Japanese magazine Famitsu has been chatting with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and producer Eiji Aonuma about different parts of the critically acclaimed game. In this particular interview, the team touched on the design of the Depths which twist, turns, and unravels underneath the surface of Hyrule. Mr. Aonuma informed the publication that the design and elements which make up the Depths were created in a surprisingly short period of time. However, perfecting the Depths to the state that it is in the final game, did take them longer to accomplish.
Fujibayashi: By the way, in fear of being misleading, the Depths were made in a surprisingly short period of time.
Seriously? Is that true?
Fujibayashi: But if you say that sort of thing you’ll make the staff angry and say “That was not easy!”. Strictly speaking, I mean the base landforms of the depths made from in an extremely short period of time.
The Depths and surface have an inverted relationship; areas that are high up in the surface are instead low in the Depths, and conversely, low places and rivers on the surface become tall walls in the Depths. When originally creating the surface area, level designs were separated by rivers so if you were to make the terrain inverted, the areas themselves would be similarly separated by rivers and you would have another naturally terrain-created level. So I wanted to try investigating this idea, and after conveying some of the conditions we talked about to a programmer, they quickly finished a prototype.
Aonuma: Not only Fujibayashi, but other staff members also attempted to ask various things in the process of creating the previous game, like “I wonder if by using Breath of the Wild’s materials, what things can we change?” Meanwhile, with an automated approach, programmers implemented this in a short time.
Fujibayashi: Of course, from there it took a long time and many adjustments for it to take its present shape, but the time to build up the base itself was not long at all.
Aonuma: I am the first to stop things so that they do not take too much time and effort. The way it went when we decided to implement something was, “No, this surprisingly will not take much effort to create”, and then “Well then, let’s do it”. (laughs)
It is possible to seamlessly move from the sky to the surface and then pierce into the Depths, isn’t that difficult to technologically achieve?
Fujibayashi: Yes, it is. The programmers were considerably creative while they made various adjustments and moved forward implementing optimizations until the end.
Aonuma: In fact, until the end of development it had not become seamless. While in the middle of loading, Link would stop and not fall among other issues.
It truly was a properly challenging thing, wasn’t it?
Aonuma: The programmers would say “It’s fine” but that situation continued until the end and we kept checking “Can we really make it seamless?” But, at the very end, they made it a reality. (laughs)
Totk depth is the most empty area in a Nintendo game.
The Great Sea from Wind Waker says hi.
The Sky in Skyward Sword also says hi. (I’d argue it’s worse than GS in WW.)
The Great Sea.
OoT’s Hyrule Field
The Sky of Skyward Sword
TP’s Hyrule Field.
The Depths are repetitive after a while, but they’re full of monsters, light roots, valuable materials, mines, schematics, bosses, Zonai Parts and there are 2 dungeons, a lengthy Yiga Side Adventure + the entire final boss down there.
Recycled content usually doesn’t.
Not suprising considering how boring they are
Wow, didn’t realise people were so down on the depths haha. I thought they were cool. Obviously not like an equivalent of the surface world to explore etc. but still fun enough presenting its own challenges.
The whole game I hate. For a that climbing link has no muscles. I hate the technology they put in the game. Batteries, Cars, Weapons. The puzzles suck, there is no thought behind the game it’s wow you spin a wheel and a door opens. Games today should not be called games because they basically run you through a story. Lastly I hate all the Japanese influence in the game. When I play Zelda I don’t wanna see anything resembling the real world.
Then you must have really hated the classic Zelda titles with their heavily European and Tolkien-derived influence
Totk was a worthy sequel to a great game, which is hard to do! Didn’t quite have the relaxed, pleasant feel of Breath of the Wild but then again, I had spent probably a couple hundred hours in that game so maybe it was lost on me. Still, did not disappoint even with high expectations. I already can’t wait for the next Zelda game, hopefully sometime before 2030!
I’m surprised they managed to keep a lid on the depths until release. We knew all about the sky islands and that some things changed on the surface, but they hinted practically nothing about the depths. I found myself saying aloud, upon activating the second light root “You’re telling me there’s an ENTIRE SECOND MAP done here?”
When I first went down a chasm, I thought it was gonna be a big mini-boss room with each having it’s own unique boss. Of course, the first one I went down was in Akkala so I landed right in frox territory & died. I didn’t find out til the camera quest with Robbie that it was actually a lot fucking bigger. While I was disappointed there weren’t gonna be unique bosses, I did like how it felt I was sorta playing the og LoZelda but in total darkness… til I started activating all the lightroots. A shame we don’t get to fight alternate versions of the temple bosses, though.
What are the game coordinates to that picture?