After two years of no news and plenty of fan speculation, Nintendo has finally shown off the forthcoming sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The gameplay trailer closed out their E3 Direct this year, featuring some familiar enemies and environments while also showing off new mechanics and locales for players to visit. The trailer kept to the dark tone established in the game’s reveal trailer from 2019, showing off more of what appears to be the desiccated corpse of Ganon doing presumably creepy and nefarious things.
The big reveal from the gameplay footage was that the explorable regions of Hyrule have been expanded to include islands floating in the sky over the main landmass. Link is shown falling through the clouds with several of these islands passing by around him, a mechanic not unlike one seen in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a game that is seeing an HD re-release on the Nintendo Switch next month.
The other notable gameplay addition appears to be a robotic arm or gauntlet for Link that offers similar functions to the Sheikah Slate from the first game. One ability shown in the trailer involves an evolution of the Stasis ability that now appears to allow Link to rewind time. In fact, the ability to rewind time seems to be a theme for the game if this trailer is anything to go by.
The trailer ends with the ominous image of Hyrule castle breaking free of its foundation and floating up into the sky while surrounded by a red miasma before revealing a release window of 2022. Next year will see the Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild turn five, so it stands to reason that we would see this new iteration come out then. This year marks The Legend of Zelda’s 35th anniversary so we can expect more news about Breath of the Wild 2 sometime later this year or early next year as we get closer to the release date.
