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Zelda Breath Of The Wild 2 planned for 2020

The Legend of Zelda Breath Of The Wild 2 may be releasing sooner than most expect, according to rumors.

Today, Sabi, a known leaker with a good track record, revealed that The Legend of Zelda Breath Of The Wild 2 is currently scheduled for a 2020 release date worldwide. This isn't speculation, as he confirms that this is the current plan. He also added, however, that games in the series are often delayed, so there's the chance that Breath of the Wild 2 will as well.




While a 2020 release for the game may feel too close for most fans, we have to consider that The Legend of Zelda Breath Of The Wild has been in development for a very long time mostly due to the new engine and design choices, which are unlike anything ever done in the series before. Breath of the Wild 2 will use the same engine, so development shouldn't take as long as it did with the previous game.

Additionally, a 2020 release would fall in place with what other leaks previously revealed. According to these leaks, which surfaced online before the announcement of the Link's Awakening remake, there would be a 2D Zelda in 2019, and a 3D one the following year.

 
BotW development began right after Skyward Sword. Perhaps if they re-use a lot of the same assets (like the map) they'll be able to get it out the door, but I think this is likely a late-generation Switch release (just like Skyward Sword was a late gen Wii release).

I'm not gonna turn my nose up at a 2020 BotW, though. :messenger_beaming:
 
BotW development began right after Skyward Sword. Perhaps if they re-use a lot of the same assets (like the map) they'll be able to get it out the door, but I think this is likely a late-generation Switch release (just like Skyward Sword was a late gen Wii release).

I'm not gonna turn my nose up at a 2020 BotW, though. :messenger_beaming:
Steal some next gen thunder, it's the same assets just a different story.
Switch 2 (or whatever Nintendo comes up with) probably won't appear until 2022 or 2023.
2021 - 2022 with a AMD APU, not Nvidia.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
2020 makes a lot of sense.

-If holiday, over three and a half years since 2017 (the DLC wasn’t that ambitious to be taking up the entire team’s attention)
-Same engine
-Same assets (?)
-Working with an existing Hyrule
-A bomb to drop alongside the launch of new consoles

That all lines up really well.
 

Zannegan

Member
2021 - 2022 with a AMD APU, not Nvidia.
Three years ago, I would have said they'd be be crazy to switch teams for their next generation, but since NVidia doesn't seem to have any interest in updating their mobile stuff, and AMD is diving in headfirst with Samsung, what other choice will they have? I wonder if it will make BC/cross-gen stuff inconvenient.
 
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Three years ago, I would have said they'd be be crazy to switch teams for their next generation, but since NVidia doesn't seem to have any interest in updating their mobile stuff, and AMD is diving in headfirst with Samsung, what other choice will they have? I wonder if it will make BC/cross-gen stuff inconvenient.
In the long run it will, porting current (Ps4, Xone) & next gen (Ps5, X2) games would be easier.
 

Zannegan

Member
In the long run it will, porting current (Ps4, Xone) & next gen (Ps5, X2) games would be easier.
Then watch Microsoft and Sony go Nvidia for next next gen. Lol. Not that it would matter all that much. The Switch handles ports pretty well (taking the massive power differential into account) for being Red to Green.

I wonder if they'll be able to get portable hardware close enough to the PS5/Scarlett for even scaled down ports in 2022.
 
Then watch Microsoft and Sony go Nvidia for next next gen. Lol. Not that it would matter all that much. The Switch handles ports pretty well (taking the massive power differential into account) for being Red to Green.

I wonder if they'll be able to get portable hardware close enough to the PS5/Scarlett for even scaled down ports in 2022.
AMD has a 24CU GPU, to me knowing Nintendo being cheap it make sense, and no you wont notice the difference in graphics at 1080p, the fifference would only be FPS and few details.
 

cireza

Member
They are re-using the exact same world so that's the least they can do, release it "quickly".
 
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Rat Rage

Member
Has anybody thought about the following: Breath of the wild came out 2017. Yet, it probably came out 1 or 2 years later than expected. All the talk about the game having to be delayed because they weren't finished with it, could have feen false. An excuse to delay the release date and align it with the upcoming Switch launch back then, since the Wii U was such a massive failure. They knew they had a masterpiece at hand, which cost them huge sums of money. So bringing the game over to the next system was inevitable. Had it come out on Wii U only, it would have been a massive financial disaster.

So... They could've started development for a BotW 2 as early as 2016 (conceptual stuff and what not). Full development could have started in 2017. If BotW2 really comes out at the end of 2020, it would have been in development for 3+ years. Considering they already had a lot of assets, the engine and a lot of new ideas to tell a new, big story in their massive, beautifully designed open world, it's not unreasonable to expect a 2020 lauch of Breath of the Wild 2.

Also, their developers are very familiar with BotW's huge world. It's basically like a digital playground. All the important parts are there. They can reuse and expand this playground in a very efficient manner.

Therefore I not only think it's not unreasonable to expect BotW2 at the end of 2020, I think it's pretty likely.
 
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SnapShot

Member
My biggest concern at this point is that the world will be too similar to BOTW's map, which the trailer and subsequent comments from Aonuma have reinforced. A major part of an open-world game is the exploration, after all.
 

GAMETA

Banned
Well, Aonuma himself said BotW 2 was initially DLC that they later decided to expand into a new game... there's a good chance they already had a bunch of stuff done other than the engine and models, so I don't think 2020 is impossible.

Hopefully February 2020
 

NahaNago

Member
I could see Zelda releasing in 2020 now that I think about it. I can't see them pushing back the release date several times for this game as well just to reach a 2022 release date. They have probably been working on this title since the launch of the switch so a new Zelda should be available in time for next gen.

I do think 2022 will be the release date of Switch 2 just because of how weak the system will be in comparison to ps5 and xb2. With the E3 of 2020 and psx being a showcase of the power of next gen giving the next gen consoles some breathing room seems like a good idea since the comparison won't be as harsh due to folks being accustom to the wow of next gen.
5 to 6 years between consoles seem to be the norm for Nintendo.
 

Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
I'm almost 100% sure that this game will be released sometime from march to autumn 2021. You can quote me on that later.
 

StormCell

Member
People have this crazy idea that a game like BoTW takes 4-5 years to create. You are crazy for believing that. Half of BotW's development time was spent not building the game we actually got. If they already have functional game engine and a good understanding of the type of game they're buildling, then a lot of the work is already done. The actual game world and assets are things that they can outsource and have produced in parallel (like they did with the shrines).

It simply doesn't take that long to make a sequel or successor to BotW. It might take them that long to figure out what game they're making, but that's all on them.
 
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Gavin Stevens

Formerly 'o'dium'
I can see it being a shorter turn around, what with the engine being done, the assets being mostly there, and the world being built.

Think of this more like Farcry 5 and Farcry New Dawn in terms of content creation, more so than 4 and Primal.

So yeah I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come out quite soon.
 

StormCell

Member
They are re-using the exact same world so that's the least they can do, release it "quickly".

It really doesn't even matter if they use the exact same game world. They've got a team that is really good at making game worlds. That team didn't spend years making BotW's game world. I have a hunch that they could make some pretty interesting changes to the existing game world in a matter of months (complete with new game world assets). It's all stuff that can be done in parallel with other parts of the game development process.
 

cireza

Member
That team didn't spend years making BotW's game world.
To me it looks like they spent years making BotW, and personally, I find the world pretty lacking. So I am not so confident. And obviously they decided to keep the world and assets etc... to speed-up the process, because money money money and quick quick quick !
 
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StormCell

Member
To me it looks like they spent years making BotW, and personally, I find the world pretty lacking. So I am not so confident. And obviously they decided to keep the world and assets etc... to speed-up the process, because money money money and quick quick quick !

You don't think that they're deciding to keep the game world because it's a direct sequel to BotW's story?

The reason why the game world may seem a bit lacking is because all of the content was created in a 6 to 12 month span of time. They've actually talked about the development process substantially. The concept of the shrines was necessary to fill out the game world, but in order to create all the shrines the work had to be done in parallel and the shrines needed to be generic enough to fit almost any locale. A few of them were a bit locale-specific but that's the extent of it. The same goes for the korok puzzles.

They can do a way better job in 2 years knowing what they have to work with than what they did in 6 months on game world content. The game required a ton of QA time. So on. So forth. They made an awesome game world with world physics, but IIRC they didn't fully realize the open world game they were creating until the last 2 years of development.
 
I like them reusing stuff, because it can be a great opportunity, like how Majora's Mask was on N64. However, I hope they do something like the Majora's Mask approach to differentiate at least.
 

DESTROYA

Member
Three years ago, I would have said they'd be be crazy to switch teams for their next generation, but since NVidia doesn't seem to have any interest in updating their mobile stuff, and AMD is diving in headfirst with Samsung, what other choice will they have? I wonder if it will make BC/cross-gen stuff inconvenient.

But they are,I could see a version of this APU potentially being in the Switch 2.




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cireza

Member
You don't think that they're deciding to keep the game world because it's a direct sequel to BotW's story?

The reason why the game world may seem a bit lacking is because all of the content was created in a 6 to 12 month span of time. They've actually talked about the development process substantially. The concept of the shrines was necessary to fill out the game world, but in order to create all the shrines the work had to be done in parallel and the shrines needed to be generic enough to fit almost any locale. A few of them were a bit locale-specific but that's the extent of it. The same goes for the korok puzzles.

They can do a way better job in 2 years knowing what they have to work with than what they did in 6 months on game world content. The game required a ton of QA time. So on. So forth. They made an awesome game world with world physics, but IIRC they didn't fully realize the open world game they were creating until the last 2 years of development.
Let's hope that you are right. I don't want to travel a huge world full of generic stuff again. They need to address the dungeons as well.
 

Bodatan

Banned
BOTW was also held back to release alongside the Nintendo Switch. So the development of BOTW2 is probably started earlier than we thought.
 
BOTW2 is done already, just waiting the right time to drop it so they can still be on the map when Sony & MS announce their consoles.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
I would hope so considering its using the same engine as the first game. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the open world aspect in place but I hope they ditch the weapon breaking thing.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Please be more interesting and user friendly than the previous game. I love Zelda but got tired of the switch game quick
 

Yumi

Member
Still optimistic on that last count imo. Nintendo were very clear they're starting from scratch. 2022 for Prime 4 maybe?
You are right. I forgot that development restarted in January 2019. I remembered it being announced 2017.

On topic though, end of 2020 sounds reasonable for BotW 2. Been playing BotW again and I still love it. But ive always thought for as high up as you can go, you never feel like you go too far down. Looking forward to Cave systems and proper dungeons
 

ultrazilla

Member
As soon as they showed off the announcement trailer, my brother Solarstrike Solarstrike and I both agreed that this is most likely a 2020
release.

BOTW released on March 3, 2017. So the team has had a bit of time to be working away on the title. Also, since they're re-using the
graphics engine, that should save them a huge amount of time and they can simply create content and code away without worrying
about engine features, etc.

They should be pretty far along at this point.
 

Zannegan

Member
But they are,I could see a version of this APU potentially being in the Switch 2.

Interesting!

Given that this is built around AI (and designed to slot into something like a car with a huge battery) though, would a modified version of that design really work in a gaming handheld? Can they just... not run AI apps on there and use the same setup for rendering or is it full of dedicated/fixed function AI hardware that would take up too much space with no gaming benefit?
 

DESTROYA

Member
Interesting!

Given that this is built around AI (and designed to slot into something like a car with a huge battery) though, would a modified version of that design really work in a gaming handheld? Can they just... not run AI apps on there and use the same setup for rendering or is it full of dedicated/fixed function AI hardware that would take up too much space with no gaming benefit?
I’m sure they can turn off functions not needed and it runs at 10W-15W so it’s manageable.
With over 35 million switches sold I don’t see why nvidia wouldn’t want to remain in the console market.
 
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