Breath of the Wild was a groundbreaking game when it was first released back in 2017. It brought a new spin to the open world genre and brought the classic 3D Legend of Zelda gameplay into the modern age. It was such an amazing game that it scooped up four awards at The Game Awards, including Game of the Year, a Game of the Year award from GameSpot, and one award from BAFTA for its innovation. Breath of the Wild’s widespread popularity is why excitement for its sequel, Breath of the Wild 2, has been building at such a rapid pace.
We’ve scanned through the internet and pieced together what little information there is about this much-awaited sequel and made this list of what’s confirmed and what hasn’t been confirmed yet in Breath of the Wild 2.
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Release Date
The most concrete fact we have so far is that Breath of the Wild 2 was originally slated for a 2022 release. Since then, it’s been pushed back to a Spring 2023 release date “in order to make this game’s experience something special.”
Breath of the Wild’s Director and Producer Return
In an interview, Eiji Aonuma, the producer for Breath of the Wild and Breath of the Wild 2, confirmed that he and Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi are returning to create Breath of the Wild 2.
Both Aonuma and Fujibayashi are long-time veterans of the franchise. Aonuma has been working on Zelda titles since Ocarina of Time where he was the game’s director. This means he has been working on Zelda games for close to 24 years. Fujibayashi in comparison started with Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, putting him at around 22 years of Zelda-making experience. As a result, we can rest assured that this game is in good hands.
The Theme Isn’t Necessarily Darker
Based on the trailers we’ve seen, it’s easy to conclude that the storyline will be darker this time around. However, in the often misquoted interview with IGN, Aonuma pointed out that “it’s just that it happened to be what we showed you [the first look trailer] currently is a little bit darker, and we’re honestly still in production, so we can’t really say exactly how it’s going to be turning out.”
This means the story isn’t necessarily darker than its predecessor. It’s just that the first trailer showed a dark moment in the story. Plus, that interview happened in 2019, and a lot can change during a game’s development. It could be that the final story may end up being darker than the first game, or those dark parts could be cut as the game is developed. Until proven otherwise, it’s best to keep an open mind.
Breath of the Wild Has An Unrevealed Title
To further underscore just how much this game is still in development, Breath of the Wild 2 isn’t even its official, finalized name. In another interview, Bill Trinen, the Director of Product Marketing at Nintendo America told IGN that “obviously, Zelda names are kind of important, Those subtitles… they start to give little bits of hints about maybe what’s going to happen.”
Since Nintendo isn’t ready to reveal any concrete details of Breath of the Wild 2’s story, it also isn’t ready to reveal Breath of the Wild 2’s true name. Which leads me to a more recent development that needs to be addressed.
A Leaked Title
There are currently rumors going around that the actual title is Breath of Duality. While this isn’t confirmed, it does bring to light the parallels in theming shown so far. The first trailer starts us in the dark, deep underground. There, we’re treated to a sight of what fans are assuming is the main antagonist of the series, Ganondorf.
In later trailers, we’re treated to bright shots of Link flying through the skies of Hyrule, an obvious juxtaposition to the underground scenes shown in the first trailer. These parallels add strength to the idea that the title of the next game may well be something along the lines of Breath of Duality, but again, a lot can happen when a game is in development, especially if official sources haven’t confirmed the name yet. Even if Breath of Duality is the name right now, there’s nothing stopping Nintendo from changing it to a more fitting name later in development.
Story In the Sky
On the note of Hyrule’s skies, there appears to be a much larger focus on what is going on in the skies this time around. The first gameplay shot from the E3 teaser trailer shows Link falling from the sky, flying on his glider, and several shots where the camera is panned upward toward floating islands.
As Aonuma puts it in the most recent trailer, “the adventure in this sequel will take place, not just on the ground as in previous games, but also in the skies above. However, the expanded world goes beyond that.” Paired with this voice-over, we’re also shown Link flying up into a sky ruin and crawling through it. While we don’t know how players will use this skill in the game, its existence gives us a taste of what the interactions with the new sky ruins “and beyond” will be like.
Stasis Rune Is that you?
We got to see some gameplay at the E3 teaser trailer and it confirmed the return of what looks like the Stasis Rune. Link holds up his new arm and stops time on a metal object rolling down the hill. However, it may also be a new ability, since Link is also seen reversing the path of the metal ball back up the hill.
Speaking of new things…
New Arm, Who Dis?
Link is seen toting around a new arm. While it looks like a fusion between a glowing version of Link’s fleshy arm and the Sheikah slate, it remains to be seen why and how this strange occurrence could have happened.
In fact, the only other time we’ve seen this arm is in the “First Look” trailer where the arm is clearly shown holding the desiccated body of Ganondorf.
Curious about what other games are coming out soon? Here’s our list of upcoming games for the Playstation 5 and for the Xbox Series X/S.
