'Breath of the Wild 2' May Fix a Big Dungeon Problem From 'Zelda: BotW'

We’re going back to Hyrule! We might not know when, why, or how, but Nintendo’s officially confirmed that a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is in the works. The company’s been pretty secretive about its plans for BotW 2, but a recent interview with series producer Eiji Aonuma could reveal how Nintendo plans to fix a major complaint about the previous game: dungeons.

Dungeons are a mainstay of the Zelda franchise, but Breath of the Wild mostly ignored them in favor of smaller shrine puzzles scattered across the map. Even the four massive Divine Beasts still felt tiny compared to classic dungeons like the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time or the Stone Tower from Majora’s Mask.

Thankfully, it looks like Nintendo may correct this oversight with Breath of the Wild 2. To be clear, Aonuma never confirms this in his interview with Kotaku, but reading between the lines of two key quotes may reveal what the company has planned.

Here’s the first quote about how Nintendo wants to improve on what those BotW shrines did best:

“One thing we learned from Breath of the Wild is that when we focused on creating a dungeon that has multiple solutions, it turned into this great title. That’s one thing I want to polish up and use for inspiration going forward.”

So it sounds like Nintendo will take what worked best from shrines (creative problem solving) and apply it to Breath of the Wild 2. Second, here’s Aonuma explaining why he decided to make a sequel instead of just releasing more DLC:

“When we wanted to add bigger changes, DLC is not enough, and that’s why we thought maybe a sequel would be a good fit.”

Bigger changes? It sounds like maybe Nintendo wanted to add entire new levels. Say, perhaps, a whole dungeon?

If Nintendo can combine the creative puzzle design of BotW shrines with the epic scope of a classic Zelda dungeon in Breath of the Wild 2, then it might just be a perfect video game. Then again, even if it’s just as good as Breath of the Wild, we’ll still buy it on day one. After all, it’s Zelda.