Image: Nintendo
Nintendo has delayed its sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to next year.
In a new video directed to fans of The Legend of Zelda, series producer Eiji Aonuma has announced that the upcoming sequel to Breath of the Wild has been delayed to Spring 2023. The development team had previously announced that it was ‘aiming’ for a 2022 launch during E3 2021, but those plans have since changed.
Eiji Aonuma says in the video that, “we have decided to extend our development time a bit and change the release to spring 2023. For those of you who have been looking forward to a release this year, we apologise.” Nintendo still hasn’t revealed the official title for Breath of the Wild 2, saying that it might give away certain story elements too early. Maybe we’ll only learn what the game is actually called during its ending credits. Who knows?
Breath of the Wild 2 will use the open world environment of post-apocalyptic Hyrule introduced in the original game, but with an expanded scope that includes the skies above. Link will be able to fly into the air to explore new floating structures, while Hyrule Castle hovers ominously in the distance under mysterious circumstances. An earlier teaser featured Link and Zelda exploring a cave while Ganon’s corpse seemingly comes back to life. Today’s video also shows off a few seconds of Link unsheathing his Master Sword - but it looks pretty broken. Weapon durability gets us all in the end.
Even with this delay, Nintendo has a ton of game releases lined up for 2022. Bayonetta 3, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Mario Strikers and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are all slated for a release later this year. The Breath of the Wild sequel would have undoubtedly been Nintendo’s biggest release this year, but there’s still plenty for Nintendo Switch owners to look forward to.
Until the game launches, we’ll just have to keep scanning this teaser for clues and pray more information arrives during E3 2022: