Zelda: ToTK's Twist Perfect Opportunity for Age of…

The next Zelda game has been announced, and it might be the final entry in the subseries that Breath of the Wild began. Dubbed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, this new addition to the Hyrule Warriors line serves as an interquel of sorts to Tears of the Kingdom. Whereas the previous Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity, fleshed out and grew from the onset of Calamity Ganon one hundred years before Breath of the Wild, Age of Imprisonment instead follows Princess Zelda back to Tears of the Kingdom’s ancient past, promising to expand on the events foundational to this Hyrule iteration’s history.

Although this does mean that Age of Imprisonment has a similar time-travel framing device to its predecessor, unlike Age of Calamity, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is canon. What this will mean for the game’s content and story remains to be seen, but it does indicate that Age of Imprisonment is going to adapt the memory scenes in Tears of the Kingdom more directly than Age of Calamity did with Breath of the Wild. With a likely endpoint at around the same place that TotK’s Dragon Tears concluded, Age of Imprisonment could adapt that moment’s twist as the perfect final sequence.

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By Liam Ferguson

Princess Zelda’s Transformation Must Be Represented In Age of Imprisonment

Once players collect all the Dragon Tears in Tears of the Kingdom, they are treated to one last scene where Princess Zelda receives the broken Master Sword from the opening. She consumes her Secret Stone, transforming her into the immortal but mindless Light Dragon, and spends the next untold millennia repairing the Master Sword with her radiant energies. Even for those who have figured out the twist, it's one of TotK’s most poignant and visually striking scenes, and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment has the chance to make it even better.

How The Light Dragon Could Play In Age of Imprisonment

In a similar manner to the Divine Beasts in Age of Calamity, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment can make the Light Dragon playable in an endgame setpiece. As something like a combination of Vah Medoh and the final battle against the Demon Dragon in Tears of the Kingdom, players can soar over a massive battlefield as the Light Dragon, raining down beams of light on Ganondorf’s forces. If nothing else, it would add a great cathartic climax to the game, on top of showing off more of what the open-world Zelda’s elemental dragons can do.

Age of Imprisonment Will Need To Stretch Canon A Little To Include Light Dragon Action

Tears of the Kingdom Left Just Enough Room For Age of Imprisonment’s Light Dragon

Since the Light Dragon is a good fit for Age of Imprisonment’s endgame, the only thing remaining is deciding on its context. Some postgame levels giving the Light Dragon’s gameplay a bit more screentime would be sensible, but its actual canon appearance in Age of Imprisonment is a bit trickier. By the time Zelda transforms in TotK, the Imprisoning War is over, and Hyrule is implied to be at peace. The Light Dragon could feature in an epilogue of sorts where it arrives to defeat a lingering monster army before it overruns a village, though there is a more ambitious option.

Age of Imprisonment can also end with a spruced-up version of Tears of the Kingdom’s Demon Dragon boss fight. It would be very interesting to experience TotK’s epic airborne finale from the Light Dragon's view, perhaps involving some dogfighting against the Demon Dragon while needing to break away at some point and catch Link. There’s also room for the Light Dragon to engage Ganondorf's army mustering on Hyrule’s surface before or during this sequence. However it's handled, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment can't pass up the chance to get Zelda’s dragon form in on the action.

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