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on November 14, 2025
<br>However, I think the first game was a stark indicator that this isn’t a company playing by the rules anymore. Knowing this, I’m hopeful Breath of the Wild 2 will be the most narrative-heavy Zelda game we’ve ever seen, perhaps even superseding Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess with the amount of dialogue it’s willing to subject us to. As long as it’s in service of a wonderful story, I’m more than happy to sit back and sink in.<br><br>I’ll likely write an article defending Breath of the Wild’s use of flashbacks one of these days, <a href="https://adventuregameland.com/posts/galactic-shadows-respawn-s-struggle-amidst-ea-s-industry-tempest">respawn entertainment</a> but for now I want to focus on the sequel and how it should do away with them. The first game’s ending sees us return to the present day, with Link and Zelda embarking on another trip across the land to reunite with friends and mourn the loss of their loved ones. Things are returning to normality, at least until another threat emerges in Breath of the Wild 2 and once again throws everything into disarray. So when Calamity Ganon (or whoever is in that spooky cave) rears its head once again, I want the narrative that follows to take full advantage of the present day.<br> <br>RE4VR doesn’t function like a remake or remaster at all. When I play it, it's a way of experiencing something I’m intimately familiar with. It’s somewhere between nostalgia and deja vu - like going somewhere you’ve only been in your dreams. When I’m fully immersed in a VR game, it's the closest I ever get to that childhood feeling of getting totally lost in a game, and the familiarity of RE4 makes that even more profound. I know every inch of this game, yet somehow I’m also seeing it all for the first t<br><br> <br>Breath of the Wild 2 seems to follow a similar trajectory, except Hyrule Castle is floating in the sky this time. See, it makes all the difference. Except it doesn’t really, and I can’t help but feel that potentially relegating Princess Zelda into the role of a helpless damsel in distress once again does a disservice to what is easily the best iteration of this character to date. In many ways, Zelda is the star of the show, especially in the previous game’s flashbacks where her struggle with accepting royal power and the inevitable loss of her friends becomes a crux for the unfolding narrat<br><br> <br>In Resident Evil 4 , Albert Wesker dispatches both Ada Wong, and the mostly forgettable Krauser to infiltrate the Los Iluminados, to gain a sample of a Dominant Las Plagas parasite. Overall, however, Resident Evil 4 's plot, main villains and its Las Plagas monstrosities remain a confusing detail to the story and overall universe, given their mysterious autonomy from the series, and unclear orig<br><br> <br>In the larger picture of the universe, Resident Evil' s Umbrella , its research, and its past creations of bio-weaponry have usually played as the backbone of the series lore, history and dark world, even long after Umbrella shutdown. For example, after Resident Evil 4 , the next games, Resident Evil 5 and 6 , and even 7 to a degree, made Umbrella's dark past relevant to the current crisis' at hand in the ga<br><br> <br>Whether it’s Link, Zelda, or something completely out of left field like Waluigi - I just hope the Princess isn’t left to gather dust as a prisoner beneath Hyrule Castle. As I mentioned earlier, Breath of the Wild’s timeline now exists in the present, offering a level of dramatic agency that simply isn’t possible with flashbacks. Our emotions will react to an ongoing story we’re an integral part of, instead of pondering on flashbacks whose participants have long since met their end. Princess Zelda is the strongest character of the whole lot, and pushing her aside purely so Link has a passive damsel to save is woefully archaic writing this series could do without. Who knows, I still have a feeling she’ll be playable. Or there will be time travel. Screw it - do whatever you want, Ninte<br><br> <br>There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but Zelda has always been a wonderfully diverse series. Not to the extent of Mario which has crossed all manner of genres in its years, but it is diverse all the same. It has shaped the RPG genre numerous times since the ‘80s, inspiring the likes of Dark Souls, Secret of Mana, Shadow of the Colossus, and now, the aforementioned Genshin Impact. You can see how much the RPG genre varies with Zelda’s inspirations alone and that’s telling. After Breath of the Wild 2, it needs to do something different again. Going back to the classics might not scream new. In fact, it sounds like a step back, aye? Well, that’s the thing. The triple-A space seems to be scared of its own history, desperate to move past it and become more cinematic, more graphically domineering. It’s all about tech and visual prowess. But art style is just as import<br><br>Breath of the Wild tells an achingly human tale, but to uncover it you’ll need to invest dozens of hours into scouring Hyrule in search of brief cutscenes that chronicle Link and Zelda’s doomed pilgrimage in search of allies. None of the flashbacks are told with any sense of chronology, so you’ll stumble across them randomly and be forced to work out exactly what is going on and how it factors into the overall adventure. This mirrors Link’s own amnesia, so it feels like we’ve truly been placed in his shoes, trying to work out how our friends were lost and what we can do to save whatever it is they left behind.<br>