The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the best games in the franchise and a huge reason to purchase the Nintendo Switch but did you know that there were quite a few things cut from the final version?
In an interview with Kotaku, Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi revealed that certain aspects of the game were cut for various reasons including some weapons from past Zelda games.
“Hookshot was [one] we experimented with and tested, as well as [the] Beetle from Skyward Sword,” Fujibayashi said, referring to the flying mechanical insect that you could use to grab items and drop bombs on enemies. “After a lot of experimentation and testing, we weeded out all the ones that had potential to detract from the gameplay and enjoying the game. What’s left currently, the four items, were really what would draw out the fun of the game.”
Read: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review
Another aspect changed from Breath of the Wild was how players received the Runes. Instead of receiving the bombs, freeze, magnet and stasis abilities in the first two hours of gameplay players would have been rewarded with the various weapons in certain dungeons in the main story.
However, as Fujibayashi points out, this way of obtaining the weapons will force players to proceed with the story in a specific way instead of leaving it up to choice.
“We did at one point test what it would be like to be able to obtain some of these abilities in some point in the story,” Fujibayashi said. “But when we do that, you are pigeonholed into having a specific order of dungeons. We did have ideas [that] if a certain dungeon needs bombs, for example, we might put a little bomb icon on the dungeon walls or somewhere on the ground.”
Read: Breath of the Wild is Best Selling Launch Title in Nintendo’s History
There were even experiments done on tried and true features like how the heart gauge works but Fujibayashi would quickly find out that those features have been in the franchise for 30 years for a reason.
“We had talked about the idea of maybe — usually the heart gauge decreases from the right, having it decrease from the left,” Fujibayashi said. “Or have it naturally regain over time... We actually did that with a number of things in the game that don’t look like they changed in the final product. Actually, during our experimentation we tried to change them, and then realized, ‘Oh, this is actually really well thought out.’”
There’s a lot of other examples of how the final version was different, especially when it came with using the Wii U and its gamepad so be sure to check out the full interview.
So what do you think of some of the things cut from the final version of Breath of the Wild? Let us know in the comments section below.
