E3 2016 - Nintendo

Nintendo continues to not really conform to the standard E3 conference format with their Nintendo Direct streamed segments with interviews and gameplay demos in Treehouses. Even more unconventionally they're dedicating their entire presence at E3 to a single brand new game. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath In The Wind. This next installment of the popular Legend Of Zelda series aims to break everything that you're used to and bring a completely new kind of Zelda game to the masses.

An introductory gameplay demo with director Eiji Aonuma alongside Bill Trinen and some unimportant Treehouse goons shows that the huge new game world can be approached a variety of different ways and really exposes itself immediately to you like an old man at a bus stop, valuing personal freedom above all else.

A lot of people are already calling this "The Dark Souls of Zelda games" because of the exchangeable armour and clothing, different weapons with their own durability and a ramped up difficulty that should weed out all the filthy casual pissbabies who got on board during Nintendo's ultimately ill-fated motion controls Wii-phase.

Personally I found the most shocking feature to be the voice acting throughout the game. Link will now comment on the scenery and enemies around him and of course, finally interact with characters in the fully voiced cutscenes. The role of Link is played by some guy called Troy Baker but Bill Trinen promises several other far bigger names appearing in famous roles later on in the game.

If you check Sir Patrick Stewart's IMDB page he's currently listed in a role detailed only as "Sacrificial Bearded Butterfly God". Whilst rumours circulate that Liam Neeson, Michael Cera and Megan Fox are also involved likely as Ganon, Tingle and Zelda respectively.

The first gameplay demo comes to a close when Link suffers a seemingly fatal neck wound from a mysterious figure hiding in the shadows but whose silhouette will look eerily familiar to anyone who's played Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. Shigeru Miyamoto leads the next gameplay demo as his translators relay his commentary in both English and Hylian. This would have been a nice little gimmick for the walkthrough had the subtitles not overlapped with the new Rage meter at the bottom of the screen, completely obscuring our view.

In Shiggy's part of the show we see a new enemy type called the "Trident Monkey." who can skewer and spear Link's armour effectively rendering it useless but annoyingly still counting towards your total equip burden. If Link is unarmoured the trident can also rip and ruin his clothing leaving him completely naked. Apparently the Moblins won't even attack you in this state but will instead point and laugh at your pasty emasculated body and genitals. Miyamoto laughs. "This feature comes from my memories of being a boy-scout but only with the power of the Wii U, can I finally see it realised."

To finish. Bill Trinen segues into an amusing skit where Reggie Fils-Aime runs through the Nintendo offices in a Wario costume flinging custard pies at everyone. Eventually Reggie is caught and receives a disciplinary for such a tasteless prank. He is then soaked in gungey white "Mario Mushroom Juice" as punishment.

A still dripping Reggie thanks the online viewers for tuning in and all the important staff who actually matter before a final trailer for Breath In The Wind plays and the conference comes to a close. Overall I think a really disappointing conference for Nintendo. Despite putting all their money into one game and only showing that, this new Legend Of Zelda looks like a great waste of time and I think my only seething hatred was not being able to see the "squad-based online multiplayer" component of the game.