Both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are going to be relaunched on June 5th with their Nintendo Switch 2 Editions. You can just pick up from where you have left on the Nintendo Switch or potentially even start all over again, using the second save files. Or maybe you will be playing them for the first time ever.
Whatever is the case, thanks to the power of the Nintendo Switch 2, both titles should be free from any limitations of their previous systems, so you can enjoy them with smooth frame rates even when there is a lot going on at once. And with that in mind, this opens the doors for new possibilities, which brings us back to the idea of a Shrine Maker, an idea as old as Breath of the Wild itself.
The Basics
First, let's run through the basics again, but with some refinements. This will be Zelda's equivalent to the Super Mario Maker, but instead of 2D platformer levels you will be making 3D mini-dungeons. This will set it apart from both the Super Mario Maker, but also something like the Super Dungeon Maker, which was inspired by traditional top-down Zelda dungeons. It will utilize a similar interface to the Puzzle Creator from Portal 2, where you carve out a 3D space via a voxel-based grid, while making good use of the different assets from Breath and Tears.
Each level has an entrance and you will have to reach the shrine at the end, which is essentially your flag pole. Both can be freely placed by the person designing the level, and whatever challenges await the player between is also up to that person, where they could design a puzzle, or have the player defeat enemies in a series of rooms (like the Trial of the Sword). But in order to upload a level you will need to beat it yourself first.
Clearing a shrine will reward the players with something akin to the Spirit Orbs or Lights of Blessing, let's call them "Hero Tokens", where four tokens can be traded for either a Heart Container or a Stamina Vessel, just like in the main games. The maximum is the same as in Tears of the Kingdom, so 40 hearts and three stamina wheels, where unlike in the main games you can actually maximize both here, since there is technically an infinite number of tokes to obtain.
Designers can define a recommended value of hearts and stamina for their trials and they will have to beat the shrine with these prerequisites, but players are not bound to them, so they can try their luck with less or completely steamroll shrines that are meant for beginners.
As additional rewards, the shrines can contain optional treasure chests with Rupees in them. The system will be similar to the Chamber Dungeon from Link's Awakening, meaning that their value will be determined by the shrines theoretical difficulty. Of course, this system still can be cheesed somehow, e.g. by making a shrine full of strong foes that can be avoided, but you won't just be able to create a shrine that offers a hundred chests filled with Gold Rupees. Replaying shrines will also lower the value of Rupees obtained from any previously opened chests and you can't get a token from the same shrine twice.
Rupees then can be used to purchase and enhance armor, which the players can freely equip before a trial... given that the trial allows it. Tokens will also be required to enhance your armor, so that they still have a usage once you've maximized your stats. The available armor will offer anything from the main games that can be somehow useful in a trial, which is most of it. They can also be dyed, where applicable, for an amount of Rupees – you don't need to collect any other materials here.
So, unlike Super Mario Maker, this game will offer constant progression, which will allow you to overcome more difficult challenges. A number of default trials that come with the game could even give you a basic goal, without the need of dealing with player-created content.
There even could be an actual story, taking place after the events of Tears of the Kindom. Purah discovers a plethora of ancient shrines all hidden deep under the earth and sends Link to investigate them, by teleporting him directly into the shrines. Simple, but effective.
Inventory
As already mentioned, players are able to equip a set of armor before starting a trial, where they can pick whatever they feel is best suited for them, given that they have unlocked it, and can also mix and match pieces as they see fit. Set Bonuses still apply, so you could use an enhanced Flamebreaker set to avoid fire damage. But you won't be able to change armor in the middle of a trial, unless certain pieces are given to you as part of the challenge.
Players will also be equipped with the basic Master Sword and – unlike in the main games – it will not break, so you will always have a fallback weapon. There will also be plenty of mechanics to ensure that the players won't run out of necessary resources to beat a trial, where weapons can respawn or fruits will regrow. Potentially, you could even make select weapons unbreakable as well.
However, the creator still has the option to make limited resources part of the challenge. They can also make their trial a "Proving Grounds", in which case the player won't be able to choose armor and won't have the Master Sword. The creator can give them a set of pre-defined armor, however.
In any case, you will have access to the Paraglider, where all the different fabrics could return as another unlockable, whether that's from amiibo, from Rupees, or both. Potentially, you could also have the Earthwake as a fallback for when you have no weapons. And the other key item(s) may be determined by what type of shrine we're looking at...
Sheikah or Zonai?
The most important choice when creating a level is whether you want to build an Ancient Sheikah Shrine or a Zonai Shrine of Light. It's a choice made upfront, because this will not only alter the aesthetics, but also the different gameplay elements, where unlike in Super Mario Maker they won't be easily interchangeable. The main reasons for such a split are Fuse and the Ultrahand.
Fuse, in particular, changes heavily what kind of equipment you should have access to. Tears of the Kingdom only had very basic weapons and plain arrows, where you are meant to fuse them with materials or other weapons. It's not really compatible with all the advanced weapons you had in Breath of the Wild, which is why they got cut. What would happen if you were to fuse an opal to a Flameblade, for example? Would their elemental effects cancel each other out? Nintendo probably didn't want to bother with figuring out such questions, since Fuse is already insanely complex as it is.
