Today during a Nintendo livestream we got our first look at Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a new open-world Pokémon game. Almost instantly after it was revealed folks on the internet began comparing it to Breath of the Wild. In fact, one particular shot in the new trailer caught the eyes of many fans for how similar it looked to a famous moment from a Breath of the Wild trailer.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is set way in the past, before any other Pokémon game, and is an open-world RPG, featuring what appears to be new ways to catch wild Pokémon and a bigger world to explore.
As we’ve seen over the last year or so, some game developers have created games that seem...inspired by Breath of The Wild. Perhaps you have a different word in mind, like copy or ripoff or clone. Regardless of what we call it, the open-world gameplay and visual style of Breath of the Wild seem to be popping up more and more in other non-Nintendo games. So perhaps it’s only right that Nintendo will get in on the BotW action with Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which the publisher calls an open-world RPG.
The similarity was quickly pointed out by Twitter user @Akfamilyhome who perfectly spliced the two shots together into a tweet shortly after the trailer was released. It quickly went viral.
Does that mean this new Pokémon game will offer the exact same type of adventure? Of course not. But it’s hard to ignore the direct comparison Nintendo itself included in the reveal of Pokémon Legends. And as you would expect, the internet didn’t ignore it. All across Twitter, you can see folks pointing out the similarity between BotW and Legends, sharing screenshots and gifs.
But if Nintendo is taking elements from Breath of the Wild’s open-world gameplay and combining them with the universe of Pokémon, as that sweeping vista shot seems to imply, a lot of folks will finally get the game they wanted back when they were kids playing the original Pokémon games on Game Boy. Or, a bunch of folks with mile-high expectations will be very disappointed when Pokémon Legends: Arceus releases next year for Switch. Place your bets now.