The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did a great job at reinvigorating Nintendo’s long-running action-adventure series, breathing (groan) new life into the rather staid state of open-world games. A follow up has been rumoured for a while, and these have now been given credence by series producer Eiji Aonuma.
In a series of tweets about a new Breath of the Wild book, Source Gaming has reported Aonuma’s confirmation that work on the next Zelda has already begun.
The site followed this up with a note that work on Breath of the Wild started shortly after the launch of previous entry Skyward Sword, so having a new game in the works is hardly unprecedented for the Nintendo team. Still, it’s nice to look ahead to future adventures for Link.
New Legend of Zelda game: Release date
Work has apparently begun on the next Legend of Zelda game, although this could mean any number of things from early storyboards to brainstorming sessions. In all likeliness, a fully-fledged follow up to Breath of the Wild is quite a few years away. For context, Breath of the Wild came out six years after Skyward Sword, which was released five years after Twilight Princess.
In the interim between these tent pole entries is a number of smaller Zelda games, including the 3DS games Phantom Hourglass and A Link Between Worlds. We may see a similarly minor Zelda game in the next couple of years, but a bigger title is likely to be at least five years away.
New Legend of Zelda game: Could it be a remake?
One rumour about the next Zelda game is that it will be a remake of an older game, specifically a rehash of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for 3DS. This theory is reported in Gamerant, which cites one Marcus Sellars as the source of the rumour. Sellars writes from a number of Nintendo-focused publications, and claims the project is being handled by Grezzo; the studio that worked on the handheld remakes of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask.
A Nintendo Direct event is rumoured to be happening in January, although this has yet to be confirmed by the company. If there is a Direct, it could be an opportunity for the studio to reveal a supposed remake of Link’s Awakening.
As for the next blockbuster Zelda game, don’t expect to hear anything about that for at least three or four years. On a positive note, a recent IGN interview with Nintendo’s Hidemaro Fujibayashi suggests the Breath of the Wild director is full of ideas for future adventures:
“I can’t say at this point if it will be in sequels or in continuations, or what form it will take, but I definitely have lots of ideas and lots of motivation right now. I think while we were working on both the main game and the DLC, it was a process of constantly getting lots of different, new ideas as we refined the game, and finding new things we wanted to do. Even in situations like this, talking to people and finding out that people want to pet dogs gives me a lot of motivation, a lot of ideas for things we could put into the game.”
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