The new open-world Pokémon has Breath of the Wild vibes

Pokémon fans rejoiced today when the Pokémon Presents stream unveiled not one, but two new games.

We got Diamond and Pearl remakes for Nintendo Switch, but somehow even that wasn’t enough to upstage the other big announcement of the day: A new open-world Pokémon game, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is coming to Nintendo Switch in early 2022.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is an open-world adventure set in feudal Japan and while its open-world formula leaps away from previous Pokémon titles, people online were quick to compare the game to another incredibly popular Switch game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

This isn’t the first time that fans have compared a Pokémon game to the beloved Zelda title. Throughout the announcements and release period of Pokémon Sword and Shield, fans couldn’t help but point out the similarities between Sword and Shield’s open roaming “Wild Area” and Breath of the Wild. However, while those comparisons made sense back then, they pale in comparison to just how alike Legends: Arceus looks to the Zelda game.

For one, both are open-world games, but it goes beyond that. Breath of the Wild has a stunning cinematic style and we see that mimicked in the new release trailer for Legends: Arceus. This GIF from Twitter account Akfamillyhome shows just closely how the cinematography matches up between the two games.

As a result of these similarities, numerous people on Twitter are calling the new Pokémon game, “Pokémon: Breath of the Wild” and “Breath of the Wild 2,” joking that we finally got the much anticipated sequel to the Zelda game. If you search “Breath of the Wild” on Twitter right now, you will pretty much only get results showing Pokémon screenshots.

Some have even gone as far as to make memes that us the Breath of the Wild logo with the new Pokémon game.

If you’re as excited as everyone else, you’ll be able to grab Pokémon Legends: Arceus in early 2022.