Spoiler Warning: Since this post is talking about upcoming post-launch updates, I will be freely engaging in spoiler talk about Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Story, characters, gameplay details, post-game, all of it is fair game! Additionally, I'll be pretty open on remarking on spoilers for the original Hyrule Warriors, Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and Tears of the Kingdom. Continue with care. <3

Age of Imprisonment hasn't been out for a month yet, but in that time I've helped my partner 100% the game as her player 2, finished it 100% myself, and recently I've been player 2 for my mum who's playing through the game.

So naturally I also want to spend even more time on the game, so I'll keep writing about it even when I'm not playing it!

On launch day the official Hyrule Warriors (or rather, Zelda Musou) twitter account quietly and with no fanfare announced that there would be two updates coming to the game to extend its playtime. When are these updates? What will be in them? How big will they be? All questions. Or to be more clear: We basically know nothing other than the updates will happen, there will be two of them, and they will presumably be somewhat significant as they probably wouldn't have announced them ahead of time otherwise?

Of course, the moment they share more details we'll probably have a lot of our answers. Even the format they choose to announce it will mean a lot. If we get a big trailer? Probably a pretty hefty update! If it's just a tweet announcing what's being added, or a "hey it's out" post alongside a shadowdrop? Probably less so. And of course, more importantly: The moment they share news, my window for extending my speculaton about the game will have expired!!!

Can't let that happen, so I'm firing up the trusty ol' brand-new blog to yammer on about a Zelda game some more!

I can see this becoming a habit.

My first prediction is pretty obvious, and I imagine it's the first or second prediction of probably everyone who's beaten the game and knows the updates are coming: Sonia.

Queen Sonia is the only non-playable character in the game capable of performing a Sync Strike with the playable cast. She's a major character in the story, despite her untimely death, and one a lot of people were looking forward to playing as. She has a unique moveset as an NPC, not based on any other character or unit. Her weapon is a bow, a weapon type otherwise only used by Raphica. I bring that up mostly because bow-type Zonaite Steel at launch can only be used for a single character's weapon and that seems ridiculous to me.

The biggest evidence of all, however, is actually in the character select screen. The game has rows of four characters, organized by importance to the story and by affiliation. As you unlock characters they organize themselves into their spot in the roster, moving to the left and even up into a previous row if the characters to their left are not unlocked yet. Except for the top row. The fair right side of the top row is always blank. And we all can tell who's going to be there.

It'll be Mineru, because Sonia will go into spot three. I mean, that's even where she goes on the official website's character section. But I digress.

I'll be honest, if it wasn't for both the gap on the character select screen and the knowledge of the incoming updates I would be legitimately upset at no playable Sonia. Even with the game focusing fairly little on the lead-up and mostly on the Imprisoning War itself, not having as at least a non-canon bonus character would be a huge misstep. And I am assuming this is a misstep they are NOT makling. Time will tell.

Now if there was just ONE update coming, then I might have just ONE very confident prediction but as there are two... I have two. This is math? Anyway, there's one more big omission in the game's playable roster at Launch, and his name is Ganondorf. Age of Imprisonment is actually the first Hyrule Warriors to not have some form of Ganon as a playable character at launch, and I don't see a world where they don't rectify that. Tears of the Kingdom Ganondorf has a FANTASTIC design, and while his characterization doesn't go very far beyond what we got in games like Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess people will still wanna play as the King of Evil.

Back in my prediction thread I made on Bluesky when the game was announced I outlined three distinct possibilities for Ganondorf being playable. The one I'd like best continues to be if his regular and Demon King forms are separately playable, with the Demon King version maybe being an overpowered bonus you unlock for getting 100% completion of the update content or something. Second place would be if his mortal form is the only playable version, leaving Demon King Ganondorf solely in the realm of Being the Final Boss.

And so it is with a heavy heart that I predict it very likely that we may get playable Demon King form only. Granted, the in-game gallery gives me a nugget of hope with the fact that Ganondorf gets two entries - one for his normal form, and one for him as the Demon King. This feels like an odd choice to me, when other characters that go through visual changes just get a button to change their art? And maybe indicative of a particular need to differentiate them? But maybe they just figured that becoming the Demon King was major enough to warrant it. Regardless: The base game doesn't feature Ganondorf's pre-Demon King self in any segment of gameplay, which leads me to my prediction here.

Aside from the two very obvious character additions (which will be a shock if either get passed up on, for me) I do have a few other ideas and hopes for characters being made playable.

The Forbidden Construct is a pretty obvious one. While it is the same model of construct as the already-playable Knight Construct, it has a very different aesthetic and at least a few original moves it uses in its boss fights. Speaking in terms of looking back on previous games, it's fun to note that it has precedent both working in and against its favor! The Knight Construct is very much like Terrako from Age of Calamity in the way he acts as a new twist to the established story from TotK, which naturally brings to mind Harbinger Ganon when looking to the Forbidden Construct. Neither Harbinger Ganon nor its DLC-added Mutated Ganon form were playable in Age of Calamity, only Terrako. On the other hand...

Harbinger Ganon ultimately served as one half of the base for Calamity Ganon's body in Age of Calamity, and Calamity Ganon was both the final boss and a postgame playable character. The Forbidden Construct's glowy Super Saiyan-esque hair even brings to mind the appearance of Calamity Ganon from Age of Calamity! All that said, I think it's a bit of a toss-up. Though I guess if they added both Ganondorf and the Forbidden Construct then they'd each have someone to have a unique Sync Strike with!

Sync Strikes... I'll circle back to that.

