Your Breath of the Wild 2 theories are too interesting to be true

Nintendo finally gave us another look The Legend of Zelda: Breath of Wild‘s sequel during E3. It wasn’t much, but fans are scouring it for details and plot hints all the same. Some are even developing wild theories, like that we may actually be playing as Zelda or even Ganondorf in this new game.

I think we should all probably calm down a bit.

Not so sequel

I’m speaking from experience. I remember the lead up to the first Breath of the Wild. I saw the tree-like Koroks and the bird-like Rito and thought, oh wow, this must be a Wind Waker sequel! Others speculated that it followed the events of the original NES games because of a point in a gameplay demo where Link overlooked a cliff in a way that resembled the key are for the first Zelda.

When Skyward Sword released in 2011, Nintendo created an official timeline, albeit a convoluted one that splits into three different realities. So we all wanted to know where does Breath of the Wild fit in. It turns out the answer was … nowhere? Or it’s in all three of them?

Nintendo has been vague and confusing about the question, which was something of a letdown for people like me who find the Zelda chronology interesting. We wanted to believe that Breath of the Wild was a part of the larger Zelda story that Nintendo seemed to be weaving.

Instead, it felt like Nintendo was retreating from the timeline it had just established. Sure, Breath of the Wild has a lot of references to all sorts of Zelda games, even less popular ones like Phantom Hourglass (shoutout to Linebeck Island). But there never seems to be any significance to these references. They’re just, well, references.

So when people notice that Breath of the Wild 2 (or whatever Nintendo will call it) has some similarities with Skyward Sword, notably with its emphasis on floating islands and having Link dive out of the sky, I feel a bit nervous. I don’t want to be party pooper, but let’s dial our expectations back a bit. Yes, maybe the game will borrow some concepts from Skyward Sword. But we’ll only be disappointed if we expect Breath of the Wild 2 to continue any of Skyward Sword’s story beats, like elaborating on Demise’s transformation into Ganon.

Not everything is a conspiracy

As for who we’ll be playing as in Breath of the Wild 2 … well, call me crazy, but I think it’s going to be Link. Look, I’d also love to be able to play as Zelda. I just feel like we’re all assuming that’s going to happen based off of nothing. Sure, we saw Link and Zelda together in the sequel’s first teaser trailer. It’s more than a leap to go from that to “oh, they must both be playable.”

Heck, I remember when we saw the first teaser for Breath of the Wild and a lot of us thought that the main character wasn’t even Link. I accidentally helped propel this rumor when I interviewed Eiji Aonuma at E3 2014, and he told me that he never said the main character in the trailer was Link.

This was just one red herring, but I now feel like Zelda fans are swimming in a sea of them. I’m worried we’re seeing conspiracies where there aren’t any. It’s like all of those Silent Hill fans that think that Hideo Kojima set up a dummy studio to work on a new game for that franchise. Why would it be such a convoluted secret?

Of course, none of it matters all that much. Breath of the Wild was a fantastic game despite not being the Wind Waker sequel I fanaticized it would be. I’m hopeful that Breath of the Wild 2 can be just as fantastic, regardless of any surprise playable characters.