The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a hugely ambitious game which breaks the conventions of previous games in the series. Online gaming publication IGN managed to scoop an interview with three key developers behind the game, game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, technical director Takuhiro Dohta, and art director Satoru Takizawa, to discuss the highly regarded game’s creation process.
- Breath of the Wild development started with less than 10 people
- A small team can work on early ideas to make a game for roughly a year or possibly longer
- First phase is spent figuring out the game idea the team wants to make
- Once the initial prototype is completed, the findings are presented to Nintendo’s senior staff
- If that team proves the ideas will work, the team begins staffing up
- After the first phase was completed, technical director Takuhiro Dohta joined the team along with art director Satoru Takizawa
- The developers knew they wanted to create a large field full of player-driven actions that could result in lots of possibilities
- The 2D prototype that was made was a great way to explain core goals/ideas to the biggest dev team
- The 2D prototype was presented to Miyamoto, which was somewhat of a surprise for him
- After viewing, he said it will be the collection of all these objects that makes the game world work
- The team came up with some very “out there” ideas to break with series conventions
- The art team used an online bulletin board where staff could freely upload their ideas
- The team could give an idea they liked a rupee on this board, with great ideas getting multiple rupees
- This is how the team decided on what elements should be included in the game
- The game’s unique sense of discovery manifested toward the end of the game’s experimentation phase
- Ideas were removed that made the game hard to play the game or that it didn’t break the convention in certain ways
- The Great Plateau ended up being a culmination of what the dev team was trying to do
- Different cultures within the game and the NPCs were added in later
- Guardians were based off of Octoroks in the original game
The game was in a long development for 5 years now.
And still going, with the upcoming DLC.
Oh
Which btw was also the thimespan they invested for OoT. So maybe Nintendo should only release a new Zelda game every 5 years, seems to totally pay out :)
Well, yes, but they did pay some extra money to develop a game for 5 years. So, there work has been pay off.
The Lords shower us with insight.
I would have loved the game just a tiny little bit more if Koji Kondo had been the direct composer, also I would do anything just to see another instrument featured in a game and playing an important role in the story. They stopped doing so in wind waker with the wand thing, although they kind of incorporated the ruto with its accordion.
I want to see the return of the Ocarina of Time. It still is my one of my favorite items in a Zelda game. Probably won’t happen in a game that takes place after Breath of the Wild though as that item has probably been lost in the passages of time. Unless Hero of Time Link was buried with it & his grave is well hidden & well taken care of.
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