Video game publication GameRant were lucky enough to do an interview via email with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. The team behind the game contuine to be amazed at its success and the positive response the open world adventure received by video game critics. Fujibayashi also discussed the concept because the awe-inspiring Divine Beast. You can read the full interview, right here.
Are you surprised by the reaction that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has garnered from critics and fans thus far? Namely, all of the perfect scores and its status as one of the highest rated games ever made.
“Yes we are. The entire staff did all they could to provide a polished product but even so the better-than-imagined reception has surprised us. We’re especially pleased to see all the inventive things people are trying and how much they are enjoying exploring the world as this is the gameplay we were aiming for.”
Where did the concept for the Divine Beasts come from?
“These came from an idea we had to solve two challenges we were facing at the time in terms of game design specifications; we wanted to create four moving dungeons which made use of the game physics, and we wanted to strengthen the romance of exploring a large overworld (the joy of discovery). The idea of having these huge mysterious objects, which in reality contained large dungeons, moving about and drawing players toward them seemed interesting.”
“As far as the design motif is concerned we drew inspiration from the divine beasts in Chinese mythology said to protect the four compass directions; the azure dragon of the east, the vermillion bird of the south, the white tiger of the west, and the black tortoise of the north. For the motif of each individual Divine Beast we took into consideration the users’ familiarity with the animals chosen, the ease with which we could make the odd sizes and movement appealing, the ease with which we could capture the users’ attention, and how to a capture the mystique (puzzle) of whether the beasts were friend or foe.”
What are the chances we see another major Legend of Zelda title on the Nintendo Switch?
“There’s nothing we can say about that at this time but we are currently working on new content for the Expansion Pass to extend your enjoyment of Breath of the Wild.”
Thanks to awesomeaussie27 for the tip!
The new expansion pass will add a new character.
http://img11.deviantart.net/1659/i/2013/058/9/5/kirby_link_fanart_by_parachuteninja-d5wdk83.jpg
I hope it’s a female one.
I think in real the new character is Zelda.
Maybe
Me too.. as Simon says below, Zelda would be great. In fact, playing the game over, but with slightly different objectives and missions but as Zelda would be incredible. Same world, new game. Doubt it happens but I would lap it up
I know right? ☺
I beat the final boss a fortnight ago. Im still playing and will buy the DLC. It would be good to know where the remaining 812 koroks are as this is a game i could seriously 100%. That’s the sign of a good game
If you don’t want to use an online map like I am there’s the DLC coming which includes the Korok mask that helps you find them.
I think I have close to 800 now. I will soon be going to the Rito village and then all I have left is the Gerudo region before storming Hyrule Castle :)
Getting close. I’m still a ways off. Potential spoilers just in case, but what’s the deal with the little stick windmills placed around the world? I imagine they must be hiding Koroks, but I don’t know what the puzzle is.
Go up to them and they activate targets for you to shoot. Sometimes balloons, sometimes smaller targets that jump up.
Really? I’ve gone up to a few of them. I’ve even tried hitting them and using the Korok Leaf on them, but nothing seems to happen. Is there some little prompt or something? Like with the little stumps with the image of the leaf on them, when you step on them there’s a clicking sound that lets you know something happened.
The stumps are a “reach the goal” challenge. Step on one and look in the direction the leaf is pointing, then go for the goal.
Yeah I know that. What I’m asking is if the windmills are supposed to have an audio queue like the stumps do.
Oh, sorry. If it’s the balloons you should hear when they appear and/or disappear by going too far from the stump. The other one is more visual so you have to look around for jumping acorn looking objects.
No problem. I’ll try it out tonight. Thanks.
Finding korok seeds is fun.
http://www.universozelda.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/minish01.jpg
Fujibayashi: What’s going on out there? Everyone’s going crazy over the game.
Aonuma: Just keep smiling.
This game deserves all the praise. It’s the kind of game that makes all other games feel blah and dull. I ordered the Witcher III for PS4 because it reminded me of a similar world as Breath Of The Wild. But still haven’t played it yet, because right now I’m playing Mafia II. And I’m having a hard time getting into it. All I can think about is Breath Of The Wild. There won’t be any Switch games I care about until Super Mario Odyssey. I MIGHT get the BOTW DLC just so I can return to it.
Witcher 3 is a good game. Good open world, dark sad atmoshpere. The weather and landscape can be just as immersive as BotW. Now BotW is by far the superior experience, but witcher 3 is really a must play IMO.
MIGHT get it?!?!?!?
HAHAHA
Are you kidding? I already started a new game of BotW before the DLC releases, and I’ll do it yet again when it comes out. And again when Round 2 comes at Holiday 2017. The game is pure 24-karat gold.
I hope they don’t let all of the praise blind them to the issues of the game that many people have criticized. (Except those people hating on the voice acting. Screw those people! lol)
I’m actually a little disappointed that there wasn’t MORE voice acting than there was. The vocal parts were too short. I expected MUCH more than that. In fact, when I first got Breath Of The Wild, I thought that the entire game was going to be voice-acted. So I was pretty surprised when I started seeing standard text with no voices. But still, it didn’t make me hate the game.
