One of the biggest, best and most beloved games on Nintendo Switch is set to get a sequel, with Nintendo confirming at E3 2019 that development has begun on The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2. You can watch the trailer at this link if you haven’t already.
Dropped in a surprise fashion at the very end of this year’s E3 edition of Nintendo Direct, this teaser for the upcoming Breath Of The Wild sequel quickly took the internet by storm. After all, just by existing, this game is very exciting.
But what actually happened in the Breath Of The Wild 2 trailer, and what might it mean? Let’s have a closer look at the teaser to see what we can glean, and try to answer a few questions…
The trailer opens with Link and Zelda, looking much the same as they did in Breath Of The Wild, except it looks like Zelda has had a haircut. The iconic duo is wandering into an eerie dungeon.
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Of course, Eerie dungeons are nothing new for this franchise, even if the green floaty lights in this one are particularly creepy. And that’s not to mention the red, tree-like roots that are creeping out from below. It’s hard to say what we’re looking at here, but it’s probably safe to assume that it’s nothing good. Could this be the poisonous Malice substance from Breath Of The Wild, perhaps upgraded in some way by green-tinged magic?
Some beautifully forboding orchestral music plays out, and a flaming torch is held up to some carvings on the wall. Link and Zelda move further into the dungeon, coming to a watery part of it. We also see the red branch-like things overpowering a small rat, and it seems to kill the rodent. This is a dangerous material, we’d assume, and it could well be Malice. Or a new strain of it.
Zelda and Link continue to look around, and they come to a somewhat broken bridge. It’s an eye-catching image, and it could well be symbolic, but it’s hard to glean any insights from a location like this without any context or explanation to go with it. Zelda holds up her torch and lets out a little gasp. The red gloopy branches, which really are starting to look like Malice, continue to spread.
The gloop seems to find what it’s looking for when it enters some skeletal remains and brings them back to life…
This resurrected character is not named by the trailer, but fans are already speculating that it could be Ganon, the monstrous menace that has acted as the main antagonist of the Zelda franchise since its very first installment.
Ganon played a major role in Breath Of The Wild, with his return after a dormant millennium being strongly foreshadowed throughout the game. And the Malice is a substance with close links to Ganon, of course.
Towards the end of Breath Of The Wild, the player went toe to toe with a warped version of Ganon called Calamity Ganon, who was desperate to properly resurrect himself. The player defeated Calamity Ganon at Hyrule Castle and then defeated him again on Hyrule Field, where Calamity Ganon attempted to unleash his wrath upon the world. We thought that Zelda, in releasing her full powers, had managed to destroy Ganon’s spirit for good. But what if that wasn’t the case?
Whether or not this resurrected skeleton is Ganon, he’s clearly a bad bloke. This reaction shot of Zelda shows her looking properly scared, which means we probably should be too…
The trailer builds up a terrifying tone, ramping up the pace and cutting quickly been images as the orchestral score swells up. It almost starts feeling like a trailer for a genuinely scary horror game.
But then, the music cuts out completely and we swap to a nice, peaceful shot of a familiar open world. You can ever hear the birds tweeting away. Ah, that’s better.
This world looks a lot like the Hyrule we explored in Breath Of The Wild. But just when those nostalgic feelings are starting to grow, and just when you think the trailer is going to end on a positive note, a rumbling sound plays out. It sounds like an earthquake. Could this beautiful landscape be in for a tough time?
Then we cut back to the green life force thingy that we saw at the start of the trailer. A heartbeat sound effect starts playing, bringing those thoughts of resurrection back into our minds.
Of course, it will be lovely to go back to Hyrule… but can we handle a villain like Ganon (if that is really him) who wants to rip this loveable landscape to shreds with some wanton earthquake-sized destruction (if that is really what we heard)? Can our nerves handle these horror vibes?
It’s all just ifs and buts at this stage, as this first trailer is intended to inspire questions rather than provide answers. Is Ganon really going to take human form and lay waste to Hyrule? We’ll just have to wait and see.
At the very end of the trailer, just to reassure us, Nintendo puts up some very welcome words on the screen: “The sequel to The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is now in development.” We’re very much up for it, but we do fear what the game could hold for the characters and places that we’ve come to love.
We’ll leave you to your own guesswork for now, but please feel free to put any ideas you’ve got in the comments section below. And as we hear more about Breath Of The Wild 2, or whatever this sequel ends up being called, we’ll be sure to let you know.