In the most recent “Creator’s Voice” video posted to Nintendo’s YouTube channel, the company put a spotlight on the upcoming Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment from Koei Tecmo and Omega Force. Producer Ryota Matsushita and AAA Games Studio Head Yosuke Hayashi chatted about why they love video games and how they got started in the industry while showing off some new footage of Age of Imprisonment running on the Nintendo Switch 2. The most notable thing over the previous game? An actual frame rate.
At roughly the halfway point in the video, Matsushita starts to talk about how the extra power of the Switch 2 has allowed the development team to push its Warriors formula further. He states, “Nintendo Switch 2 has made it possible to include lots of enemies in our Warriors games. Not that just adding more enemies is a good thing, but it heavily contributes to the realism and excitement of the battlefield, which helped a ton.”
Hayashi then chimes in, saying, “At the same time, it was also important that you could play with higher frame rates than the Nintendo Switch system. We were able to achieve that with this game.” Fans of the previous Hyrule Warriors game, Age of Calamity, will remember that it ran at an abysmal frame rate that often lingered just below 30 fps and could hit single-digit numbers at times. Split-screen was a nightmare, and while the gameplay systems were heavily enhanced and refined from the first Hyrule Warriors, the fact that you could sometimes not even tell what was going on hurt the overall game.
As far as story details go, not much was explained about what Age of Imprisonment will cover over its reveal. We already know this takes place during Zelda’s time in the past, which occurs during The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Both Matsushita and Hayashi stress that this game won’t be 100% action and will actually feature some slower bits where you can learn about the characters Zelda interacts with. We’ll also, apparently, get to learn who the other sages were that battled Ganondorf alongside Rauru, Sonia, and Zelda.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is scheduled for release this Winter. It will be a Switch 2 exclusive.
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Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment tackles Zelda’s role during Tears of the Kingdom
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
