More Zelda books coming to the West
At the Zelda Masterclass panel at Japan Expo in Paris, it was revealed that more Zelda behind-the-scenes books will be making their way to the West.
First up is Hyrule Encyclopedia, which is an extensive visual guide to the world of The Legend of Zelda, containing tons of art and information about the various items, enemies, locations etc across the series. It is currently set to be released in September in France, though we’d be surprised if it wasn’t released at the same time in other countries and languages.
Next up, a completely new book was also announced. This one will be all about Breath of the Wild, with plenty of artwork and background details. No release date has been announced so far, but we will probably have to wait for this one a little while.
The tweet by Nintendo France which announced Hyrule Encyclopedia also brought with it a bit of confusion. It announced the book “Hyrule Graphics” for release in September – however, Hyrule Graphics was already released as “Arts & Artifacts” in the West earlier this year, so it’s not quite clear what exactly this book is at this moment. When it was initially released in Japan, Hyrule Graphics was revealed to be the first book in a three part series to celebrate the franchise’s 30th anniversary, so you might think that maybe this “Hyrule Graphics” is the next book in that series. However, the second and third books in that series are in fact the earlier mentioned Hyrule Encyclopedia and the Breath of the Wild book.
Perhaps Nintendo’s French account merely made a mistake, or perhaps this is an entirely new book that hasn’t even been released in Japan yet – at the moment, we just don’t know. Hopefully we can clear up this confusion soon.
