Breath of the Wild 2

Nintendo, never iconoclastic, chose the latest Nintendo Direct not to announce the GameCube Zelda remakes we are sure they are already finished nor any information about the next mario filmbut 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, sorry about that, we can never break the habit of calling him Breath of the Wild 2.

Let’s be very clear here: tears of the kingdom (TotK) is a direct following breath of the wild somehow not Zelda the game is a direct sequel since 1987 Zelda II: Link’s Adventure. Yes of course, Majora’s Mask followed by Ocarina of timeand ghost hourglass picked up after Wind Wakerbut TotK is something else. It’s a game that was openly created from the pieces left over when they were finished. BotWthis apparently is built on the same base map, which began development as downloadable content for the previous game. It is, without a doubt, as brilliant as it is, a little more breath of the wild. That’s why it bothers our brain.

With a few weeks passed to let the title sink in…it doesn’t. I bet that’s not the case for you either. I bet your brain offers you”BotW2“before he starts having trouble remembering if it’s”The tears” or just “Tears‘, then gets lost wondering if it could be ‘tears’ like in tears… 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, it should have been at least The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Tears of the Kingdom. Sure, maybe they should release it in a bigger box to fit everything on the cover, but at least it would make sense. And it’s not like Japan is opposed 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.

And look, we at Kotaku know that we are not alone in this.

Damn, far more people discovered KotakuFollowing coverage by Google for “BOTW” than anything that mentions tears or kingdoms. People are going to be so slow to activate this!

It certainly doesn’t help either that when my eyes read “TOTK”, the first thing I think of is “TikTok”, and god damn it, I don’t need that term involuntarily imprinted in my brain more often. that YouTube ads on my phone already do.

Of course, that distracts us from more important questions, like how we should stage international protests to make sure Nintendo doesn’t let the guns break after you tap them against a sheet this time around. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if they didn’t listen to the unanimous agreement of the entire world population that this was a terrible mechanism and the worst aspect of BotW? Yes. Of course you can. It’s Nintendo. I guess they will make them break more often, but this time each break permanently lowers your stamina wheel.

This also seems like a good time to affirm my absolute conviction that BotW2 will come out to straddle the end of the Switch era and the launch of the Switch: Pro from the XL-dom (because they clearly won’t be calling this a “Switch 2“will they?). As we all know, something that happened twice before is proof of such an eternal pattern as Link fighting Ganon in every era, so equally Twilight Princess superimposed the GameCube on the Wii, and BotW stood astride with one leg in Wii U and Switch, there’s no doubt in my mind that this will happen again. But also, when it’s not, no one will remember that I predicted it with such certainty in an article about something else.

In the meantime, let’s face it. This is BotW2 in our hearts, and always will be. I fear for those poor people in Nintendo’s marketing department, who are crying their kingdom tears at our madness.