Zelda Breath of the Wild did much to expand the gameplay featured in past titles.
The Nintendo Switch games list benefited greatly from the changes, which saw the development team experiment more with an open-world format.
Giving players more freedom certainly went down well with fans, who have been finding out more about other tweaks that didn’t make the final cut.
It’s been revealed that Nintendo almost decided to go for some older-sounding gameplay mechanics which would have made for a much different final product.
According to Nintendo writer and director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, there were talks of giving Link far more control over the world.
“Initially we did consider giving players control of the weather, but realized not being able to control it is much more fun,” Fujibayashi confirmed to Game Informer.
“Controlling it wasn’t really fitting in this game. In Ocarina of Time, you were in places that were just sunny or raining.
“That was the way the players were able to control that. Adding in the weather control would have increased the number of variables in the world.
“It was more interesting to have Link against nature, not controlling it. That ended up being more natural and fun.”
It sounds like Fujibayashi believes the company made the right choice, while cutting the feature also seems to have helped Zelda Breath of the Wild standout further from other games in the series.
The Legend of Zelda franchise continues to be one of Nintendo’s top IPs, and the company certainly look keen to add another game to the Switch’s official games list.
There’s been a lot of news surrounding The Legend of Zelda franchise recently, some regarding what new Link adventures could be launching on Switch in the future.
Having seen the latest title take Link’s adventures down a slightly different gameplay route, it appears that the Zelda team are pleased with the results.
So pleased, they are aiming to create the same level of freedom found in Breath of the Wild, for their next big Switch project.
Speaking to IGN, Breath of the Wild Producer Eiji Aonuma gave a firm answer when it came to how the team want to deal with Link games in the future.
“You know, I can’t speak to what other people, other companies will do in their own games, but I think for me, especially just in terms of the Zelda series, the incredible freedom that this game offers you and how well that’s been received…to me, it means that freedom, that level of freedom is something that needs to be maintained in Zelda games going forward,” Aonuma commented.
“My eyes have been opened to how important that is.
“So one of the things that we definitely consider is that we always wanted to make sure the player could understand what their challenges or what their hurdle is.
“We always wanted to make sure the challenge could be challenged. So we always wanted to make a linear way of [overcoming] a hurdle.”
Zelda creator Eiji Aonuma has also reportedly confirmed in a recent interview for the upcoming Breath of the Wild Master Books, that work on the next title is in progress.
But as you might expect, whatever is being worked on will likely take a long time to come to fruition.
The timeline between past Zelda games suggests a long wait, however, it’s fair to say that Breath of the Wild took longer, due in part to the Switch.
There’s also been reports that new remakes and ports are being worked on for both the Switch and 3DS, although fans may have to wait until E3 to hear more about them.
