Breath of the Wild: Future Updates?

Breath of the Wild should be finally done - according to Aonuma in an interview with Famitsu, the Champions' Ballad DLC really was the finale (source). I already thought so, when they named the new dungeon "the Final Trial", because this gave it away quite clearly. But it's good to have an official confirmation.

So, we shouldn't expect a second Expansion Pass, because that doesn't seem like a thing for Nintendo. So far this only happened with Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U and only because they made a new version of the game for Nintendo 3DS and wanted to add the new characters and weapons to the old game as well. But with Breath of the Wild it is safe to assume that from now on they will put their focus on developing a sequel for the Nintendo Switch.

However, it's still entirely possibly that Breath of the Wild will receive further updates for free to improve the game and to add some little things. They could do another collaboration like they did for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or they might support any upcoming Zelda amiibo in the next year. A Spirit Tracks Toon Link amiibo for example, where you can receive the Engineer's Clothes and the Lokomo Sword in Breath of the Wild, would be fun. But most importantly they should still fix some smaller glitches, problems and oversights with the game.

I did compile similar lists in the past, like this one back in May, and most of the mentioned improvements still hold, if they weren't fixed already... But with this post I want to focus on the bullet points, where I think that there's still a chance that Nintendo might actually do something about them in potential updates. They have shown with past updates (specifically 1.3.1 and 1.3.3) that they are willing to fix and improve certain things, so this is where I draw my hopes from.

I apologize, if I sound like a broken record about some of it, but it's better to repeat these issues, before they end up as unheard, especially now that Miiverse is gone, where Nintendo previously got lots of feedback for their games.

MUST FIX

This stuff was broken from the beginning and it should be Nintendo's obligation to finally fix them:

• Fix the unobtainable chests
  There's a series of chests in the game that you just can't get. One at/under Hateno Village, one at/under Rassla Lake, one at Aris Beach and one at/under the Old Man's Hut (if you did get the Warm Doublet from him directly). Those still tickle your Sheikah Sensor+, if it's set for treasure chests, but there's no way to currently get them, except for the one at Aris Beach, where you might be able to break it free with a lot of Magnesis work:
  
  
  
  Screenshot by HylianAngel @ GameFAQs
  
  Anyway, with the Master Trials DLC update they actually added another glitched chest at Mount Drena, which kept falling from the sky, which they had fixed with version 1.3.3. But for some reason they haven't bothered with the other chests yet and it's our job as fans to keep reminding them.
  
  
• Expand the Armor Inventory
  The inventory of Breath of the Wild can extend to five pages of armor, where you're limited to a total of 100 armor pieces. Too bad that after the release of the Champions' Ballad there are currently 107 individual armor pieces in the game, so no player can ever have a full collection. They probably didn't anticipate for the Salvage Gear set and the four Divine Beast helmets, when Nintendo planned the inventory space, because those are exactly the seven overshoots. Nonetheless they should expand the armor inventory by at least one page, especially if they ever consider to add even more armor via amiibo or as promotional content.
  
  This can be solved very simply by just adding the space, but a more interesting solution would be buying additional pages for armor (and maybe also food) from Hestu. This would kill two birds with one stone, because there are currently 459 useless Korok Seeds in the game, where there's no good reason to collect them all. Expanding armor and food should be much more expensive to a point, where all 459 leftover seeds are completely used up. But this is for the completionist's sake and a completionist probably wouldn't mind collecting more, if not all Korok Seeds to have enough room for all his armor in the end.
  
  
  
  
  
• UPDATE: Fix the missable Thunder Helm
  With the limited armor inventory there's also another issue related to it, where you can actually miss the Thunder Helm, when you receive it from Riju, while your current armor inventory is full. You won't be noticed and the helm is simply gone. Players, who have missed the helm before, should be able to get it back after the update by talking to Riju. And this also makes expanding the armor inventory much more important.
  

NICE TO HAVE

The following isn't really a must and with some it feels like Nintendo purposefully doesn't want to do any of it, but I still think that the game would be much rounder and complete, if Nintendo would provide these improvements:

• Let us climb in the rain without slipping
  That's probably the most requested feature for this game. Climbing is a big part of what makes Breath of the Wild so fun, but even light drizzle will kill this fun in an instant, because climbing wet surfaces makes you slip, where it takes about four times as long and wastes a huge amount of stamina. It's one of the bigger "obstacles" in the game, but it's just random and probably every player would expect some armor ability to negate the slipping later in the game. But there isn't.
  
  Curiously, the Climbing Gear and Climbing Boots already talk about "no-slip gloves" and "no-slip toes" in their description, but this only makes you climb faster. A patch would simply deliver the promised ability or they could add another pair of boots that does the job.
  
