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Will Breath of the Wild 2 be Darker?

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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Recently, during a debate about Breath of the Wild 2 I took part in, I noticed people saying it's been confirmed that the entire game will be "darker than Majora's Mask". While I think there is a possibility a lot of the game will maintain a darker vibe, it's a misconception that the developers confirmed the whole game would maintain it. Back when IGN interviewed series producer Eiji Aonuma after the reveal trailer, what he said was took out of context a bit:

"IGN: This morning, you surprised everybody with a big, big trailer in the Direct, and we're all excited about that. I just played Link's Awakening, and I want to talk to you a lot about that, but I have to ask about the trailer. Everybody's buzzing with excitement: It seemed like this was a dark twist on Breath of the Wild, that reminded me of Majora's Mask, was that on purpose?
Mr. Aonuma: The new Breath of the Wild, or the sequel to it, it's not necessarily going to be related to Majora's Mask or inspired by it. It's just that it happened to be what we showed you currently is a little bit darker, and we're honestly still in production, so we can't really say exactly how it's going to be turning out."

Obviously this isn't any indication of what the vibe of the entire game will be; Aonuma outright says that only what was shown was coincidentally a darker section of the game, and ultimately the game is still under development so the direction could end up shifting.

I do hope we get a darker Zelda game throughout, one on par or even darker than Majora's Mask, but that hasn't been confirmed at all, therefore it shouldn't be expected with the certainty that people have. There is a lot of potential for this game to be darker, and perhaps not delivering on a overall darker theme after a trailer that relied heavily on it will be misleading, especially considering how many people bought into the headlines spinning the game that way.

So, do you think Breath of the Wild 2 will be an overall darker game? Tell me in the comments below!

Source: IGN
 
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Dio

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BoTW 1 came across as a very light-hearted entry in the series with no real sense of peril throughout. Not drawing attention to any horrific elements or featuring any horror enemies unless you count those stal enemies.

So I am guessing BoTW 2, in order to feel different enough from BoTW 1, shall feature darker moments.

I do not expect it will be as dark as Majora's Mask or even OOT though.
 
I think Aonuma's comment is very poorly translated or he was vague.

Dark in Zelda can be weird aka Majora's Mask, or edgy aka Twilight Princess.

So it depends on what Aonuma means as darker and what fans are expecting.

I hope for a new kind of dark. I want intense, where the tension is tight with each event.

We really need a new trailer. BotW was rather flat on tone, so if BotW2 is making an attempt to have a defined tone I hope they do it well.

I do want a new darker Zelda though.
 

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I sort of flip flop on this one. On the one hand I'd be interested to see what a modern Nintendo could do with a darker brief. However, I'm not entirely convinced Zelda is the right place for it any more.

If they're sticking with the BotW design philosophy then it seems a little at odds with itself to have a vast open world with a particular tone. I felt the first game was good at allowing the action of the moments to set the atmosphere, such as the distinction between tranquil horse ride through Hyrule field and a more claustrophobic climb up some of the icy mountains. If a specific atmosphere was aimed for then I'm not sure such moments would as wholly organic as they did. I like the fact that the tone was set by where I went, what I was doing and how I was doing it. One of my favourite moments in the game is the section in which you're rescuing the dragon from the blight at the top of the mountain and most of that was because instead of going bold and brash with the soundtrack in the build-up to getting there they instead went muted and forlorn. I didn't know what was to come but everything became softer and quieter telling me that I was slowly reaching my destination and it made me await the payoff even more. The quest was, in itself, dark. Despite this they didn't start adding layers of tension to the music or moody lighting and weather to the environment and I feel like that was for the better.

It's this that makes me hope that if BotW2 is darker, it doesn't seep its way into everything. There's nothing wrong with taking a specific approach in certain story notes and locations, but applying it as a broad template for everything would pull away from the freedom of the the world for me.
By darker, the thought is with narrative tone, and it doesn't really influence the organic gameplay.
 

Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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Breath of the Wild already features the darkest setting of any Zelda game. Heck, it's the darkest by a significant margin.

The Hyrule that we see in Breath of the Wild is broken and desecrated. Most of its population is gone, either killed by the Calamity's initial emergence or hunted down by Guardians. It seems like the few settlements that avoided the destruction did so thanks only to the hilly landscape and the Guardians themselves beginning to shut down, since none of them possess a plethora of skilled fighters or major defenses.

The plot of the usual Zelda game happened one hundred years ago when Link first drew the Master Sword to confront Ganon. He lost and a lot of people died in the ensuing conflict. That's significantly darker than any other Zelda game.
 

