developed and the sliding is not limited to slopes. The art style is gorgeous and the whole trailer looks great, even though it doesn't show much. We'll see.

trailer was fun; full of character and feels a bit Looney Tunes inspired. Was half expecting the protagonist to be Daffy Duck.

Game play does look pleasingly familiar, but will wait closer to release time before committing to a purchase.

As I'm wanting to upgrade to a Switch 2 in 2025, there may be some competition for my spending!

Hmm, looks a bit rough around the edges, especially the first enemy shown, but will keep an eye. I like the idea of a kinda frizbee shield weapon instead of the normal sword.

@AJWolfTill we basically left the same comment lmao!!

The indie game that comes to mind that attempts to fit that style is Ary: and the Four Seasons. It’s pretty neat but clearly was more than the devs could handle

Have you also gotten into Darksiders to try and scratch that itch??

@ScalenePowers I played all of them and honestly, the only one I found the best was the Spin-off prequel Genesis. I found the fast paced gameplay, and lighter tone quite refreshing. With that said.

Darksiders 1 is the closet Zelda like.
Darksiders 2 is more Action RPG.
Darksiders 3 is very much a hack n slash. Very much inspired by Soulbornes.

The Darksiders series is like 4 different genre of games.

@Bratwurst35 I agree with all of this, although I think that while the genre shift is noticeable in each title, they do have that singular Darksiders flavor that connects them (which is to say, belonging in the grand tradition of OoT 3D Zelda formula.)

I think that Darksiders 2 is the most dungeon focused, with so many tightly designed puzzle box locations, it really brings back that Twilight Princess emphasis on deep diving into puzzle -based/item-gated problem solving

I saw PS5 logo from the trailer.
I have curiosity with the game too.

They didn’t design characters with any visual appeal, so that makes for a harder sell

It looks interesting, but let's ser how it turns out.

Looks quite promising. Apparently the developer's last game, Pine, reviewed very poorly on Switch, so I imagine this is absolutely going to be a game to pick up on another platform (perhaps the Switch 2?)

Looks like Zelda with more platforming and potentially better combat. I'm here for it.

That mountain in the very last scene is pretty much lifted from BotW lol.

Looks very promising, but just as always, it's necessary to see how well the switch version runs.

This looks like it could be fun and BONUS it isn't another pixel art 16-32 bit game for the modern day.

This is actually looks really good, the gameplay, story, and characters seems great 😃

Captain America meets Zelda. Interesting.

@ScalenePowers
I played Ds2 on the Wii U and enjoyed aspects of that, especially the Zelda style dungeons and OST.
Haven't played 1 or 3 yet but I may still try em.

Other than that (and Okami) I haven't found much in the 3d space that delivers.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits was delightful and definitely had Zelda in it's DNA but didn't have dungeons.

@MeloMan that game already exists, and is a Captain America game for the PS3/360 by Next Level Games!!
It remember loving it and while I don’t know how much of that staff is still working at that studio it does make me daydream about an action adventure title that studio COULD craft with one of Nintendo’s intellectual properties

Looks cool, love the artstyle! This definitely goes on the wishlist!

@michaelf i thought of Fable based on the tone of the narrator.

But the game itself looks far from any of that.

@MeloMan I've always said the fist is mightier than the sword.

not to be a negative nelly, but Smaller Devs really need to hire better character artists.

@Ladasta I shall take your word for that as I’ve never played Fable! There’s no hope for me, I know …

@ScalenePowers @AJWolfTill I came here the same as you! With Nintendo moving away from the older Zelda formula, am really hoping others fill the void. There haven’t been many others to my knowledge, but I’ve loved them all: Okami, Star Fox Adventures, Darksiders 1 & 2. If anyone knows of any others, I’ll happily give them a try!

I was curious, but is there any traditional Zelda stuff? I don't want a BotW-like. I want something that fills the old Zelda void

@Shadowkiller97 @ScalenePowers @AJWolfTill, I mean Botw and ToTk are circling back to the original formula set by the first Zelda game.

