Nintendo's surprise Zelda footage reveal was the highlight of the Game Awards last Friday night, and with it came a close look at what appears to be the full world map for the upcoming Wii U game. Of course, the Internet is already exploding with theories about what's on that map and how it's all connected.
Based on previous Zelda games, it's easy to theorize that series staples like Lake Hylia and Death Mountain will make an appearance in this open-world incarnation. But where will they be? And which sections have we seen so far?
TIME FOR SOME SPECULATION.
For starters, let's take another look at the video:
There's a lot of skipping and jumping, which makes it rather difficult to tell where each section of the map is in relation to everything else. Still, over on NeoGAF, poster RagnarokX spent some time analyzing what we've seen so far, and the results are pretty interesting.
For starters, here's the beginning of the gameplay video, where we see Link looking off at a huge mountain—Death Mountain, perhaps?—that appears to be in the northwest corner of the world.
Seems to fit, right? It's possible that the mountain in that screenshot is actually far closer—in which case, holy crap this map is big—and it's also possible that the map was skewed and faked for this demo, but hey, speculation is fun.
RagnarokX also theorizes that that lake toward the bottom of the map is Lake Hylia, and that it'll have a big ol' bridge, Twilight Princess-style. His theory: there's only one possible place where Link can be in the following shot:
Based on that analysis, RagnarokX surmises that the part where Miyamoto and Aonuma comment on the nearby dungeon is also near this presumed Lake Hylia:
And, finally, here RagnarokX speculates—and, yes, this is all highly speculative—the exact path that Link takes during the demo we saw last week:
Of course, we're still a year away from Zelda Wii U, and it's likely that all of this stuff will change as development continues on Nintendo's big 2015 game. But it sure is fun to imagine what exploring this new Hyrule will be like, especially given how Zelda boss Eiji Aonuma has talked about his desire to shake up all of the series' formulas. Hell, maybe the big lake and mountain will have TOTALLY NEW NAMES. I know, I know. Probably not.