Zelda: BOTW 2’s Best Feature Would Be Zero Shrines

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild utilized Ancient Shrines to present players with entertaining puzzles and a straightforward way to acquire power-ups, but Breath of the Wild 2 should avoid including these areas in favor of new activities. While Nintendo hasn’t released much concerning BOTW 2, it’s confirmed to take place in the same world as BOTW. This means that fans can expect familiarity with the world, characters, and more. Unfortunately, it might also result in some reused assets that threaten the product’s final image. By eliminating BOTW 2’s Ancient Shrines, the game has the opportunity to expand its puzzle mechanics.

Breath of the Wild 2‘s timeline starts two years after Breath of the Wild, but little else is known about the game. Nintendo has yet to reveal the game’s official title and limited trailers to brief, cinematic shots and art. Since the Age of Calamity takes place in a separate universe than Breath of the Wild, it’s likely for the game to utilize new characters and storylines or remaster popular titles like Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask. With the risk of reusing assets and stories, Breath of the Wild 2 needs to reach its potential with unique mechanics and exciting changes from the first game.

Ancient Shrines are fast travel locations littered throughout the map that take players to subterranean arenas and puzzles. Some pit the player and Link against BOTW’s Guardians and other robotic enemies, while others force them to use abilities on the Sheikah Slate to solve dozens of unique puzzles. Though some incorporate meta mechanics with the Nintendo Switch’s motion controls, the Ancient Shrines mainly represented Legend of Zelda’s puzzle-game roots. While the source material for Shrines produces enjoyable challenges, Breath of the Wild 2 can improve the mechanics.

Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 Needs Open World Puzzles

While it can be simpler for developers to designate separate areas to allocate puzzles, implementing puzzles into the open world can vastly improve the design of Breath of the Wild’s puzzles. Breath of the Wild’s greatest strength is its open world, which swiftly became the benchmark for the other big open world games. Unfortunately, while Ancient Shrines provided a typical landmark and sense of familiarity for players, it also held BOTW back from implementing more puzzles throughout the world. By removing Ancient Shrines, Breath of the Wild 2 can utilize more assets in the open world and create more intensive (and interesting) puzzles.

Unlike many Legend of Zelda games, Breath of the Wild presented Hyrule and its territories vividly. Encouraging players to freely explore the new world around them presented unique opportunities to explore new mechanics. Breath of the Wild 2 could implement natural puzzles worldwide with jungle jumping puzzles, desert stealth puzzles, and shield surfing along the plains. The Sheikah Slate, side quests, and other hidden activities present in Breath of the Wild prove its open world hides many opportunities for power-up and puzzle opportunities. Side characters could be delegated to running different puzzles, with various landmarks and symbols designating the type of puzzle in the area.

Breath of the Wild 2 Needs More Themed Puzzles

While the Ancient Shrines isolated Breath of the Wild’s many puzzles away from the open world and provided a set location for each, the sites and themes for each Shrine swiftly became repetitive. Old stone, blue lights, and orange switches can only be organized in so many ways before they lose their appeal. While the promise of Spirit Orbs and potential health or stamina motivates players to complete as many as possible before facing Ganon, the process becomes tedious with little variation between the areas. While the challenges located in each Shrine present players with unique puzzles and tasks, delegating puzzles to the open world presents more opportunities for more unique designs.

Breath of the Wild’s open world encompasses several colorful biomes with exciting enemies and activities to partake in. Additionally, the Breath of the Wild‘s weather system fulfills different mechanics with exploration and prices at merchants, proving that Nintendo could utilize this system more with certain puzzles. For example, a platformer puzzle in the rain could force players to adapt to new challenges with new abilities, lowering Link’s dependency on climbing and jumping in exchange for crafting physical paths. Alternatively, introducing a time limit in the form of heatstroke in Breath of the Wild 2 could motivate players to take bigger risks in favor of completing puzzles faster. Each challenge could play off a particular biome, embracing new designs that match the environment with corresponding tasks and challenges.

Breath Of The Wild 2 Can Eliminate Loading Screens

While Breath of the Wild 2 can improve the first game in multiple areas, removing Ancient Shrines could eliminate the existence of many loading screens during gameplay. While there weren’t an unbearable number of loading screens in the original BOTW, entering and exiting Ancient Shrines created the most. It’s unreasonable (and inefficient) to expect a developer to create a game with no loading screens at all, but eliminating some lengthy loading times can vastly improve Breath of the Wild 2’s immersion and help the sequel break free from its predecessor.

The existence of Ancient Shrines presents a storytelling opportunity for Hyrule, and while their physical inclusion is necessary to create a cohesive story, accessing every Shrine likely isn’t required. Instead, BOTW 2 can use one or two locations for Easter eggs or storytelling purposes. By reusing Ancient Shrines for aesthetic alone, Nintendo can instead refocus its efforts on developing new puzzles located organically around the world that utilize new mechanics instead of recycling previous gameplay systems. The unfortunate side effect to removing loading screens from puzzles would be the potential lag brought on by an abundance of items or physical assets in the map and glitches brought on by unintentional interference from local mobs.

Breath of the Wild 2 has the opportunity to improve on Breath of the Wild in many ways, and replacing Ancient Shrines with improved alternatives can prove Nintendo’s dedication to the franchise. It’ll be difficult to improve on Breath of the Wild, but there are ways BOTW 2 can be better, and ensuring that players won’t have to slog through repetitive content is a step in the right direction. There are many features about Breath of the Wild 2 still unknown, but it can hopefully continue to propel Legend of Zelda games in the right direction. Breath of the Wild 2 is scheduled to release at some point in 2022 for the Nintendo Switch, but the company hasn’t confirmed a release date yet.

About The Author

Natalie Lindner
(499 Articles Published)

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Natalie Lindner is a Game Features Writer for Screen Rant, creating content on the past, present, and future of games in the industry. Prior to this, she worked out of a writing consultancy in Rhode Island from 2018 to 2021, where she helped college students improve their writing abilities. Natalie has contributed her video game writing to several smaller websites and projects since 2018 and is eager to continue that journey with Screen Rant.

Working out of New Hampshire, Natalie spends the time she isn’t writing about games outside; hiking or biking. On those rainy days, she can be found striving for action on the latest FPS or perusing the latest comic books.

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