Breath of the Wild 2 E3 2021 Trailer Analysis

Nintendo showed off their latest glimpse of Breath of the Wild 2 at E3 2021, has introduced the game to the world at E3 2019. The trailer may have been short, but it’s packed full of interesting details. Today I’m going to go through everything we currently know about Breath of the Wild 2, plus roundup some of the speculations in the community since the trailer was shown off.

First of all, we have the trailer itself. It was the headline act of E3 2021 from Nintendo which showed off a little more detail and contrasted to the original trailer shown in 2019. The original trailer showed Link and Zelda traveling through a series of underground caves. While they are traveling it appears a corpse or remains of a body is being held captive or is under the control or influence of some kind of a severed arm.

Speculation at the moment is this is the remains of Ganondorf, however, we don’t know the details for sure. Link and Zelda continue their travels on a huge Elephant-like beast, but they continue on foot when they appear to not be able to get over a bridge. Link and Zelda come across the corpse, surrounded by a swirling, green power of some sort. There’s a quick cut at this point where we see some evil escaping from the corpse, Link gets grabbed by the ‘thing’ that appears to be trapping the supposed Ganondorf corpse and then it looks like Zelda falls down deep into the underground, perhaps splitting up the pair.

That was our first taste of Breath of the Wild 2 back in 2019, and now fast-forward to 2021 where we got much more than that, plus a little gameplay.

In the new trailer we open with Link once again getting grabbed by a black and red ‘thing’, it looks like some kind of corruption indicated by the black and red. We see the corpse, who could be Ganondorf raising his hands into the air, once again alive and kicking followed by a reminder of Zelda falling into the depths of the underground. The tone then dramatically changes as we see Link falling from the sky, he’s way up there in the sky and appears to be freefalling down to Hyrule below. Link then is seen riding his glider safely down to the ground.

The first thing to notice here is the Link that’s falling from the sky appears to have a corrupted right arm, whereas the Link with the Glider appears as per the original Breath of the Wild. It looks like there could be 2 Links in this game, perhaps similar to Ocarina of Time where we play as Young Link or Regular Link.

Next, we see Link running through Hyrule, long hair flowing, again with a corrupted arm. In the distance, we can see floating islands in the sky. This appears to be the theme for Breath of the Wild 2, with Hyrule dramatically changed from the first game and parts of Hyrule have floated up into the air. Given we see Link skydiving down from above, I am sure we’re going to be not only underground, as indicated by the first trailer, but we’re also going to be traveling high above Hyrule on the islands in the sky. This is very similar to Skyward Sword, and it may be one of the reasons Skyward Sword is being released again this year for Nintendo Switch. Perhaps the creators want us to understand the origins of the Zelda franchise before diving into Breath of the Wild 2.

Moving on we see Bokoblins on top of a Stone Talus, rising up from the ground. There’s a quick shot of what appears to be Link’s arm, glowing and covered in light. There is speculation that rather than the Sheika Slate, this time we’re going to be using Links arm, and perhaps it’s going to have different abilities and attachments. This harks back to some Breath of the Wild concept arm where we see an armless Link. It certainly makes sense to have some kind of ‘multitool’ we use, and the Sheika Slate made sense in the Wii U days, but it’s going to be interesting to see how this one evolves. We don’t know exactly what has happened to Link’s arm, but we know something is going on here.

Next up in the trailer we see Link wielding some new powers. A spikey ball is falling down a hill towards him, and it looks like Link can either turn back time or use some kind of kinetic power to push the spikey ball back up the hill. A rewind time mechanic would be very cool, and this opens up a lot of possibilities for puzzles in the game. We’re not yet clear on whether full-blown Dungeons are going to return to the Sequel to Breath of the Wild just yet, but this was a huge part of the feedback since the original came out in 2017… fans want to see the return of the larger dungeons rather than the smaller shrines.

We also see Link wielding what looks to be a flame thrower, but this is on his other arm when comparing it to the corrupted arm. Link then does a neat little backflip to evade an enemy he’s fighting. Link also then appears to travel through concrete via a water-like ability. It’s unclear as to what is happening here, but it looks like Link is once again reversing time, as the water droplet goes up rather than down, and then Link travels through solid stone, arriving high above Hyrule in the clouds. It’s all very mysterious, and we’re likely to hear a lot more about this soon.

In the final scene, we see castle Hyrule shaking and rumbling against the backdrop of dramatic music, and then it raises itself into the sky. There clearly is an event that leads to this, whether it’s the discovery of the Ganondorf-like corpse underground, or the corruption escaping and affecting Hyrule is some way. The latest trailer closes with the castle in the sky, Zelda’s lullaby playing in the background against a beautiful sunset over Hyrule and fades to black with the number 2022 left on the screen.

We were hoping we’d get more of a firm release date, but there’s plenty of details in the trailer here, and more everytime I watch it.