The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an epic adventure and what would an epic adventure be without deadly monsters? The game’s director Hidemaro Fujibayashi recently spoke to Nintendo Dream about how they decided to incorporate the various monsters that are spread out over the game’s varied environments. One example is that as Link can take to the sky they wanted a fearsome flying monster with wings, this then reminded the team of the Gleeok, which hasn’t seen the light of day for quite some time.
Among the new monsters, some of them are ones that haven’t reappeared in the series for quite some time. How did that come about?
Fujibayashi: For monsters, we prioritized gameplay when creating them. To match the sky, caves, underground and other new areas, we considered what monsters would be able to do well in them. For example, we wanted a monster that could rival the Lynel from Breath of the Wild in strength for the new sky areas, so it’d need wings to fly, be large and look strong… and as we thought about that, we remembered the Gleeok. While thinking about gameplay, we looked back to see if there were any monsters that fit what we needed from older games, and if something matched, we adjusted them to be implemented into Tears of the Kingdom. For the caves, to match the terrain, we wanted a monster that could latch onto the ceiling; since there wasn’t a monster that had that characteristic in previous games, we created the new monster Horriblins. Gameplay-wise, it’s possible to make weapons with long reach using the “Fuse” ability, and monsters like Horriblins let that feature shine.
I like that they incorporated new monsters as well as returning monsters that haven’t appeared in awhile, i’d say it’s an improvement but not what i’d call a wide variety of monsters.
I just REALLY HOPE U ARE WORKING ON ANOTHER ONE!!!!!
Horriblins were actually a cool new addition to the lineup of enemies in Zelda; I really do hope they come back in later titles.
I can still remember my first encounter with them, in a cave under the Great Plateau:
“This cave actually goes in pretty deep after all these rocks. Wait… What’s that sound…?”
pans camera up to see a monkey-thing crawling on the ceiling
“OH MY GOD WHAT THE F— IS THAT?!?” (At the time I only had 5 hearts so I was afraid they could one-shot me)