There were some interesting rumors from last month that I have yet to discuss and those revolve around recent codenames of Nintendo projects. Nintendo uses internal codenames for all their games and hardware, where in case of Zelda this has looked like the following on Nintendo 3DS and Switch:
- Knife: Four Swords Anniversary Edition
- Queen: Ocarina of Time 3D
- Joker: Majora's Mask 3D
- Jack: A Link Between Worlds
- Alice: Tri Force Heroes
- U-King: Breath of the Wild
- EX-King: Tears of the Kingdom
- Richard: Link's Awakening
- Shoebill: Skyward Sword HD
Source: The Cutting Room Floor
Yes, the codename of Tears of the Kingdom very blatantly labels the project as an expansion for Breath of the Wild, but that's not the point here. A leaker named Midori has recently shared some more project names from Nintendo and this is where it gets interesting. There is a bit of drama around this account right now, but overall it seems to be credible.
Anyway, the two codenames that I'm interested in are U-King-O and Edward. Project names with an additional letter at the end are often for remasters and ports, where the first one is seemingly a remaster of Breath of the Wild for the upcoming Nintendo Switch successor, codenamed "Ounce".
Apparently, Nintendo has demoed an enhanced version of Breath of the Wild at last year's Gamescom for select developers to show off the capabilities of their next system (source). This would be a similar story to Ocarina of Time 3D, which started as a tech demo for the Nintendo 3DS as well, before it became a dedicated project.
Since the next Nintendo system will likely be backwards compatible, I personally didn't expect to see a remaster of Breath of the Wild so soon, but after playing Tears of the Kingdom the game already feels a bit antiquated, because the "EX-King" came with so many improvements that all would be nice to have in the original game as well (more on that later).
As for "Edward", this could be a follow-up to Richard, where I'm really hoping to see a remake of Oracle of Ages & Seasons as well, maybe already in the upcoming June Nintendo Direct. Of course this doesn't necessarily have to be, but Richard and Edward seem to be somewhat related. Well, Richard is also a character from Link's Awakening and The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls, while there is no Edward in the Zelda series, but it's more likely that these are just supposed to be the names of British kings.
In the past most Zelda games were just codenamed as "king" in some form, e.g. DSking and wiiKing2 for Phantom Hourglass and Skyward Sword, which is even still true for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. But otherwise this seems to have evolved somewhat.
The most common suggestion I keep seeing is either The Wind Waker HD or Twilight Princess HD, mainly the latter, but if we still were to get them now for Nintendo Switch, they would be released as ports and their codenames would probably reflect this, e.g. "ckingS" for The Wind Waker HD on Switch. They could also go for both games in one, but I would expect this to be named "S-kings" or so. Of course there is no real science here and Nintendo will pick whatever they feel like, so I'm not claiming that "Edward" can't be Twilight Princess for Switch. I just don't think it's likely.
Alternatively, it could also be the codename of a brandnew top-down Zelda game, but I wouldn't expect this to be released on the Nintendo Switch still. I am currently predicting such a title for the upcoming Nintendo system, however, for reasons explained in January, and "Edward" could also be that game's codename. I would be quite sad if they completely skipped over the Oracle games, however...
Update: It's very likely that "Edward" is Echoes of Wisdom, the newly announced Zelda game in the style of Link's Awakening.
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