Nintendo, always iconoclastic, chose the last Nintendo Direct to announce no GameCube Zelda remakes we are sure they have already finished, nor any information about the next Mario moviebut instead of surprise-reveal the official title of breath of the wild 2 . It was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Except, no, I’m sorry about this, we can never get out of the habit of calling him breath of the wild 2.
Let’s be very clear here: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) it’s a straight sequel to breath of the wild somehow not Zelda The game has been a direct sequel since 1987. Zelda II: Link’s Adventure. Yes, sure, majora’s mask followed by ocarina of timeY ghost hourglass picked up after Wind Wakerbut TotK is something else. This is a game that was openly created from the bits that were left over when they were done. Downthat apparently it’s based on the same basemap, which began development as DLC for the previous game. This is undoubtedly, as brilliant as it is, something more breath of the wild. That’s why this is messing with our brains.
With a couple of weeks gone to let the title settle…it hasn’t. I bet it hasn’t been for you either. I bet your brain offers you”BotW2“before I start having a hard time remembering if it’s”The tears” or alone “Tears”, then gets lost wondering if it could be “Tears” as in rips… and then, yes, we can all agree not to bother.
Read more: The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 Gets A Totally Different Name, Release Date And Trailer
Come on at least it should have been The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Kingdom Tears. Sure, maybe they’d have to release it in a bigger box to fit everything on the cover, but at least it would make some sense. And it’s not that Japan is averse to the long title. Say hello, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors. Or, you know, White Princess the Second ~ Yappari Itto ni Ittemo Soujyanakutemo OK-na Gotsugou Shugi Gakuen Renai Adventure.
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And look, we at Kotaku we know we are not alone in this.
Hell, far more people have discovered KotakuCoverage of the sequel by Googling “BOTW” than anything that mentions tears or kingdoms. People are going to be very slow to turn this on!
It certainly doesn’t help that when my eyes read “TOTK,” the first thing I think of is “TikTok,” and gosh, I don’t need that term inadvertently stamped on my brain any more than YouTube ads on my phone anymore. it does.
Of course, this distracts us from more important matters, like how we should organize international protests to make sure Nintendo doesn’t let the guns break after hitting them against a blade this time. You can imagine? Can you imagine if they didn’t hear the unanimous agreement of the entire world population that this was a terrible mechanic and the worst aspect of Down? Yes. Of course you can. it’s nintendo. I guess they’ll make them break more often, but this time every break permanently lowers your stamina wheel.
It also seems to me a good time to declare my absolute conviction that BotW2 will be released to overlap the end of the Switch era and the release of Switch: Pro of the XL-dom (because they clearly won’t be calling that a “Switch 2“Will they?). As we all know, something that happened twice before is proof of a pattern as timeless as Link fighting Ganon in each age, as well as twilight princess superimposed the GameCube on the Wii, and Down was straddling a leg on Wii U and Switch, I have no doubt this will happen again. But also, when not, no one will remember that I predicted it with such certainty in an article about something else.
In the meantime, let’s not kid ourselves. It is BotW2 in our hearts, and always will be. I fear for those poor people in Nintendo’s marketing department, crying tears of their kingdom for our madness.