In an interview with The Verge, Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, art director Satoru Takizawa, and technical director Takuhiro Dohta sat down to talk about how Breath of the Wild broke conventions for The Legend of Zelda while keeping the franchise’s classic feel, kept a vast open world while keeping bugs out, and how the possibility of DLC influenced their feelings about the game.
Despite the vast open world, which is new to The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild anchored itself in the Zelda series’ classic puzzles to keep its franchise feeling. “One thing that I knew we didn’t want to change was the aspect of discovery and exploration, and the joy that you get from discovering something new. There’s also the idea of puzzle solving. You think about it, you try some ideas, and when you’re finally able to solve a puzzle, that joy and sense of accomplishment is something that I think speaks really truly to the Zelda franchise,” said Fujibayashi.
While coming up with new ideas is never easy, the Breath of the Wild team relished the idea of change. “When you’re changing something, you’re able to put a lot more exciting things, a lot more fun things into the game. So as a creator it’s something that I enjoy very much,” said Fujibayashi.
One of the best things about Breath of the Wild is how the famous bugginess that seems to plague other open world titles is mostly absent. “Once we realized we wanted to go about filling the world, or linking the world, with a set of rules, as opposed to filling the world with a number of handmade objects, I think one of the positive effects we got was that the world was kind of stabilized by those rules. And that cut down on a number of bugs,” said Dohta.
Dohta also explained another QA (quality assurance) process the team used, where they’d utilize scripts that allow Link to run about automatically and receive emails wherever a bug appeared, a tool he stated helped them immensely.
The game world might be open and bugs are at a minimum, but that doesn’t mean that players don’t find ways to innovate and surprise. “We’re really excited to see people who are able to figure out things we weren’t able to figure out. Because we made the game so that, even though you can do things that we weren’t expecting, it’s not a bug, it’s all part of the game mechanics and game logic,” said Fujibayashi.
As for DLC, the gameplay still intrigues the dev team. “This time around, the world we’ve built, just has a lot of potential, and a lot of engagement and fun to be had. So after we fully develop the game there’s still new ideas. And so that doesn’t mean that maybe at this moment we want to come up with something completely different. We want to explore more of the potential that this gameplay has,” said Fujibayashi.
He added that “we want to be able to provide new and more expansive ways to play and engage with this current game. It’s easy to keep adding new stuff, but we have a lot of ideas on how we can expand the experience of making this game.”
For the complete interview, check out the Verge’s extensive write-up here.
Are you still lost in the vastness of Breath of the Wild ? What game mechanics do you think the DLC for Breath of the Wild will center around? Practicing your speed runs already? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
