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Nintendo Explains How Skyrim Influenced Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

We heard back when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was early in development that the team had said that they had drawn some influences from Bethesda’s massive open world RPG, Skyrim. In a recent interview with GameSpot The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild producer Eiji Aonuma and game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi revealed that they both played through Skyrim to find out the challenge of making a giant open world game. Here’s what they had to say, below:

“In the past I’ve also actually said that I have played Skyrim, so it’s not necessarily that I don’t play games,” Aonuma stated. “But we don’t look at it from, ‘Oh, what kind of things can we take from this game?’ It’s more of like, ‘How can we prepare for this? What should we expect from games like this?'”

“And so we also think about how many people we might need, or how we can make it improved, or with the number of people,” he continued. “We would collect data and then work and see what worked, what didn’t.”

“I don’t actually myself play a lot of other games,” Fujibayashi explained through a translator. “I obviously am well versed in them, I know what’s happening in them. But this ending up in this kind of bigger open world really started from the prototype stage where, just kind of naturally by virtue of what we wanted to do in this game, we started to realize that we absolutely do need this bigger open world in order to make the kind of game that we wanted.”

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20 thoughts on “Nintendo Explains How Skyrim Influenced Zelda: Breath Of The Wild”

      1. I’ve spent 300hrs on this game and I’ve still got tons to do, such a great game.
        I have skyrim but I havnt played it yet. I want to do everything in Zelda first before I start another big open world game.
        I hope it’s good?

  1. It sure is the largest world in The Legend of Zelda games. Imagine if they put traditional dungeons and that this time there are more than in previous Zelda games. But please give us the pieces of hearts back. That is something that needs to return in the next Zelda game.

    1. “But please give us the pieces of hearts back. ”

      What? The heart pieces were in the game. They just called them something else because now you had an option of two things to do with your heart pieces.

      “Imagine if they put traditional dungeons”

      Yes. Pre-OoT style dungeons please.

      1. I see your point, its just that I’ve grown so attached to the pieces of hearts that I feel sad they changed to the spirit orbs. I hope they put the pieces of hearts and the stamina enhancer (I don’t remember its true name) separate. In an open world Zelda, this can work well.

      2. Well, I think it would be *extremely* unwise for them to copy/paste the shrines/spirit orbs system in the next game. Though what I liked about it is it gave you some customization in how you wanted to build link. I thought it was quite fun, especially in master mode, to run with stamina vessals for your first several picks, and figuring out how to use that properly in combat when you can’t ever afford to get hit.

  2. I can’t believe how many hours others say they’ve played Breath Of The Wild (such as Natsumi’s 1,200 hours on the Wii U version). I only played 120+ hours before I beat Ganon and moved on. Though I have many things to do in it still. Such as the DLC. So I hope to return one day. Even if I didn’t have any other games, I doubt I’d play it more than 250/300 hours.

    Speaking of hours, does anybody know if there’s a way I can see how long I’ve played a game on PS4? I’d dying to know how long I’ve played Witcher III so far.

  3. In other words, they got bored working on Zelda games for 25+ years, so they decided to make the franchise different.

    Yup, how about a sequel to Skyward Sword?

    1. Aonuma only took over after OoT, <20 years ago. The Zeldas before then really didn't play the same way, and were nowhere near the puzzle fests that the kids call "classic zelda" now.

      I'll bet good money, really good money that you get an hd remake of Skyward Sword (maybe even in 2018. After all, they said they were considering hd Skyward when they did both the Wii U hd remakes), but I doubt you'll ever get a sequel.

  4. I remember hearing comments about Breath for the Wild reminding people of Skyrim so it’s really cool to see that it was actually inspired by the game.

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