Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
- "After Ganon was defeated by Link, the remaining Malice pulled itself together to form this bestial creature. Its appearance and fiendish magic earned it the name of Dark Beast. This form is considered to be Ganon's original, although in this state, his awareness has been consumed entirely by Malice, and all he knows is a desire to rampage and destroy."
- — Hyrule Compendium
Dark Beast Ganon (魔獣ガノン Majū Ganon?, Demonic Beast Ganon) is the final boss in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Like his incarnation from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Ganon appears as a monstrous boar demon with a mane of violet flames and a body made of pure Malice. Link fights Ganon from the back of his horse while using the Bow of Light provided by Zelda.
Description[]
Despite his intimidating appearance, Dark Beast Ganon is a large, slow target. His only means of hurting Link are stomping on him with his massive hooves and firing a beam of dark purple energy from his mouth; both are heavily telegraphed and easily avoided at a distance. After a while, Zelda will use her magic to create glowing sigils on Ganon's body; Link must shoot these spots with the Bow of Light to damage his calamitous foe. Initially, there are six sigils for Link to shoot (three on either side of Ganon's body), and he can shoot up to three of them at a time. After losing about three-quarters of its health, a new sigil appears on the boss's underside, forcing Link to get closer in order to line up his shot.
Once the sigil on his underside has been hit, Ganon will open a seam on his back, revealing a cluster of demonic eyes that Zelda describes as his core essence. To finish the fight, Link must fire one last Light Arrow into the largest of the eyes; this can be done with a well-aimed shot from the ground, but the easier tactic is to paraglide upwards with the updrafts created in the wake of the Dark Beast's beam attack - alternately, Revali's Gale can be used. No matter how Link does it, the final shot from the Bow of Light weakens Ganon to the point where Zelda can break free of his body and finish him off with the divine power of Hylia.
Fate[]
According to Zelda just prior to the boss fight, when transforming into Dark Beast Ganon, the demon king gave up on trying to reincarnate himself and instead poured all of his strength into a final attempt to lay waste to Hyrule. It is unclear exactly what this means; during the ending, Zelda notes that she and Link have stopped Ganon for now, implying that the Calamity is not permanently dealt with. With these two comments taken into consideration, the implication may be that Ganon's transformation into the Dark Beast has effectively "trapped" him in his current state - although he may yet be able to return, he will never be able to take any form other than a mindless force of destruction. In the Japanese version, however, it was mentioned that Ganon assumed this form specifically because he refused to give up on reincarnating himself.
Spoiler warning: Spoilers end here.