A Split-Second Appearance
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s first trailer of the evening certainly crammed a ton of details into a short amount of time. While we’ve already covered a few of them, this character in particular, despite being on the screen for literally two seconds, is one of the trailer’s most interesting parts.
This bird may not mean a lot to some of you, especially with how quickly it disappeared, but to those invested deep into Zelda’s lore, this could well be Roam. For those who are unaware, Roam is a character that featured in the A Link to the Past comic, referred to as ‘The Mystery Knight’ and a master archer from the Knights of Hyrule. Despite actually being a human, the comic states that the Dark World changes the shape of those who inhabit it based on their hearts, so when Roam enters into battle with Link for the Master Sword in the comics, he transforms into a humanoid Eagle.
Combining that information with the image we see here, we can draw a few interesting conclusions. If this is in fact Roam, then Breath of the Wild may actually be taking place in some form of the Dark World. Later in the trailer, the camera panned over a desolate and dark-looking area, a stark contrast to the lush green meadows we’re familiar with from the title. This would raise another question, why does Link not suffer a similar transformation?
If we refer back to the events of the comic, Link manages to maintain his human form by controlling his emotions, meanwhile Roam saw his transformation as an advantage in battle. The Eagle man thing also can be seen equipped with a bow, further supporting that this is indeed Roam. Finally, this new character can also be seen wearing that same blue color as Link and the female character from before. Again, if this blue clothing is some form of link between characters, we could be looking at a begrudging ally for Link on his adventure in Breath of the Wild.
