Do you need to play Zelda: Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom?

The last five years have been monumental for the The Legend of Zelda franchise, with Breath of the Wild releasing in 2017 and the highly reviewed Tears of the Kingdom releasing on May 12, 2023. With TotK being a direct sequel, many are curious about whether or not they should play the first game before diving into the world of TotK.

Here’s all the information you need to know about whether or not you need to play Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom and some of the important information if you don’t.

Should you play Zelda: BotW before TotK?

The short and less complicated answer to whether or not you need to play Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom is “probably not.” While there’s a lot of background knowledge of this version of Hyrule, there will likely be some form of recap video available in the game. Even if not, Nintendo summarizes all the needed information in as little as six minutes in the YouTube video below.

If you’ve played any Zelda game in the past, you’ll likely understand the premise of this game, with Link needing to save the princess and the entire world from an evil force. What’s important is in this timeline, this version of Link has already done it once. What will be interesting is to see how the hero changes now that he’s forced to save the world once again.

While you don’t need to play Breath of the Wild first, it will give you an appreciation of the evolution in mechanics. Seeing the new ability to dive upward through roofs after spending countless hours climbing rocks is hard to describe unless you played the first game. There will also be a number of returning characters that players fell in love with from the TotK‘s story, but you can learn about these from different BotW lore videos on YouTube.

The Legend of Zelda history before BotW

The Zelda series is one of three legends in an eternal cycle of struggle in the kingdom of Hyrule, with stories being told about a great evil, a wise princess, and a powerful hero. It can get pretty complicated, but BotW, and subsequently TotK, take place at some point in a long timeline that extends at least 10,000 years before the start of BotW.

These aren’t the same version of Link and Zelda, as they are typical Hylians named in the tradition of Hyrule. Ganondorf is a recreation of the evil force that was shown as the Calamity in previous games, now appearing in his rare male Gerudo form. He has been advertised as the main antagonist in TotK.