Same here. Expected more, text can be tedious but I can understand it being a huge game and all
Like the Honest Trailer for BotW said, baby steps, guys (I guess.) Hopefully the next game gives Link a better jump. It doesn’t have to be Mario great but better than what we got.
The story in general was too short. They needed more cutscenes and a deeper story. Also this game lacked a second tier villian. Like Zant from Twilight Princess or Giriham (I think that’s his name lol) from ALttP. I didn’t like how Gannon was handled, how we never even got to really see him until the end of the game. Also there were no Dark Nuts or Iron Knuckles, or any real “evil soldier” enemies at all. Just Bokoblins and Moblins. I thought there should have been ally better enemy variations. But it’s still an amazing game. However some people see it as a perfect game with no flaws and that’s just not true.
@Deepsouth
Ghirahim is from Skyward Sword. Agahnim is the one from A link to the Past.
I hope so too. BOTW was fun initially, but I don’t see myself playing it but maybe one more time through the story. Other Zeldas I have gone back to multiple times, but BOTW is just not what I want in a Zelda game. Som of the new stuff was great. But I feel they went too far away from the original formula. Almost didn’t even feel like a Zelda game to me. Bosses were too easy. Horses were useless and still not that intelligent. Lack of enemy variety (different colors doesn’t count to me). I’m not a fan of the weapon durability. Climbing is a chore. Fun at first, then a pain in the ass. Especially when it rains. Exploring doesn’t really get you much. The views are nice, but any chests you find are either weapons that break or rupees or other stuff that isn’t particularly interesting. No cool gadget items (the runes aside). Getting from point A to B can be quite a bore. I don’t consider it fun to be walking or riding a horse for five to ten minutes to get somewhere when there’s not much interesting stuff along the way. Oh look another wolf pack or group of deer. Haven’t seen a thousand of them already. Dungeons were way too short and had literally almost no enemies until the boss. The blue print maps were cool looking but not helpful at all. The old maps actually helped as maps. A giant orange dot that I’m kind of around doesn’t really show me much. Changing the dungeon landscape was a nice feature. But not a game changing revolution. The difficulty was misleading in the beginning. I kept getting one shot. But once I got good, and learned the patterns for the enemies, it became a joke. Not that most Zelda enemies have ever been much of a challenge. But I don’t consider an enemy doing 15 hearts of damage to be difficult. I consider it to be cheap. I don’t want to get killed because an enemy has an unfair advantage. I want it to be an actual challenge. Because once that unfair advantage is equalized, they become a waste of my time. Grinding for all the materials in the game is forced replay. Trying to make the game seem longer than it is. If can literally take hours to get all the required materials to upgrade all the armors. But that is not in the slightest fun for me. Oh here comes the dragon. Let me shoot it once, collect item, change the time of day, and repeat. Oh what amazing entertainment that is. The dragons were cool to look at. And then I found out their purpose in the game. Major let down. The star fragments, same thing. A lot of things on the game feel like cheap attempts to make the game longer. Final boss was disappointing to say the least. And the excuse that you can just three heart the game doesn’t cut it. How are you going to punish players for trying to 100% the game, thereby making the game pathetically easy? Combat is dull. People say “oh, there’s so many ways to kill enemies. You can drop boulders on then or use explosive barrels, or magnesis to smash them with rocks, etc.” That stuff is all cool for like the first five times at best. Then the novelty wears off and it isn’t. More of a hassle to do half of that stuff anyway, and they aren’t even instant kill attacks. Boulder falls on enemy, enemy says ouch, then looks for the boulder dropper for two seconds, then goes back to sleep or jumping in excitement or whatever they’re doing. There’s other things I can think of right this second. I haven’t played since I beat it. And these are just my opinions. I’m not saying it’s a bad game by any means. I’ll glad other people are still enjoying it. There’s a lot of good things in it. But for me it’s only a 7 or 8. And certainly not even close to best game of all time or best Zelda game for me. Not in top four even. I’m hopeful they try to fuse the old formula and new formula instead of just completely abandoning the old formula (which is what made a Zelda game a Zelda game to me). And the map, while amazingly huge, could stand to be a lot smaller in my opinion. As I alluded to earlier, taking forever to get from point A to point B isn’t fun. Climbing a mountain just to get to the top and having to climb another maintain is not fun at all. Ok. I’m hungry. Time for breakfast. That’s all folks.
The Guardian Stalkers were a challenge in the beginning. Then I later learned I could save durability on my weapons by parrying the beam attack at just the right moment with my shield, which doesn’t lose durability if you parry an attack perfectly. I still used Ancient Arrows at times, though, when I didn’t feel like playing tennis with the beam attacks. But that still made them into nothing but pushovers; persistent pushovers when you don’t feel like playing tennis or using ancient arrows but pushovers none the less.