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AHH well that I would be fine with. Just so long as they didn't try to mix the Majora's Mask style of gameplay atmosphere with BotW's environment.
I'm not sure what would be so bad amount more nuanced characters and side missions that flesh them out. Combined with Ganondorf being an existential threat to the world and his return threading to destroy everything they've just now been able to rebuild. I really hope it is darker and they make him more of a 3 dimensional character as was hinted at in Wind Waker. A tragic villain who only wanted to see his nation flourish as the neighbor to the East and North did (and obviously chose to go about doing so in an evil way.) Perhaps they can go into what turned him from man to Demon King (how did he, out of all the people of the world, become the representation of Demise's curse?)

Breath of the Wild already features the darkest setting of any Zelda game. Heck, it's the darkest by a significant margin.

The Hyrule that we see in Breath of the Wild is broken and desecrated. Most of its population is gone, either killed by the Calamity's initial emergence or hunted down by Guardians. It seems like the few settlements that avoided the destruction did so thanks only to the hilly landscape and the Guardians themselves beginning to shut down, since none of them possess a plethora of skilled fighters or major defenses.

The plot of the usual Zelda game happened one hundred years ago when Link first drew the Master Sword to confront Ganon. He lost and a lot of people died in the ensuing conflict. That's significantly darker than any other Zelda game.
While that's true Majora's Mask was dark in tone and via it's characters arcs. Perhaps the word better used to describe MM is depressing.
 

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I don't think it'll be hard to be darker than BOTW but MM........not likely considering that MM was dealing with a full blown extinction event and attempted Genocides
 
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Dio

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Breath of the Wild already features the darkest setting of any Zelda game. Heck, it's the darkest by a significant margin.

The Hyrule that we see in Breath of the Wild is broken and desecrated. Most of its population is gone, either killed by the Calamity's initial emergence or hunted down by Guardians. It seems like the few settlements that avoided the destruction did so thanks only to the hilly landscape and the Guardians themselves beginning to shut down, since none of them possess a plethora of skilled fighters or major defenses.

The plot of the usual Zelda game happened one hundred years ago when Link first drew the Master Sword to confront Ganon. He lost and a lot of people died in the ensuing conflict. That's significantly darker than any other Zelda game.

Nobody is really bothered by what happened in BoTW and it doesn't focus on dark elements at all. All the world's events are treated mainly as inconveniences by the population and there is no feeling of impending doom present.

If you want to say the history of the world makes it dark then SS's Hyrule has absolutely no humans left in it. Those that weren't killed by demise were sent to Skyloft. I would think that should be the darkest world by the way you see darkness. Less people survived in the original LoZ too than were around during BoTW.

Only OOT and MM really focus on dark elements and the terror of the NPC's as a result of previous and ongoing dark events With many of MM's characters being aware of and in fear of their impending extermination with some in denial. TP is somewhat dark also though this is mainly the colour palette that makes people believe it's really dark rather than its content. The rest of the games are very lighthearted. Full of mainly happy NPC's unaffected by world events.
 
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Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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Nobody is really bothered by what happened in BoTW and it doesn't focus on dark elements at all. All the world's events are treated mainly as inconveniences by the population and there is no feeling of impending doom present.

If you want to say the history of the world makes it dark then SS's Hyrule has absolutely no humans left in it. Those that weren't killed by demise were sent to Skyloft. I would think that should be the darkest world by the way you see darkness. Less people survived in the original LoZ too than were around during BoTW.

Only OOT and MM really focus on dark elements and the terror of the NPC's as a result of previous and ongoing dark events With many of MM's characters being aware of and in fear of their impending extermination with some in denial. TP is somewhat dark also though this is mainly the colour palette that makes people believe it's really dark rather than its content. The rest of the games are very lighthearted. Full of mainly happy NPC's unaffected by world events.

I think OoT's problem is the lack of meaningful consequences to the destruction in game. Castle Town is destroyed, but the inhabitants were evacuated to Kakariko Village. The Zora are frozen, but they're not dead. Most of the Gorons are gone, but they were idiots who were starving themselves to death.
 

Dio

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I think OoT's problem is the lack of meaningful consequences to the destruction in game. Castle Town is destroyed, but the inhabitants were evacuated to Kakariko Village. The Zora are frozen, but they're not dead. Most of the Gorons are gone, but they were idiots who were starving themselves to death.

I agree about the Zora's and Gorons, none of them die as a result of what happened as far as I know. I haven't done a Goron count before and after. Though it is quite clear that some castle town inhabitants such as sakon the thief end up as ReDead as they are never seen in the adult portion of the game.

Grog the carpenters son also ends up as a stalfos.
 

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Based off of how eerie the trailer seemed, perhaps? A lot of games and movies overhype their customer and even potential customers by showing off or even adding certain scenes of a game to make it seem like it has more worth than it actually does. So, it’s kind of iffy. I would say.... maybe. I say this because BOTW just had Ganon fly around Hyrule Castle “menacingly” but he was too easy to defeat. Especially the second fight with the bow. Like come on now. But, maybe Nintendo will add a better continued storyline.
 

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