Breath of the Wild: Five Years

Five years ago today, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released on Wii U and the Nintendo Switch. It was on that day that many players have experienced the infamous and beautiful scene on the cliff in the middle of the Great Plateau for the first time, with the view of the gigantic new Hyrule unfolding before them. Breath of the Wild is a monumental entry to the series, which has greatly influenced the open world genre and will shape the Zelda series for many years to come, much like Ocarina of Time before it.

With over 26 million copies sold, it became the most successful Zelda game by a gigantic margin, a number that will be very hard to top in the future. This success essentially spawned a franchise of its own, where Breath of the Wild got its own of everything: merchandise, an amiibo line, an artbook, even an entire Hyrule Warriors game all dedicated to itself. You could even distinct between classic Zelda, with all the games part of Hyrule Historia, and modern Zelda with Breath of the Wild, where the title has left all the other legends far behind on the timeline.

It was a fresh take on Zelda in many ways, where it finally brought the focus back on what may be the most important thing in a Zelda game: exploration. It is unrivaled in giving the player freedom, especially with the ability to climb and glide almost everywhere, as well as employing an intricate physics system for solving all sorts of problems in all sorts of ways.

Now, five years later and after playing Breath of the Wild for hundreds of hours, the fans really only have one question in mind: Where is the sequel? Will the sequel to Breath of the Wild really come out in 2022?

Well... the answer is probably "no". Sure, Nintendo has still listed the game for a 2022 release in their latest financial reports, where the media took this as a re-confirmation, but you shouldn't read too much into that. That's still the release date they gave at E3 2021, where even if their plans have changed internally, they will announce this separately to the public once they are ready. And until then they will go with the given placeholder date of "2022".

Of course it's still possible that it may come out in this year, but it already feels very crowded in 2022. We're getting Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, and Bayonetta 3. A couple of days ago, for Pokémon Day, it was also announced that Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are coming to the Nintendo Switch in late 2022, which can be seen as Nintendo's big holiday hit.

2022 is going to be a fantastic year for Nintendo, even without the sequel to Breath of the Wild, and it's also going to be a year full of massive open world titles and large-scale Action Adventures all around. Pokémon Legends Arceus, Dyling Light 2, Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring were all already released this year, and there are many more to come, including God of War Ragnarök... There will be a huge fatigue when it comes to Action Adventures of this magnitude later in 2022, which isn't exactly a good position for the sequel to Breath of the Wild to be in, no matter how great the game might be. Nintendo will want it to get as much attention as possible, where it's best to wait until the current tide is over.

And with that in mind, an early 2023 release doesn't feel out of place, which still is part of Nintendo's fiscal year 2022 anyway.  The same thing happened with Breath of the Wild, which originally was planned for 2016, where history could repeat itself with its sequel, starting with an extensive showcase in June. Come to think of it, March 3rd 2023 will be on a Friday again, where the sequel could be released on the exact date of the sixth anniversary of Breath of the Wild.

In that case the game would also have gotten the exact same development time frame as Breath of the Wild did with a little over five years, considering that the development started at the end of the DLC Expansion Pass in late 2017. It all would add up.

Additionally, the game could get into the same position as Breath of the Wild (and Twilight Princess), where it becomes the launch title for the next Nintendo system. Let's not dive into any "Nintendo Switch Plus" rumors at this point, but Nintendo has been releasing a new model of the Nintendo Switch every second year, where in 2023 we could finally see a second generation for the system. The Nintendo Switch has become quite outdated from a technical view, where players and developers alike would love to get their hands on something with more power.

A new Nintendo Switch will most likely be backwards compatible and here it's thinkable the sequel to Breath of the Wild could make use of the new system's power somehow, but also run on old Nintendo Switch systems, basically like certain GameBoy Color titles did early on, e.g. Link's Awakening DX.

Anyway, as for 2022, the obligatory Zelda release of the year could just be ports of The Wind Waker HD + Twilight Princess HD as a two-in-one package, so that the Nintendo Switch will have the entire collection of 3D Zelda games available before the sequel to Breath of the Wild comes out.