If you were born before the 3d era or atleast played the orignal famicom series, player freedom was something Miyamoto envisioned.

Exploration and progression at the players place instead of a strict linear structure was Miyamoto ahead of his time rather it unbeknownst to him. He manged to mix traditional dungeon design with a non linear over-world map.

In many ways Zelda NES is a combination of OoT and BOTW. It has the strength of exploration seen in latter, and traditional design that was featured in the former.

Every franchise reaches a point where innovation must introduced to keep a formula from reaching the stage of regression. BoTW isn't perfect, but it's a stepping stone into progression.

Skyward Sword is what I would argue the tipping point that made Nintendo realize they were heading into stagnation and regression. Skyward Sword is good example of game that was too strict in it's design. At total opposites of the ideas set forth by it's predecessors.

But if we do a deep dive, Zelda was stumbling right after Majora's Mask. We have Wind Waker, a game the devs were passionate about, but didn't translate well with fans, and then Twilight Princess, something the devs weren't passionate about, but became the best selling Zelda title before BoTW.

WW, TP, and SW were Zelda going through an identity crisis. A battle between the devs vision and fans vision for the franchise.

BotW is the response of trying to figure out what made Zelda, Zelda in the first place. It's a game that understood a younger Miyamoto's vision of what he wanted Zelda to be at the time.

@WaffleRaptor01 I don’t disagree with you about the original Zelda.. but Nintendo created a specific type of game (basically its own genre: Zelda-like) that it did for 25 years after the original starting with A Link to the Past. Those are the games I grew up with and fell in love with and what defined Zelda for me.

I like BotW and love TotK, but they don’t really satisfy the Zelda itch for me. When you’ve got 18 games and 14 of them are one style, it’s unfair to argue the new games are true Zelda games because they tie back to the original which is an outlier.

Innovation is great! And I think the games within the old formula used to do that with new mechanics and unique items. The new games are pretty much a different type of game, which I do enjoy. But I still want more Zelda-likes and lament that Nintendo doesn’t want to make them anymore.

@WaffleRaptor01 I think that’s a lot of words that don’t address the issue we are talking about. BotW isn’t really a game I like, but I also don’t really care for the original Zelda. They did make four games I very much love, and stopped making them when they had their other ideas, which is fine too. BotW may have even saved Nintendo, I’d go that far

I like Twilight Princess best 🤷‍♀️

@Shadowkiller97 @ajwolftill let’s make a support group lol

I thought Oceanhorn 2 was pretty good. Ary and the Secret of Season is also pretty decent but I don’t think the Switch version passes muster lol. I’ve never played the Soul Reaver games but I understand they have some similarities! We may even get a chance on Switch here soon

@WaffleRaptor01
Don't get me wrong,
I entirely agree with you that BOTW was exactly what the series needed. Throwing away the preconceptions about what a Zelda game is and ushering in a new era for a series that was not innovating as much as it should. I adore TotK and put 200+ hours into it and was glad for the increased diversity of the dungeons and expanded narrative. If the main Zelda team never goes back I'd be ok with that (it would be nice if Grezzo did though).

The issue for me is that Zelda has always been my favourite game series and while the indie scene has definitely been able to produce satisfying iterations and advancements of 2d Zelda games (Death's Door & Hyper Light Drifter spring to mind for me) no one has filled the void of the 'formulaic' 3D Zelda games since Nintendo stopped making them.

That's why I had hopped this game was doing that as opposed to styling itself after the newest games

@NinChocolate I’m a bit on the fence for the character design. I do like how different it looks.
At least they’re trying not to make it generic.

@PinderSchloss it’s just not much of a memorable character. It’s an artificial life form type that’s basically two white dot eyes to connect with, but no interesting shapes or proportions to suggest some personality (take Vivi from FF9 for example).

@NinChocolate The game isn’t out yet, so maybe they’ll give the characters some sharper lines and more expression like you said.
Maybe it’s missing something that makes it a bit dirty, like Abe from Oddworld. They could really own the weirdness more.

@PinderSchloss yeah that’d be cool