  
• Set Bonus for alternate headgear
  There's plenty of expansive jewelry in the game, which you could wear as an alternative to the different helmets or topknots that sometimes look quite goofy. But sadly most of the jewelry is useless, because they don't provide the Set Bonus that you have normally with the other headgear. The same applies to Sheik's Mask and the Stealth Set. Ideally it would work like in the following example, where the Diamond Circlet still provides the "Ancient Proficiency" Set Bonus together with the Ancient Cuirass and the Ancient Greaves:
  
  
  
  
  Curiously, when Nintendo added the four Divine Beast Helms in version 1.3.3, they did think of that! They all give the "Ancient Proficiency" Set Bonus like they should. All Nintendo would have to do is make this work with the other examples.
  
  
• Enhancements for the Kilton and EX Armor
  By now there are many armor pieces in the game that just can't be enhanced. It started with the items from Kilton's shop, mainly the infamous Dark Link Set, but absolutely all of the DLC armor can't be enhanced as well. In the end all what Nintendo would have to do is define a list of material requirements, so you can upgrade all the stuff at the Great Fairies:
  
  
  
  
  With some of the DLC armor there might be a good reason, why you can't upgrade them. Especially Majora's Mask and the Phantom Armor seem broken for items that you can get very early in the game (which is another problem that can't be fixed anymore). But that doesn't mean that all of the DLC armor has to go without enhancements, especially when most of these items become so inferior later in the game that most players probably won't use them at all, which is a shame.
  
  Previously there was another big issue around DLC armor, where you couldn't re-purchase them. Nintendo did fix this in version 1.3.3 and there's still hope that they might add some enhancements to the DLC armor as well to finally make them equal to most of the base game armor.
  
  
• Dye some of the amiibo and EX Armor
  Similar to how you can't upgrade all of the DLC armor, you also can't dye any of it. And while you can enhance the amiibo stuff, you can't dye them all either. It's understandable with some of the items, but most of it just seems like a case of Nintendo being lazy, because they would have to provide the additional skins for each color.
  
  But it would be really nice to be able to dye some of it. For example some might want to have a red and blue Cap and Tunic of Time to emulate the Goron and Zora Tunic from Ocarina of Time. And with the Cap and Tunic of the Wind it would be awesome to create a set in the Four Swords colors. Or lets dye Tingle's Set in the colors of his siblings. Combined with more armor inventory space this could even motivate players to collect dyed duplicates of many of the sets. Even more stuff to do in the game!
  
  You can actually dye all four Divine Beast Helms, by the way. It seems like with these items Nintendo really thought of everything, but why not with all the other stuff?
  
  
• Manual Inventory Sorting
  This might not seem that important, but it's still a frequent request, where players simply want to arrange everything in the inventory how they see fit by pressing the L-Stick or alike. Since the game already remembers the order of how you got the items, this shouldn't be hard to implement.
  
  On a side note, the Armor Inventory still could use other "quality of life" features like a quick equip, where pressing the X-button will equip the entire set for example.
  
  
• Regional map completion data
  When you start the game, you can see the outlines on the map for the different regions like the Great Plateau, Hyrule Field, West and East Necluda or Akkala. Those lines disappear eventually, when you start to conquer all the towers. With such a feature you could display the regions again by pressing a button and see for each area, if you got all Shrines, Korok Seeds, overworld bosses and maybe even treasure chests. This would help tremendously with completing everything, because you have a way to divide these massive tasks, instead of looking all over the massive world for that last shrine or Korok.
  
  Past Zelda games even offered similar features already, so it's kind of weird that they deliberately removed this in a game of such a large scale, while at the same time they added Poe Soul counters for each area in Twilight Princess HD...
  
  
• Reset function for Hero's Path Mode
  This is probably self-explanatory. The Hero's Path Mode adds a nice feature to your map, where you can track your last 200 hours of movements on the overworld. But if you want to clear the data, then that's currently not possible. Well, why would you even want to do this? For example when you start looking for all Koroks with the Korok Mask, it's useful to know where you've been for that time only. Or maybe you just want to get rid of those death marks that the One-Hit Obliterator trial left you with...
  
  
• Prevent a few Hyrule Compendium Omissions
  For no good reason, few of the weapons in the game don't get replenished. This includes the Forest Dweller's Sword (there is one at the Test of Wood, but you can't keep or drop it), the Kite Shield and various lower level Lynel gear. Nintendo would just have to put new resources for this stuff somewhere, which they partially even did for the Lynel gear in Master Mode.
  
  Also, there's currently a small issue in the game, where you can't buy the new EX pictures from Symin, if you previously completed Hyrule Compendium and received the Classified Envelope. It's not a big problem, because all of the new EX entries can be photographed at any time, but it's still an annoyance for those, who prefer to buy the better stock photos.

Let's hope that Nintendo is willing to release additional updates in the future and fix at least some of these points with them. Miss anything? Let me know in the comments!