This morning, Nintendo published a video to announce new content is coming for Breath of the Wild. In the video, Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma stated that due to the need to delay the Breath of the Wild sequel, the company would release new content for the first game.
Though, as Mr. Aonuma stated in the presentation, the delay wasn’t the factor that led to the creation of extra content for the Switch launch title:
“If there’s one thing people love more than buying games they have already bought before, it’s buying additional content for games they bought a long time ago. The new Mario Kart 8 content has proven this, which has definitely helped us feel justified about creating DLC for a five-year-old game.”
This expansion, named Beedle’s Takeover: A Tingling Sense of Doom, centers on the fan-favorite character Beedle and helps explain the events that took place between Breath of the Wild and the upcoming sequel. Beedle is trying to expand his business and open his own stores all across Hyrule, and Link and Zelda are trying to help him. Unfortunately, the arrival of a bizarre stranger to Hyrule almost ruins Beedle’s efforts.
Beedle’s Takeover marks the return of the infamous character Tingle to the Zelda series. Tingle comes to Hyrule with the goal of having a monopoly on all business. He and his army of slave labor relatives use balloons to fly over Hyrule and bomb all of the opposition. With the land not being safe to travel across, Link and Zelda’s only option is to use a secret network of underground tunnels to traverse Hyrule to stop Tingle’s invasion.
After revealing Tingle, Mr. Aonuma gave their reason for adding him to the story as the antagonist:
“As we’ve mentioned in the past, the sequel to Breath of the Wild will feature a much darker story. We wanted to highlight the transition to a darker tone, so we decided to include Tingle, who is perhaps the most terrifying character in the Legend of Zelda. Actually, scratch the “perhaps.” He’s creepy as [expletive].”
The DLC’s gameplay will be a mix of various missions that Link must complete to help Beedle. These missions will include various forms of corporate and literal sabotage. One mission that Nintendo highlighted, called “You’re Fired,” has you collect and then release beetles into one of Tingle’s new shops. The swarms cause the manager to panic and close the store. When the shop closes, Beedle promptly arrives to set fire to the building to get rid of the competition.
Nintendo did not provide spoilers for how the DLC ends, but they did infer that the underground area seen in the Breath of the Wild sequel teaser would play a part. As Mr. Aonuma stated:
“We realized there needed to be a good reason why Link and Zelda decided to take a large ox-like animal down into a cavern. It makes no sense and is a stupid idea to lead an animal like that into such a dark and dangerous location. But we already made that part of the game, so the only logical thing to do was create a DLC story to correct that oversight. Some staff members insisted that the fans wouldn’t care about such an ‘insignificant detail,’ so we fired them and proceeded with development.”
As you might expect, the development time for this DLC has been extremely tight. Mr. Aonuma explained as much when discussing the process:
“We already had everyone working overtime on the Breath of the Wild sequel, so the only solution was to have everyone move into the office for the past six months and work 20 hours a day. Many people did pass out from fatigue in those months, but that’s what insurance and lawyers are for.”
Thanks to the unnamed team’s completely voluntary efforts, this new DLC will be available in just a few weeks on April 20, and for the surprisingly low price of $6.99 USD. You can view the announcement trailer on Nintendo’s YouTube channel.
