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Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – E3 2021 Teaser – Nintendo Direct

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Nintendo finally lifted the curtain on Breath of the Wild’s sequel — and sent Hyrule into the sky.

During its E3 2021 Nintendo Direct broadcast on June 15, Nintendo aired the first gameplay footage of the untitled sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, two years after the game’s original teaser closed out E3 2019. Franchise producer Eiji Aonuma introduced the clip himself, confirming that the follow-up is still very much alive and now has a release window: 2022, on Nintendo Switch. The footage traded the familiar rolling plains of Hyrule for something stranger — Link falling through open sky, past floating islands, toward a castle that no longer sits on the ground.

• Nintendo confirmed a 2022 release window for Nintendo Switch, its first concrete update since the sequel’s E3 2019 announcement teaser.
• The trailer showed Hyrule expanding into the skies with floating islands, and Hyrule Castle itself lifting into the air surrounded by red malice.
• Link’s new abilities are centered on a glowing right arm, including a time-reversal power to ride falling debris upward, a phase-through-solid-stone mechanic, and a flamethrower-style shield attachment.

A Long-Awaited Update

Since the brief announcement teaser in 2019 — a shot of Link and Zelda descending into a chamber beneath Hyrule Castle — Nintendo had said almost nothing about the sequel. That silence made this Direct segment the game’s real coming-out moment. Aonuma’s on-camera introduction signaled that Nintendo wanted the reveal handled with weight, not buried in a rapid-fire trailer reel, and the studio used it to lock in a release window rather than just teasing tone.

Hyrule Turns Skyward

The footage opens with Link free-falling through cloud cover, skydiving past chains of floating landmasses that hang above the familiar Hyrule surface map. It’s a structural expansion, not just a visual flourish — Nintendo is building vertically on top of the open world it already built horizontally in 2017. The trailer’s most striking image comes near the end, when Hyrule Castle itself is shown lifting off the ground, wrapped in red malice, suggesting whatever catastrophe drives the plot is tied directly to the sky islands’ appearance.

Link’s New Right Arm

Where Breath of the Wild gave Link the Sheikah Slate and its four core runes, this footage centers everything on an altered, glowing right arm. In the clip, Link uses it to reverse an object’s fall and ride the debris upward, to phase his body through solid stone, and to fit a shield with a flamethrower attachment. None of these are named or explained on screen — Nintendo left the mechanics for players to puzzle out from the footage alone.

Link free-falls through the clouds toward a Hyrule Castle that’s no longer on the ground.

Nintendo Holds the Title Back

Despite showing gameplay for the first time, Nintendo deliberately withheld an official subtitle, continuing to refer to the project only as the sequel to Breath of the Wild. It’s the same approach the studio has taken with other high-profile follow-ups revealed early — Amazon’s Rings of Power announcement is a recent example of a title reveal getting its own separate moment down the line rather than arriving with the first footage.

For a series that’s used to slow-drip reveals — see how Bungie built anticipation with the Destiny 2: The Witch Queen weapons and gear trailer months ahead of launch — Nintendo’s pace here fits the pattern. What’s locked in now is the 2022 window and the sky-islands premise; the name, the story details, and the rest of Link’s new toolkit are still Nintendo’s to reveal whenever the next Direct rolls around.