An Italian voice actor for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may have revealed a major plot point in the long-awaited sequel. Spoilers follow.
Legend of Zelda YouTube channel Lega Hyrule uploaded a video where they interviewed Pietro Ubaldi, the Italian voice actor for Goron champion Daruk at a fan event. In the video, Ubaldi candidly revealed that he is not only reprising his role as Link’s stalwart (and long-deceased) friend, but that he is also voicing one of Daruk’s ancestors as well.
“Whose name I don’t remember, unfortunately,” Ubaldi said in the video. “But it was a bit more serious Daruk.”
While the phenomenon of a voice actor giving away plot details for an upcoming game isn’t anything new, in the video, Lega Hyrule’s Emanuele notes that Ubaldi’s revelation that Daruk returns in the sequel is peculiar considering Daruk’s spirit passes into the afterlife at the end of Breath of the Wild. But that isn’t to say that Daruk popping up in BotW2 is an impossibility–he was already a spirit throughout the events of the first game, after all, and it’s also possible that throughout the sequel, more memories of Link’s past will surface in which Daruk (and the other champions, Revali, Mipha, and Urbosa) were alive and well.
More notable, however, is the news that an ancestor of Daruk’s makes an appearance. To be clear, we know nothing about this ancestor–not his name, or how many generations removed he is from our boy Daruk. However, Emanuele does raise the intriguing possibility that he may be the ancestor who piloted Divine Beast Rudania in the battle with Calamity Ganon that took place 10,000 years prior to Breath of the Wild.
Of course, like Daruk, this ancestor may appear as a spirit or only in flashbacks, we don’t know. But what if this ancestor appears because Link somehow travels back in time to the conflict that happened 10,000 years ago? What if we discover that the hero of legend who wielded the Master Sword in that struggle is our own Link, cast back in time? Zelda games have a penchant for timey-wimey plot points, so it’s hardly out of the question. Given BotW’s plot involving Link Rip Van Winkle-ing himself from a 100-year sleep to give Ganon the smoke, it would make sense that Link would link up (I’m not apologizing) with Daruk’s ancestor in the past, given the fact that he’s the “hero of time” and all.
Ubaldi’s leaked plot detail, while innocuous, is a big deal considering it’s the first real nugget of information Zelda fans have gotten about BotW2 since Nintendo’s trailer at last year’s E3. Although the teaser trailer is briefer than most YouTube advertisements, eagle-eyed fans theorised that Link has time travelled to the past based on his toga-like garb and his long hair.
Sadly, outside of the BotW 2 trailer that’s now nearly a year old, the folks over at Nintendo have been tight-lipped about any details, even going so far as omitting the game’s actual title in fear that it would hint too pointedly at the plot, simply calling it, for the time being, “the Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild.”
“As for why we’re holding back on the name, you’ll just have to stay tuned because, obviously, Zelda names are kind of important,” Bill Trinen from Nintendo Treehouse told IGN in a 2021 interview. “Those subtitles… they start to give little bits of hints about maybe what’s going to happen.”
Fans are gonna have to wait a little longer thanks to BotW2’s shifted release date from this year to sometime in 2023. Hopefully Nintendo gives fans some new footage to scour over before another voice actor candidly breaks NDA and reveals what their characters are up to in BotW2.
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