In a recent interview with Nintendo Dream Web, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Zelda franchise director Eiji Aonuma revealed that they wanted to break away from the traditional Zelda formula with this game. After the success of Tears of the Kingdom, it’s clear they’ll want to continue that trend.
During the interview, the pair spoke on this desire to break away from the traditional Zelda formula. For example, Tears of the Kingdom introduces a number of new gameplay mechanics while continuing the changes made in Breath of the Wild. With the series’ success, the team seems to want to move away from the traditional RPG that started it and towards the new-age RPGs we’ve seen from Bethesda and Larian Studios.
The older Zelda games were too restricted according to Aonuma. To quote him:
I’ve been reconsidering ‘Atarimae’ (the Japanese word for natural, reasonable, or common sense) for a long time, but I couldn’t help but be told that ‘Zelda is like this, right?” and I felt like I couldn’t break it down. ‘Skyward Sword’ was also created while reconsidering ‘Atarimae,’ and after its release, I was asked, ‘I want to know what’s going on between the neighboring areas, so why can’t I go there?’ I realized that Zelda is a game that makes you want to explore areas that you can go to but can’t. This leads to Breath [of the Wild]. So, the theme of [Tears of the Kingdom] development was to try and shake off the meter.
Eiji Aonuma
Fujibayashi also spoke about the game’s theme, which is to do what you thought you could do. While older games have explored that a bit, they are pretty set in that everything you do is part of the game’s ultimate goal. Yet, Tears of the Kingdom changes things, and it looks like that’s going to stay this way.
The interview with Fujibayashi and Aonuma provides some interesting insights into the development of Tears of the Kingdom and the themes that the developers were aiming for.
There is no doubt that the developers wanted to create both a familiar and new game in Breath of the Wild. However, Tears of the Kingdom is just the start of the series going in another direction instead of repeating the same formula from the previous games.
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