Daily Debate: Should Future Zelda Games Introduce New Gameplay Modes?

The Legend of Zelda series, for the most part, has always been fairly straightforward in game design and story elements. Once you’ve beaten a game, if you have paid careful attention through your adventure, you can remember exactly what routes to take to get through dungeons and to collect certain items, which takes some of the challenge away in future playthroughs. But in the past, some Zelda games have added different modes to change things up a bit. Should future Zelda games do this more?

Some of the older Zelda games had the Master Quest, which changed the layouts of each dungeon. A few games have included a Hero’s Mode, in which enemies deal more damage than they would otherwise. Breath of the Wild, with its first DLC pack, added the Master Mode, a version of the game with items in different locations, and more and tougher enemies. Each of these are interesting ways to add an extra challenge when returning to a game.

However, there are other possibilities of new modes that Nintendo could add to this franchise. For example, I’ve been watching quite a few randomizers of A Link to the Past recently. As it’s one of my favorite Zelda games and I’ve beaten it multiple times, I know it fairly well; even so, because of the randomizer putting essential items in different locations, every single playthrough is different. Nintendo could implement something like that in future Zelda games, where items that are essential to progress in the story line are placed in different locations than usual. I’ve even heard of swordless playthroughs of some of the old Zelda games, where players have to beat the entire game with the items they find instead of a blade. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see that be an official mode in the future?

So what do you think of this idea? Should Nintendo add more gameplay modes to Legend of Zelda games in future installments? Or should they keep things classic and simple? And if they were to add new gameplay modes, what sort of concepts would you like to see? Leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!

Adam is an original content editor for Zelda Informer; He likes sipping tea; He writes fan fiction on Wattpad; Follow him there and on Twitter