Zelda fans can rest easy knowing that plot introduced a time travel element that players found controversial, given how the game was initially d. Age of Imprisonment appears to avoid those two pitfalls, if Koei Tecmo and Nintendo are to be believed.
In a new "Creator's Voice" video on the Nintendo of America YouTube channel, Koei Tecmo developers Ryota Matsushita and Yosuke Hayashi stated that the game's story will be canonical to Zelda lore, and the gameplay will feature high frame rates. Matsushita states in the video that Age of Imprisonment "tells the history of the Imprisonment War" from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, while Yosuke says that it was "important" to the studio that "you could play with higher frame rates than the Nintendo Switch system," and the developers "were able to achieve that with this game."
The Switch 2 Is Better Suited For Musou Games
1 vs. 1000 Gameplay Works On Beefier Hardware
The Dynasty Warriors-style of pitting one player against mass hordes of enemies, also known as a "Musou" game, can be taxing on any hardware due to the sheer density of characters put on screen at once. Players certainly felt that while playing Age of Calamity, which often suffered from frame rate drops. Those technical hitches apparently won't be present in Age of Imprisonment due to the Switch 2's superior hardware and specs, at least the developers claim. The official gameplay footage in the Creator's Voice video featured snippets of gameplay running at 60 FPS.
Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment Could Finally Answer My Biggest TOTK Questions
The newly announced Age of Imprisonment would be the perfect game to reveal the answers to some of Tears of the Kingdom’s lingering mysteries.
However, we've yet to see direct feed footage of Age of Imprisonment, so the jury is still out on whether the game can hold a consistent high frame rate. There could be sequences in the game that strain the hardware that could lead to frame drops, though the fact that Nintendo's upgrades to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom appear to be super smooth in areas like the infamous Korok Forest gives hope that Nintendo helped Koei Tecmo wrap developers' heads around the new hardware. Whatever the case, Switch 2 can handle this type of game better.
But Is Age Of Imprisonment Canonical?
The Zelda Timeline Has Always Been Complicated
Per press materials, Nintendo explicitly describes Age of Imprisonment as a "canonical tale featuring Princess Zelda, King Rauru, and other familiar characters," and Matsushita's comments in the Creator's Voice video appears to corroborate that. But some Zelda fans are still skeptical that any Hyrule Warriors game would hold a true place in Zelda canon, seeing how Age of Calamity was billed as a prequel to Breath of the Wild and yet diverged from canonical events due to time travel.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that Age of Imprisonment will deviate from events depicted or mentioned in Tears of the Kingdom. But with how contentious any talk about a true Zelda timeline and canon is, perhaps talking about whether Age of Imprisonment matters in the wider story is moot. Age of Calamity proved to be a best-seller despite its technical issues and its defiance of Breath of the Wild lore, and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment has the potential to reach that same height on Switch 2.
Source: Nintendo of America/YouTube
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
- Released
- 2025
- Developer(s)
- Koei Tecmo
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
- Franchise
- Dynasty Warriors
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