Sunday, February 12, 2017

Breath of the Wild: amiibo Speculation

In less than three weeks we will all be able to play Breath of the Wild in our homes and add a bunch of amiibo to our collections, where the game even gets its own amiibo line, separate from the The Legend of Zelda line, that has been established already. And it's weird that we don't know already what they will do. But we can always speculate (again)!

So, these five amiibo have been announced for Breath of the Wild and will be available at March 3rd::

  • Archer Link
  • Rider Link
  • Guardian
  • Zelda
  • Bokoblin

The functions of the 30th Anniversary amiibo also have been announced, where each of them lets you have a delivery of goods. Also, there is the Wolf Link amiibo that lets you summon Wolf Link. All of the amiibo seem to be used by the "amiibo Rune" of the Sheikah Slate and they all seem to function in a similar way, where they let you spawn or summon something right in front of you. And this might also apply to all the Breath of the Wild amiibo.


It's kind of obvious with what Archer Link and Rider Link will do in that case. Archer Link will basically work like the Link and Toon Link amiibo in Twilight Princess HD and will supply you with arrows, probably even bows. There might also be a chance of getting the rare "Tek Arrows", which let you destroy the Guardians with one shot. The Archer Link figurine is even using one of these arrows!

Rider Link simply summons a random horse in front of you, in case you ever need one. The only question is, how this will work, if there are indeed different mounts for different regions, but then the horse amiibo could simply give you a walrus instead. Or we will have separate figurines for this in the future.

The Guardian might be there for a challenge, where it lets you summon a hostile Guardian right in front of you, which you can fight for fun. It might also be that the summoned Guardian isn't in a corrupted state and will support you instead, but in that case they might have colored the figurine differently. And if the Guardians in the game really turn out to be limited (which means that they do not respawn after being destroyed once), it will be good to have some way to let them loose again, where the amiibo figurine seems like a fun idea to implement that. The Bokoblin figurine might just do the same thing with a horde of Bokoblins, which you can call for your destructive pleasures, whenever you want.

With Zelda it's not so obvious and it would be boring, if the figurine simply gives you another health recovery supply, where the 30th Anniversary amiibo already got you more than covered. But if the whole buddy system turns out to be a real thing, the amiibo might just let you summon Zelda at any time like Wolf Link, so you can have her at your side. It might not be the actual Zelda, because this probably wouldn't make sense from a story point, but it could be like a "hologram" enabled by the Sheikah Technology, which does fit the whole mechanic, where you're using the amiibo via your Sheikah Slate.

Whenever I finish the Earth Temple in the Wind Waker, I'm sad that I have to leave Medli behind, because I really enjoy having her at my side. amiibo might be Nintendo's costly solution for that, where the figurines let you bring the characters back into the game. But it does fit the concept of amiibo quite well. It brings the figurines to life in the game, but at the same time you're not missing out anything essential, if you don't want to buy or can't buy amiibo, because you can still play with the characters during the respective points in the story. The amiibo are just for some fun later.

And you can even take this idea further, where all the supporting characters will get their own amiibo figurine at some point. I'd expect the Breath of the Wild line to be expanded by the following four figurines later on:

  • Darkel, the Goron
  • Mifa, the Zora girl
  • Reebal, the Rito
  • The Gerudo girl


They do all look like catchy figurine material and the figurines might be a way to bring them back to your side at any point later in the game. The only drawback would be that these figurines might not work, until you have progressed enough in the game. But that's fine, if the figurines will be released at a later date, and it might also explain, why Nintendo hasn't revealed the amiibo functionalities yet, since they might not want to spoil as much of the game this time.

Also, there might be a fallback for all amiibo, where you get something for scanning any amiibo that you have. Like scanning any amiibo in Hyrule Warriors other than the supported characters will give you some random materials, weapons or Rupees. This will probably be the same for Breath of the Wild, where it doesn't even seem like any of the Super Smash Bros. Zelda amiibo are directly supported. But they also might just give you certain supplies, where it would be fun, if scanning Sheik will give you Sheikah technology gears.

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