Japanese Nintendo-centric magazine Nintendo Dream has chatted with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, about what they wanted to accomplish with the critically acclaimed adventure. One thing which Mr. Fujibayashi says the team tried to do is to make the open world feel lived in. He said that they accomplished that with NPCs who “feel alive,” rather than just standing around, waiting for Link to go up and chat with them.
You can observe how the people have been rebuilding their lives or how time has been passing from conversations with the people of Hyrule too.
Fujibayashi: Tears of the Kingdom follows up on events post-Breath of the Wild, so naturally we wanted to demonstrate the passing of time for the people living in the world. This isn’t limited to just Princess Zelda; we wanted to make every character feel “alive”. Instead of having everyone wait around for the main character, Link, the world has continued to move even without him. That’s why we made all the characters’ dialogue change depending on the current situation.
Thanks to Greatsong1 for the news tip!
I really liked Outlook Landing. It felt like the people were finally coming together to form a nation once again, and Link and Zelda were the driving force for that cause. There wasn’t much gameplay reason to go back there, but the people you encounter while you progress through the game made it a delight return to.
They could’ve done a bit more in that area, though. Like maybe Lookout Landing gets stuff built onto it to make it bigger as more & more NPCs flock to it. Also, you see all these materials for rebuilding across Hyrule but yet they’re never used to actually show stuff getting rebuilt. Imagine finding the Lon Lon Ranch facsimile being rebuilt by some NPCs you met & helped out in another part of Hyrule. Or find Hyrule Castle Town getting a few houses (and the fountain in the center of the town) rebuilt by other NPCs you helped out. So many places that could have done this but sadly only Lurelin Village gets this treatment. And that was a village that WASN’T destroyed by the Calamity 100 years ago.
This brings me back to Witcher 3. There were destroyed villages that you could clear monsters out of & then some NPCs would come & start rebuilding there once you did. Once again another awesome Witcher 3 feature that the Switch Zelda games failed to use that would’ve been perfect for these two entries.
DLC could’ve added this rebuilding feature but they foolishly shut DLC down. (DLC also could’ve added more to the dream house in Akkala. (15 rooms wasn’t enough for me as I still have some ideas for my home, but I won’t be able to do that now.)
The announcement of no DLC, noticing more stuff that could’ve been added to the game, no ties to previous lore heavy Zelda games like Skyward, no second half of the game that jumps off after defeating Ganondorf, the dream house being half assed. All these things have made me lose a bit of interest in finishing TotK. I was playing it nonstop for months. I even put Hogwarts Legacy on hold (a game I initially started playing side by side with TotK) because I got so invested in TotK. I guess I finally got over the honeymoon phase. (I’m still gonna 100% finish the game, though, before the end of the year. Just need a little break from it. Then again, I took a break from Death Stranding, a game I played on & off since it’s initial release back in late 2019, & the last time I played that was late 2021. So… shrug)
Fujibayashi has taken smart initiatives
Fujibayashi has taken smart initiatives, thank for sharing
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this post. You obviously conducted a great deal of research, as evidenced by the caliber of your work.
Not to crap on TotK (I loved it, btw), but I think Xenoblade 3 does this a lot better. Your actions/sidequests make a bigger impact on what’s going on in the world. I’d really like to see the next Zelda go for something more along the lines of what Xenoblade 3 has done – a big mostly-open world that has an equally big, yet mostly linear, story. BotW and TotK are great, but I really wish they had proper stories instead of just a handful of flashbacks.