2023-05-12 07:05:00
Six years ago, Nintendo was preparing to revolutionize its saga The Legend of Zelda with the release of Breath of the Wild. The pressure, of course, was strong. Stress too. But today they give way to excitement among the creators of the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom. “I’m even more feverish than I was at the time,” says its director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi.
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A bit of history before we begin. Building on its three decades of success, the video game saga The Legend of Zelda was undergoing a major overhaul with Breath of the Wild, in 2017. Now deployed in a fully open world, the adventures of the knight Link became less linear, certainly, but also infinitely richer, deeper and complex. The visual aesthetic was revised, as were its methods of combat, strategy, inventory management and many other aspects that had helped to elevate the series. The Legend of Zelda to the rank of worship.
Nintendo was therefore risking a lot by making such major changes to its famous saga. But the game was worth the candle; Breath of the Wild is not only the best-selling chapter of the entire series, but has since been widely – and unanimously – considered one of the greatest video games in history.
Different circumstances
In videoconference with The newspaper, the producer of the series, Eiji Aonuma, remembers the strong feeling of anticipation felt on the eve of this launch. And it is clear that the circumstances are very different today.
“We had made a lot of changes to the DNA of the saga. So I wondered how the fans were going to react, what they were going to think of all these changes, ”he recalls.
“But this time around, fans have a good idea of what to expect with Tears of the Kingdom. And we recently released a video where I demonstrate some new features of the game and I was happy to see how people were noticing the smallest details,” he continues.
However, he is not fooled; if the nervousness is more subtle, he still knows how much this Tears of the Kingdom is expected from players, many of them having set up counts on social networks while waiting for its release.
His colleague Hidemaro Fujibayashi also points out an important element: the patience of the fans has been sorely tested. In effect, Tears of the Kingdom was first expected in stores last year. It was finally this Friday that it was launched with great fanfare across the planet.
“We took a long time to develop this game, so people had to wait a while,” says the director.
“But we’ve taken advantage of this time to put the most new content into this game, so it’s very exciting to see how people will react to these additions and the discussions they will fuel,” he adds.
Allies to the rescue
Among these “additions” already revealed – we would especially not like to reveal anything – let us mention Link’s ability to invoke the power of different allies to help him in his multiple quests. These can come to lend a hand to our hero, adding a cooperative dimension rarely seen in the universe of The Legend of Zelda.
There is also this unprecedented ability to assemble vehicles from scratch that will allow Link to facilitate his travels and journeys. The idea behind these size additions? Give free rein to the imagination of the players.
“We wanted to make sure that each challenge or problem had more than one possible solution. This was the case in Breath of the Wildbut we wanted to push the exercise even further with Tears of the Kingdom to give full freedom to people’s creativity,” says Eiji Aonuma.
“The idea of calling on these allies to overcome certain challenges is part of this desire. Link might not even call on them, but rather find creative solutions to solve each of these problems,” adds Hidemaro Fujibayashi.
►The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is now available on Nintendo Switch.
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