What Breath of the Wild 2 Plot Details Age of Calamity Reveals

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was announced out of nowhere, and just from what little details Nintendo and Koei Tecmo showed off in its reveal trailer, it’s easy to make some educated guesses about how the game will impact The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2. Nintendo has remained very quiet about first-party IPs for the majority of 2020, but after the reveal of Super Mario 3D-All Stars and Age of Calamity, fans are relieved to finally see the company’s holiday lineup.

The last bit of official information concerning The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 was released during E3 2019, but Eji Aonuma mentioned the title in the Age of Calamity presentation. The developers have been working on the game, but there’s still no official release window or any additional details. However, he mentioned that Age of Calamity is a way to quench the thirst of Breath of the Wild fans while they await its upcoming sequel, so it’s fair to expect that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 won’t be reaching store shelves likely until much later next year.

As its name implies, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will be a continuation of the original Hyrule Warriors from a gameplay perspective, but with a vastly different premise for its plot. Hyrule Warriors was a love letter to the Zelda series that uncanonically linked most of the major titles together by merging their worlds and characters, but Age of Calamity is instead a prequel to Breath of the Wild that focuses on the events that led up to Link’s 100-year slumber before the 2017 epic begins.

How Age of Calamity Will Influence BOTW 2

Because Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is going to focus entirely on what happens to Link and the other champions before Breath of the Wild, it’s unlikely that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 will rely on flashbacks to tell its story like the original game. Breath of the Wild is often criticized for its lack of meaningful plot points in the present, because most of the interesting details in the game’s story take place before Link’s quest even begins. Most of those details were left ambiguous, so many fans were hoping The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 would cover these missing plot points. Since Age of Calamity is doing precisely that, those aforementioned missing flashbacks would come across as redundant rather than fascinating if they did show up.

What this ultimately means is that Breath of the Wild 2’s story is far more likely to focus on something entirely new and be based in the present. It’s all but confirmed that the mummified being surrounded by swirling blue lights in the cave is Ganondorf, who wasn’t even mentioned in the first game. Breath of the Wild 2 may reference events from Age of Calamity, but it’s almost certain that the majority of the game’s story will be focused on the new catastrophe created by Ganondorf instead of Calamity Ganon. Nintendo has intelligently freed up the possibilities for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2‘s story by allowing Age of Calamity to show the details of Breath of the Wild’s ambiguous war, which will only make the highly-anticipated sequel more unique and special.

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