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Zelda: BotW director talks cut ideas, changes considered, moving to Switch & the franchise's future
Coming from a Kotaku interview with Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi...
Hookshot was [one] we experimented with and tested, as well as [the] Beetle from Skyward Sword. 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.
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. 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.
We had talked about the idea of maybe — usually the heart gauge decreases from the right, having it decrease from the left. 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.’
We thought maybe there’s something we can do differently with these. You’d find a treasure chest in the game that’s open. It’s just open, and that’s the end of it.
Fujibayashi also talked about the move from Wii U to Switch and Wii U.
It wasn’t a real email, but our back and forth with him followed a similar pattern. We knew about the hardware... We thought it’s probably gonna come, oh and here it is. When it was originally just for the Wii U, we had touch controls. But we had to remove them... Although it was not very flashy or exciting work, it was still time-consuming and difficult.
We felt that the way the Sheikah Slate is represented in the game and how we use the GamePad in real life synced really well. So when we had to remove it, I did feel like, ‘Oh, it’s too bad we had to do that.’ And because it was so tied into the scenario, we did have to go back and redesign and rethink the scenario, which was a little bit [of] hard work.
Finally, Fujibayashi talked about the future of the Zelda series.
Every time we put out a Zelda game we feel like we’re at the top of the mountain [and] this is the best Zelda game. But we realize there’s a taller mountain behind that. And I feel like the minute you feel like this is the tallest mountain there ever will be, then you’re not being a good Zelda director.“