Aside from actual character PREDICTIONS, I do have a few hopes. My biggest, if most far-fetched, would be for them to actually name and make playable the Twinrova characters. Given that they're literally nameless and don't have unique movesets or even any fire and ice powers I'm really not thinking it'll happen at this point. Lenalia would also be very fun to see. She's definitely not a fighter, but I'd love any excuse to see her more since she rather tragically gets barely any screentime once the war begins.More of a hope than Twinrova, sure, but not by much.

And since we're talking about characters who don't have a reasonable chance of being playable: I'd dig getting to play as Grimgibdo. The Archfiends don't even use weapons to be able to be upgraded, and even being one of the smallest she's still pretty huge. Though they did make the playable Calamity Ganon smaller in Age of Calamity...

But characters are just one part of the equation. Heck, if Sonia and Ganondorf were playable in the game at launch I probably wouldn't even be thinking too much about them adding in characters. The real meat of the game, after all, is what you DO with the characters rather than the characters themselves. The game is split between its large Story chapters and the many bite-sized Challenges, and it also has the numerous Quests throughout the map where you turn in materials for unlocks and such. Naturally, I feel like the updates are going to at the very least add new Challenges and Quests even if the only Quests are for upgrading Sonia and Ganondorf.

In particular, there's a lot of open space in the Sky and Depths maps that could be filled out easily in the coming updates. I'm sure they could squeeze more into the surface map as well, but it's already pretty cramped so I'm expecting at least a decent chunk to be in the Sky and Depths. A part of me would be very entertained if everything Sonia-related was in the heavens and everything Ganondorf-related was underground... But again, I digress.

I do wonder if they'd give Aside Quests, and therefore a bonus conversation, to any new characters added. Aside quests are a neat, if somewhat overwhelming and hard to track, part of the game. I wouldn't mind incentive to go out and do things with my new characters, so that'd be neat. And I enjoyed a lot of the bonus conversations in the game, at least for the characters I was interested in.

I do have one last big hope, but before that I wanna circle back to Sync Strikes. What a great mechanic. They took a central part of Tears of the Kingdom's theming, connections with others as represented by hands, and used it to make a flavourful, fun, and exciting bit of gameplay. And the way it comes up in the battle against Ganondorf is so good...

Sync Strikes are something every character has access to, with the main characters even getting unique Sync Strikes. They represent both the overall cooperation and alliances of the people of the land standing up to the Demon King as well as the specific relationships for those that have unique Sync Strikes! Oh wait, that bit about standing up to the Demon King...

So yeah, while it feels unthinkable that they wouldn't add a playable Ganondorf... It also feels bizarre to imagine him doing Sync Strikes? And while they could technically make it so he can't perform them, that would just feel bad. Sure, any playable Ganondorf action is probably gonna fall outside of canon and the need for proper logic, but I'd be remiss to not at least bring this up.

Now, with that out of the way... My big hope:

I'd really love to get additional story chapters in the updates. Age of Calamity had two DLC waves (huh, sounds familiar) with the first adding a bunch of Challenges, a new moveset each for Link and Zelda each, and one playable character. But the second was where the real meat was. Not only did they add 2 new playable characters (one was a secret though so don't tell nobody) but they also added in various new story chapters, most of which focused on the Champions and were pretty fun. One in particular was a standout, and everyone who's played knows what I'm talking about.

So obviously anybody enjoying the game is gonna want extra story chapters. Not only do I quite enjoy the game's writing, but the story chapters are bigger and more fleshed-out experiences compared to the bite-sized Challenges. But will I be satisfied with just any story? Well, given the high quality of the base game I probably would be happy with whatever they've got next but I do have more specific story-related hopes!

My first hope is the same as something I hoped for in my prediction thread: A Villain chapter. Getting to play as Ganondorf and wreak havoc across the land would be great. I loved the Ganondorf Chapter from the original Hyrule Warriors and I'd be more than fine with something that would effectively be an encore performance.

My second hope, and this can be the same as my first hope, is that we get to actually see what happened to the Gerudo who were most loyal to Ganondorf. Ardi's faction and a lot of the Gerudo in general join up with the Hyrulean army, but we never get a hint of what fate awaited Ganondorf's masked captains. In addition to the gold-masked unnamed Koume and Kotake, there are also two more specific Gerudo captains: One with a white mask, and one with a black mask. Even if all we get is a story chapter where you cut them down as Ganondorf, that would still be closure on their fates. Knowing THAT he betrayed his people and actually seeing it go down are two very different things, after all.

And my third hope, and this will wrinkle some noses: I'd just like an Age of Calamity-style Everyone Gets to Live timeline. I don't care how they get us there. Have Zelda turn back time to save Sonia, have Sonia fucking Perfect Dodge and Flurry Rush Ganondorf into next century, just let her live and be happy with her perfect goat husband. What would the story even be about beyond Sonia's life being saved? How would it make sense with Ganondorf needing to become the Demon King for Zelda to even come back in time in the first place? Not my problem! I'm just making a wishlist over here! Logistics are up to SOMEBODY ELSE!

But at the end of the day, these are just hopes and dreams and thoughts about things that may or may not come to pass. Age of Imprisonment is already an absolutely phenomenal game in my opinion, and what issues I have with it pale in comparison to everything it does right. I'm not realistically expecting anything too huge with these updates. They're free additions to the game and not paid DLC or anything, so you won't see me saying I got cheated or anything if I end up not feeling like what they give us holds up to my wildest hopes.

And hey, I'm just trying to have a little fun here! If it stopped being fun for me, I'd stop making little prediction games. Here's hoping your little bits of fun stay fun for you, too.