Princess Zelda wields an enormous toolkit in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. With the flick of a wand, she can summon perfect copies of anything from a household pot to a a living, moving monster that fights for her. These objects, called Echoes, help her navigate the terrain and fight baddies. And while it’s no Master Sword, the Tri Wand has something Link never did: The ability to wield a nice plush bed. And now as I play, I’m convinced the bed is the main solution to all my problems in Echoes of Wisdom.
Echoes of Wisdom embraces a more open and less restrictive design approach when compared to previous top-down Zelda games. A puzzle in a dungeon might have multiple solutions instead of a single one. Because the game has been designed in this way, players are encouraged to think for themselves and tinker freely with all kinds of potential solutions rather than finding a specific path. In an interview, long-term Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said that “having the excitement of solving puzzles in your own unique way makes the game ‘Legend of Zelda-like,’” so the team increased the degree of freedom to achieve that goal.
Generally speaking, this allows players to flex their creative muscles and find unique ways to get around the world, but for me, I’ve just defaulted to bed. It gives you a bit of additional height, extends out the length of roughly two blocks or so, and only costs one little triangle — so beginners can stack as many as three beds across a gap. I’ve used it to scale cliffs, cross gaps, and solve puzzles in dungeons. Before I get discouraged, I ask myself: Can this be solved with bed? And more often than not, it can be.
When you don’t want to use bed, you don’t have to. The furniture can make a lot of the puzzles easier, but it is about your own creative solutions at the end of the day. Forcing your way through a dungeon with a bed might be more simplistic, but not as exciting. A lot of times, it can be more fun to take advantage of newly learned Echoes, and that’s great! But if you find yourself hitting a wall and not knowing what to do, maybe see if it’s time for Zelda to take a little snooze.
