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It’s hard to fathom the amount of work that’s gone into creating The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. From every piece of fauna to the grandiose dungeons, it takes an incredible team full of unbelievably talented developers to make it all happen.

Steering that development ship is none other than Eiji Aonuma, the man behind the Zelda franchise for over 2 decades now. If there’s anyone out there more dedicated to modern-day Legend of Zelda, I’d like to see them!

In the latest ‘Ask the Developer’ feature for Tears of the Kingdom, Aonuma speaks up on the work he’s put in on the title. While there’s countless things he tackled during development, his time also included playing through the game a staggering 20 times. Best of all, even he’s still discovering new things with each playthrough!

I wonder how many times I’ve played the game to debug (8) it… I’ve played this game from start to finish about 20 times, and I can say that it’s more fun with detours, even more so than in the previous game. When testing the game, I sometimes needed to rush ahead to clear the story, but later on, as I started to go off on side paths, I realized… it’s a whole different game! (Laughs) Some discoveries made me think, “Wow, you can even do this at this point in the game?” Even when sticking things together, there are so many different combinations that even I don’t know all of them. I even discovered something new the other day while shooting the gameplay demonstration video. So, it may take some time, but as you take detours and try out whatever you can at the time, I think you’ll be able to enjoy the game in your very own way. So don’t head straight for the ending! (Laughs) I’ve cleared the game many times myself and never felt bored once. You have my word!

[Eiji Aonuma]

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Comments (1)

lionk

11M ago

That's a lot.. But probably not so much compared to what speedrunners will do with this game.