Story spoilers and news regarding a potential release date may have leaked for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, and the way it happened was downright silly.
Fan Q&As including voice actors are a staple of gaming, anime, and sci-fi conventions, but not much comes out about them. Occasionally something notable about an actor’s life will be brought up, but upcoming projects are usually not discussed.
That wasn’t the case with Pietro Ubaldi, the voice of Daruk from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Ubaldi discussed some of his work on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, telling YouTube channel Lega Hyrule how he was returning to voice a new character. This new character is an ancestor of Daruk.
Intervista a Pietro Ubaldi (Informazioni inedite sul seguito di “Zelda: Breath of the Wild”)
Ubaldi states that he doesn’t remember the character’s name, but that the character has a more serious personality than Daruk. The interviewer asks if the character is Darunia from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but Ubaldi says that’s not the case.
Though this doesn’t spoil everything, there are two strong possibilities regarding this.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 is a direct sequel to the previous Zelda title, but is set to explore the destruction of Hyrule centuries earlier.
Zelda canon revolves around the cyclical nature of the games. An evil force rises and causes immense damage before a swordsman defeats him with the aid of a demigod princess. This is usually simply a nod to the players who have seen this same story play out time and again, but in Breath of the Wild the characters in the game also know about the story’s cyclical nature.
To prepare for the return of Ganon, the Hylians built the four Divine Beasts and the spidery Guardian robots. Ganon returns and the technology works in defending against Ganon, allowing that era’s Link and Zelda to win. This preparation for Ganon represents a breaking of the cycle, but not for the better.
The next time Ganon returns, he wrests away control of the Divine Beasts and Guardians, kills Link, and destroys Hyrule. Though Link returns 100 years later and defeats Ganon, things have gone off the rails in ways that will be explored in the story of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2.
The first trailer for BotW2 shows what will likely be Ganondorf, seemingly sealed away in a cave. Ubaldi’s discussion of an ancestor of Daruk appearing suggests that the Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 story will focus on the cycle-breaking defeat of Ganon prior to Link’s death.
The release date of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 has been pushed back to spring 2023.
Ubaldi didn’t offer anything new regarding a date for the launch of BotW2, but he stated that the game was coming out “next year.” The good news is that this aligns with Nintendo’s previously confirmed delay of the game to the spring 2023 season. Details and footage of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 have been extremely scarce despite the game being revealed at E3 2019. While it wouldn’t have been shocking for the game to be pushed back even further, Ubaldi’s comments and the fact that voice lines are being recorded suggests that things are on track for a 2023 release date.
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