Ask the Developer Vol. 9, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom-Part 3 – News – Nintendo Official Site

• This article has been translated from the original Japanese content.

• The images shown in this interview were created during development.

I now understand the challenges and circumstances behind The Legend of Zelda™: Tears of the Kingdoms Development. You said the setting is like that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, now that you can explore the skies above Hyrule, does that mean the world has expanded considerably?

Fujibayashi: Yes, now there are skies and caves to explore. These are areas that could not be created in the previous title for several reasons.

Doha: Actually, the previous title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, originally developed for the Wii U™ (7), therefore has limitations in development. We had a lot of ideas to implement during its development, but we made clear decisions about what we didn’t want to do in that game. For example, we have decided that it does not involve flying. Then Aonuma-san kept saying, “If flying is out of the question, I want to dig underground!” And we respond, “Oh no! Please don’t develop us too!” (laughter)

(7) Released in 2012. A home console that includes games that link the screens displayed on both a TV and a handheld Wii U gamepad.

Aonuma: This was my natural reaction while playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. “Man, I want to dig a hole right here.” (laughter)

Doha: for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we started by compiling and implementing ideas that we could not include in the previous title. We wouldn’t have been able to do that if we had created a completely new world, so developing in the same setting as the previous game was important in this sense as well.

Takizawa: entrances to cliffside caves would be a good example.

Doha: In the previous title, only rocks could be climbed, and the sides of the rocks were bare.

Takizawa: In this game players who find a cave next to a cliff ask “Is there even one of the rocks there?” I think that may be surprising. When a place – even an already familiar one – enhances something of value, you begin to see the world in a different light. Even as game developers, we started looking at the landscape in a different way while working on the game. I believe the way players explore Hyrule will also change.

i see This is a The Legend of Zelda It’s typical for one clue to lead to another, causing a chain reaction where players see different locations in new ways. So how about the sky?

Fujibayashi: Although the walls in the last game gave “height”, I felt that the game was mostly two-dimensional. This time, we added “verticality” – in other words, a game that utilizes height. We have developed a three-dimensional world on the premise that you will be able to travel seamlessly from the surface to the sky. Link also has a new action called “Dive” and a new outfit for Skies.

Thinking about how to get to the floating sky islands sounds funny.

Fujibayashi: The steps you take to get there and the exploration of the sky islands are both a lot of fun. New actions and sky area are such novelties for us that we added sky island one after another to test different gameplay elements. Then one day, the designers scolded us. “We have cluttered the sky by adding too many islands,” he said. (laughs)

Takizawa: It was very chaotic… (laughs)

Aonuma: When we put the islands to scale in the sky, I was surprised to see how small they looked from the ground.

Doha: As per the previous title, we have ensured that everything is connected seamlessly. Things like houses are built to scale and even if you enter a house, there is no map conversion. From the windows, you can see the outside the same way you did before you entered the house. Everything looks as it should. But when we created the sky to scale on a seamless map and added features like floating stairs, they appeared too small from the ground and looked like loose specks of garbage. (Laughs) In the end, the designers did a good job adjusting their looks.

Wakai: Connecting ground and sky seamlessly also presents difficulties from a sound perspective.

Doha: Yes, the sound crew often pressed the programmers to clarify where the dividing line between surface and sky was.

Wakai: Sound transitions are done seamlessly, but background music in particular needs to be changed according to the situation. Because of this, we need to place transition triggers to indicate where to change the music.

Doha: I’ve never had to consider where the sky begins before, so I had to think about it. (laughter)

Wakai: Also, it was difficult to find a suitable sound for the sky.

Takizawa: I guess the sky is a sight we’ve all seen only from inside an airplane, right?

Wakai: Exactly. I knew what “flying in the sky” was like, but the request was for an “island in the sky”. (laughter)

Aonuma: After all, no one has ever been to an island in the sky.

We’ve only discussed the sky, but this title has its dungeons, right?

Fujibayashi: Yeah, we haven’t talked about dungeons yet. They have changed from the previous game. For example, there is a dungeon directly connected to the surface of Hyrule. If you dive straight from the sky into a dungeon, you’ll trigger an event. We think this is a new experience that was not possible in the previous game.

Doha: We’ve made dungeons unique to their environments, so we hope you’ll be able to enjoy a variety of regional characteristics.

Takizawa: Making “wide variety” was very challenging. The four Divine Beasts were dungeons in the last game and they shared similar designs. This time, the dungeons are larger and each has its own regional look and feel, traditional the The Legend of Zelda Games. We hope they provide a satisfying challenge to players. They were definitely a challenge to develop! (laughter)