The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 trailer shows Link and Zelda exploring the depths of Hyrule Castle, discovering what appears to be the corpse of Ganondorf himself before the body reanimates and the castle appears to begin to lift off. And that’s basically all fans know.
While there are ways to connect the games, The Legend of Zelda generally has little continuity, with each installment being its own self-contained story where Link starts from scratch and slowly becomes the Hero of Tim. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, however, will be one of the few direct sequels released in the franchise’s history. As such, it will likely need to make a move seen in one of the series’ other sequels, the acclaimed and creepy Majora’s Mask.
Breath of the Wild 2 faces Nintendo with some significant challenges after the first game saw Link awaken after a hundred-year slumber. It made sense for him to start with next-to-no power, with the character suffering amnesia as he gradually pieces together his past and becomes the knight he was a century before. The explanation is simple, while still allowing Link and Zelda to have a backstory that’s uncovered over the game
Breath of the Wild 2 has no such luxury. Assuming that the next game takes place directly after the events of the first, which the trailer seems to imply, Link should be just as powerful as he was when he defeated Calamity Ganon. Starting the game with that level of power, however, would be limiting. It wouldn’t allow for a meaningful sense of progress, or the fun of surviving in a world in which the player is drastically outmatched.
The same can be said for Hyrule’s map. One of the best parts of the original Breath of the Wild is slowly uncovering the entirety of Hyrule from the Gerudo Desert to the lava fields of Death Mountain. Nintendo will also have to find a way to make the world worth exploring again. This could pose an even bigger challenge than Link’s power progression. Simply covering the map again and requiring players to unlock it would be tedious for players who already explored it in the first game. Nintendo will need to find an in-universe reason that Link would no longer have knowledge of his surroundings, or at least access to a map of them.
The studio will also need to make sure that players have new motivation to explore regions they’ve already seen, with Breath of the Wild 2 confirmed to be using the same map as the original. While Majora’s Mask doesn’t provide direct solutions to these problems, it had similar challenges which might give players a clearer idea of how Nintendo could tackle these challenges.
Majora’s Mask is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time. It faced a similar set of problems to Breath of the Wild 2: explaining how Link’s power was reset after the events of Ocarina, and giving players a new world worth exploring. Nintendo got around the world problem by setting Majora’s Mask in an alternate version of Hyrule, Termina, which was also affected by the imagination of the Skull Kid wearing Majora’s Mask. However, neither Ocarina nor Majora’s Mask were open-world, and Breath of the Wild 2’s open world may face a bigger risk of repetition by using the same basic structure as the first game.
Majora’s Mask got around Link’s power problem by having the Skull Kid steal the Ocarina of Time from him at the start of the game, and turning Link into a Deku Scrub. That plus Link’s fish-out-of-water presence in Termina helped to explain why the Hero of Time was so suddenly out of his depth at the start of Majora’s Mask, and helped the game have a steady sense of progression that was unaffected by but didn’t clash with the story of Ocarina.
There are a few ways Breath of the Wild 2 could follow the example of Majora’s Mask, some which seem to be hinted at in the trailer as well. Throughout the Breath of the Wild 2 trailer, viewers can hear sounds which sound like they’re being played backwards as a mysterious force moves through the castle.
This seems to imply that Breath of the Wild 2 will rely on time manipulation to solve some of its key challenges. For example, it’s possible that Link and Zelda will find themselves suspended in time for another hundred years, emerging to see a version of Hyrule that’s been under Ganondorf’s rule for a century. It’s unlikely that Nintendo will want to use the amnesia card again, but being flung through time could also have effects on Link that could cause him to lose his powers, or at least some key items like the Master Sword.
It’s also possible that Link could find himself flung into the distant past, with Ganon attempting to lift Hyrule Castle off the ground and teleport it back in time to defeat the Sheikah directly, at which time Hyrule Castle would likely not have been built. During the height of the Sheikah civilization even Link’s powers would likely be outmatched by their technology.
A significant time jump could also allow Nintendo to make some big edits to the map of Breath of the Wild 2 that could make that world feel worthy of exploration a second time around. Alternate timelines have been a mainstay of the Legend of Zelda franchise, and it seems likely that Ganondorf will have the upper hand yet again using some form of time manipulation at the start of the game.
Until more information is released by Nintendo, however, fans can only speculate. Considering the moves made in Majora’s Mask and the similar challenges facing Nintendo with Breath of the Wild 2, however, fans can expect that the start of the next game’s story will see a sudden and significant shift of some kind that will leave Link powerless and Hyrule drastically changed.
The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is currently in development for the Nintendo Switch, with no confirmed release date.
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