So, when going for a Sheikah Shrine, you may not be able to fuse things any longer, but you will have access to all the weaponry from Breath of the Wild, including the different arrow types. Maybe there could even be new ones, like Water and Wind Arrows, just to give you a bit more of the versatility of Fuse without having Fuse.
Ultrahand on the other hand relies a lot on the different Zonai devices. Of course, they could simply make a Sheikah variant of everything, so it's not necessarily a limitation by style, but it would make sense from a lore perspective and also makes it clear right from the start what type you're dealing with.
Let's say that Link obtains some sort of Zonai bracelet, which gives him access to Fuse, Ultrahand, Ascend and Recall again. But it's only active within the Shrines of Light. Likewise, there could be a "Purah Pad 2" (as a nod to the Nintendo Switch 2), which by default gives you the Camera Rune and maybe the compendium. But within a Sheikah Shrine it draws power from them to enable Bombs and Stasis (in their enhanced form), as well as Magnesis and Cryonis. There could even be Bombchus as a third type of bomb and maybe you could use Cryonis on lava in this game to create rock platforms.
But throwing materials will work in any type of shrine, so finding a Sapphire would be actually useful in a Sheikah Shrine for some freezing blasts. In general, the quick inventory management will be based on Tears of the Kingdom, so you can quickly drop stuff and so on.
There also shouldn't be any limitations regarding enemies, other than what kind of weapons they are able to wield. But you could theoretically deploy a Guardian in a Shrine of Light, or a Gloom Spawn within a Sheikah Shrine. The only exception might be the Constructs due to their ability to fuse, but otherwise that's something where you could break completely loose from the usual shrine conventions, where you only ever face either Guardians or Constructs. Instead, you can have any type of enemy, even overworld bosses, similar to the Trial of the Sword. But Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity already has done this as well with its Coliseum challenges.
And this does not only concern the monsters, but other elements as well. You wouldn't normally find a cooking pot within a shrine, but this could be something that can be placed nevertheless. They could even go wild and include all sorts of recurring structures from the overworld, like trees or the skull caves... Again, the Trial of the Sword already did the same, even though it is not a real shrine, but a trial of the mind.
Themes
Well, if we really were restricted to only having the blue Sheikah Shrines and the green Shrines of Light, then the visual variety of the game would suffer quite a bit. It's already a major complaint about both Nintendo Switch games that their shrines all look the same. One way to avoid this would be a number of skins, which can be freely swapped during creation.
The first thing that comes to mind are the Divine Beasts as an alternative to your typical Sheikah Shrine. The Final Trial from The Champions' Ballad shows how those aesthetics can be used to create something that was essentially a larger shrine. There could also be a twisted Yiga Shrine variant, where everything is in red/orange and the Sheikah symbols are upside down.
As for the Shrines of Light, maybe let's reduce those lights and go for a "Zonai Mining Facility" variant, where they are placed within the Depths and give the same gloomy feel. There could also be a theme based on the ancient Zonai ruins, like the Lomei Labyrinths.
If we wanted the fanbase to lose their minds, however, there could even be styles based on past Zelda titles. The most obvious example is something based on the Palace of Twilight from Twilight Princess, which feels like a predecessor to the whole magical technology theme from the later games. In such a case you wouldn't just want it to be a visual theme, however, but also something that alters part of the sound effects or potentially even some of the gameplay elements. For example, instead of the usual metallic orbs, you could have Sols. And the sockets that are activated by these orbs could get a corresponding reskin.
Technically, this could even warrant a third main variant of shrines – Shrines of Twilight essentially, or Twilit Shrines –, where they could take things even further, maybe even re-introduce enemies like the Shadow Beasts. But with such a project they would probably just want to focus on re-using the assets from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom one more time.
Another good candidate for a classic theme would be the Tower of the Gods from The Wind Waker. It also gives similar vibes of ancient technology and fits the whole "trial for the hero" concept that these shrines all go for. Naturally, such classic themes would have to be created within the engine and visual style of the new games.
Only on Nintendo Switch 2
This whole idea isn't new and Nintendo could theoretically already have done this on the current Nintendo Switch, as a direct follow-up to the two games that this based upon. However, like with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, there might be a number of advantages of having this exclusive to the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2.
- Performance. That's the obvious reason, where both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom don't always ruin smoothly on the Nintendo Switch. Rest assured that things will be tested to the extreme with such a tool, where creators will certainly throw too many monsters at you. But at least you will have stable 60FPS when you fight those dozen Lynels all at once.
- Mouse controls. This new Joy-Con feature will certainly make it a lot more convenient to control a level editor in 3D. Pointer and touchscreen controls will still work as well, but won't be as comfortable.
If the next Zelda game continues the open world direction, then it will likely have shrines again, or at least something similar that works mini-dungeons. And if the next game were to continue the Breath of the Wild brand, then it would be possible to expand a shrine maker with everything new. Maybe it won't even come out before, so it will already feature the next game and its shrines as the basis, but also still supports everything from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