I remember when I complained to either you or your brother about the Lynels being broken. Then like a week or two after that rant to one of you, I actually got use to their patterns & turned them into even bigger pushovers than Guardian Stalkers as I mastered the dodging, mostly, & activated flurry attacks. Hell! I didn’t even need to use flurry attacks as I got pretty good at simply dodging & just wailing on them til they started with their next attack. (Hard mode can’t come soon enough. But I don’t expect the challenge factor to go up too high even then since I’ve gotten pretty good at running away from attacks & dodging others. If anything, it’s just gonna take longer to kill them.
Speaking of durability, I sadly started finding more weapons than losing them so durability sadly became less of an issue. Once you know where the Hinoxes were, you never had to worry about running out of weapons as you could use the Sheikah armor to sneak on top of them & steal the weapons.
I enjoy the guardians because I love cutting their legs off and then wailing on them. But challenge-wise, they are pushovers as you said. They were intimidating at first, especially since they could shoot you from a mile away, but once you learn the game, easy as hell. Lynels just take forever to kill. I barely bothered with them after realizing that all they were good for was upgrading the barbarian armor, and honestly, you don’t even need to completely upgrade any armor to the max to be able to knock that crap out of Ganon. So I saw no reason to waste ten minutes fighting them and constantly doing the same dodge, flurry, etc. maneuvers. Must have been my brother that you discussed the Lynels being broken. Unless I missed the comment. But I don’t think I did. Weapons overall I just didn’t enjoy. You either didn’t have enough room and had to keep dropping weapons, or you didn’t have enough and ran out during a fight. The Master Sword running out of energy was so lame to me personally. I was like “finally a weapon I don’t have to worry about breaking.” And then I found out it ran out of energy. Basically the same thing! It takes about ten minutes to find and kill enemies, so it’s basically the equivalent of breaking. I didn’t bother stealing from Hinoxes, because I enjoyed killing them. Easy enough and enjoyable enough. Not ten minute kills like Lynels.
I’m the opposite. I enjoy fighting lynels but find the hinoxes boring since they are pushovers in the sense I can easily run underneath them & start literally spanking their asses. xD
Oh, Hinoxes are definitely pushovers haha. But They’re pretty quick kills. Lynels just take forever, so I got bored with the fight. Somewhere in the middle would be great.
I like the Lynels because they keep me on my toes even with my near mastery of the combat system when fighting them.
Oh they certainly do that. Even if you’re really good, one mistake and they can end you haha.
I agree with some of your points, the game had a fair amount of flaws. But seriously, some of your complaints are ridiculous. So your telling me your upset because the game was hard at first, but once you learned the enemies patterns it became easy? Well duhh, lol. That’s with any game, especially the dark souls series. The game was challenging, you got better at the game and it became easier.
Think of it this way, compare BotW with a really good book. The first time you read through it it was amazing. It was amazing because of the mystery of what’s over the next hill, or on the other side of that river, or behind that mountain. But once you read through book, or explored the other side of the hill, you lose that sense of wonder and mystery. The game just doesn’t seem as fun anymore. But I don’t think you should discredit the game for that, just as I wouldn’t discredit a good book for it not being as good on the second read.
First, I didn’t discredit the game, I said it is still a really good game. Just not a 10/10 for me. And I stated that these were all my opinions. I know other people really feel this is a 10/10 game and possibly the best game they’ve ever played. I am happy for those people, as I mentioned. But as for the difficulty thing, in most games, it can be ignored because they are not so long. BOTW is extremely long if you try to 100% it. And therefore while 100%ing it, you will be dealing with enemies that serve no real threat to you after a while. If you just go straight through the game without trying to 100% it, that’s a different story. But I try to 100% most games I play. But I like to feel engaged while doing so. Once I got past a certain point, I didn’t feel engaged in the slightest. Eventually, I got bored and stopped playing. I beat Ganon like four or five times, got all 120 shrines, all four divine beasts, all four fairies, Kilton’s rewards, and some other things. But there was nothing driving me to continue. The battles had zero appeal to me anymore. The korok seeds are extremely repetitive, and the prize you get for it is not really rewarding at all (won’t spoil what it is for those who haven’t gotten them all). As for the Dark Souls series, I’ve never played since I only have a Wii U and 3DS at this point, but I’ve heard it is an extremely challenging series. That’s literally all I know about it. As for your analogy, I do agree that first time is always the best. But unfortunately for me (again, my own personal opinion, as others find this game right up their alley) the story ceased to be amazing before it had even reached the halfway point. I’m not trying to ruin anyone else’s experience or say they are wrong for enjoying the game so much. I was merely discussing my own personal thoughts. Nothing more.
I understand, I didn’t think the game was a 10/10 either. To lacking in dungeons and enemy variations. Also in good boss fights, which I never considered any of the over world enemies as boss fights. Yea, the game does get boring after you experienced most of the content. I have also gotten all shrines and fairies and everything really besides korok seeds. But it’s the first play through, the first experience that will stick with you, not the boring post game.
Agree with everything you said. I wonder how the next Zelda will be, and if they’ll try improve the dungeons. Out of all the critiques, that’s one of the biggest. Some of my earlier critiques were not major. But the dungeons really need more to them and more of them. Shrines were nice, but not a substitute for dungeons.
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