Without a doubt, Breath of the Wild 2 has a ton of fan expectations coming off the heels of the last game. The original Breath of the Wild helped launch the Switch and remains one of the console’s most popular titles, but the sequel faces a unique problem which the studio will need to overcome.
Breath of the Wild presented players with a huge open world to explore, and while it was still the Hyrule of previous games, the games’ map rendered that world in a way no Zelda game before had. Now, the sequel faces an equally huge challenge: recapturing that sense of wonder and exploration when BotW2 is taking place on the same map.
Breath of the Wild 2 grew out of a concept for DLC for Breath of the Wild, which eventually grew and gained enough traction at Nintendo to warrant its own release. However, one confirmed consequence of this is that the map of the game will be the same, at least in broad layout, to the map from the previous game.
One of the most enjoyable parts of Breath of the Wild was starting with nothing and slowly forging paths into the wilderness, particularly in hostile areas like the Gerudo Desert where players had to brew plenty of potions and take risks in the hope of finding safe haven from the elements. Reaching Gerudo Town felt like an achievement because it was pay-off for the risk of exploration, and Breath of the Wild 2 will have to figure out a way to make the sequel’s exploration feel as fresh and exciting as the first game.
It remains unclear how Nintendo plans to rejuvenate its map in Breath of the Wild 2, but to avoid repetition, it has too. Starting the game with all of the Sheikah towers unlocked and the whole map visible isn’t viable, nor is taking away all of that accomplishment IF the map is the exact same. The wilds themselves will need to have that same sense of danger, excitement, and exploration, without compromising the first game.
If that sounds like a tall task, that’s because it is. If the areas of the map need to be unlocked again, how does Nintendo plan to justify Link no longer having access to most of that information, and how can that be done in a way that encourages exploration that feels exciting and not tedious for players who already played the original Breath of the Wild?
Of course, there’s a couple of possible explanation. There may be another big time leap, with Zelda and Link perhaps getting caught for a number of years in Hyrule Castle, which appears to take off at the end of the teaser trailer with both of them inside. However, while this could allow for changes in the layouts of towns and other locales, it’s unclear how the game could make exploring the same general environments feel exciting again without taking the players somewhere other than Hyrule.
Perhaps the castle taking off in the trailer implies the addition of places like Skyloft from Skyward Sword to the map, though this seems unlikely. Adding new areas may be one solution, considering how much the exploration in Breath of the Wild took a degree of priority over the main story. However, it would also require Nintendo to commit to creating fresh new areas as well as making the old areas feel worth revisiting, and the challenge of handling the areas of the map including in the first game remains.
Breath of the Wild 2 will need to find a way to reinvigorate the first game’s map, and make it different enough that the setting feels worth exploring all over again. This will require more than just new enemies when Ganon returns, but with most of the details about the sequel not yet announced, many fans will still be hopeful that Nintendo can pull it out of the bag just as the company did with the original Breath of the Wild.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 is in development.
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