Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's returning monsters were chosen from a gameplay-first perspective
Stepping back into the spotlight
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom introduces a number of never-before-seen enemies to the franchise, but it also brings back recent favorites and baddies we haven’t seen in years. Thanks to a new interview, we now know how Nintendo came to make these decisions.
Nintendo’s Hidemaro Fujibayashi spoke to Nintendo Dream Magazine about all things Zelda, including the metric ton of work that went into crafting Tears of the Kingdom. When talking about classic franchise enemies making a return, Fujibayashi said that the gameplay mechanics they offered were paramount in the decision. (h/t Nintendo Everything)
For monsters, we prioritized gameplay when creating them. To match the sky, caves, underground and other new areas, we considered what monsters would be able to do well in them. For example, we wanted a monster that could rival the Lynel from Breath of the Wild in strength for the new sky areas, so it’d need wings to fly, be large and look strong… and as we thought about that, we remembered the Gleeok. While thinking about gameplay, we looked back to see if there were any monsters that fit what we needed from older games, and if something matched, we adjusted them to be implemented into Tears of the Kingdom. For the caves, to match the terrain, we wanted a monster that could latch onto the ceiling; since there wasn’t a monster that had that characteristic in previous games, we created the new monster Horriblins. Gameplay-wise, it’s possible to make weapons with long reach using the “Fuse” ability, and monsters like Horriblins let that feature shine.
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giancarlo thomaz senoni
5M agomissed oportunity in not bringing back Skutullas for caves
Lots of missed opportunities imo, a lot of enemies would mesh well with Fuse and such, but the expansion of the enemy roster still feels a bit lacking.
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