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Can A Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Sequel Top The Original?

• Mike Guarino
• June 12th, 2019

During Nintendo’s E3 2019-focused Direct broadcast they made many big announcements, but none were bigger than the surprise announcement of a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild served as a launch title for the massively-successful Switch console, and it went on to become one of the best-reviewed games of all time.

While the prospects of a sequel is of course something that has gotten fans excited, the question is whether or not it’s possible to match or even top that game. In this article we’ll dive into what Breath of the Wild did so right, while also taking a look at things a sequel could improve upon.

Open-World Hyrule

If there’s one thing that everyone agrees that Breath of the Wild did phenomenally, it’s the open-world that Nintendo created. The land of Hyrule is bursting with things to do and places to explore, and there’s a constant pull on the player to venture off the beaten path just to see what they might find. We got a quick look at that same Hyrule in the sequel trailer, though it looks like some changes could be headed our way. If Nintendo can offer new environments in an open world that’s just as inviting as the first game did then they’re on the right path.

Weapon Durability

This part of the game is more controversial, as depending on who you ask will result in a very different opinion. Breath of the Wild is the first game in the series to introduce this concept, as Link’s weapons would break after using them for a certain amount of time. This allowed for a lot of weapon variety to play around with, though it also resulted in a lot of annoyances for the player each time a weapon broke. I’m not sure Nintendo should nix this idea entirely, but perhaps making it so that weapons lasted longer or having a way to repair them on the fly would be nice.

Story

The game’s narrative is another point of contention, as it kind of put it on the back burner in favor giving the player more time to explore this huge world. It’s a shame too, because the brief story bits that are present here are very good. Some late game revelations lead to some emotional scenes, though they didn’t make as big of an impact as they could have due to a lack of a more traditional storyline. If Nintendo can offer more story in the sequel then we’ll be very happy.

Dungeons

Instead of offering a handful of dungeons as the games did previously, Breath of the Wild instead offered over 100 mini-dungeons called Shrines. These offered more bite-sized bits of puzzle gameplay for the player to play around with, without taking them out of the open world for too long. It was an interesting change of pace, but after going through most of them we couldn’t help but wish that there were fewer, yet more in-depth shrines to take on. It would be great to see more intricate Shrines that demanded more from the player did than Shrines from Breath of the Wild.

It remains to be seen when the sequel to the latest Zelda game releases, but it obviously has a lot to live up to. However, Nintendo does have certain things that they could improve upon in a sequel, which could potentially make it even better.