A chat with the directors of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an important game. For one, it’s the key launch title for Nintendo’s ambitious new platform, the Switch, making it a title largely saddled with the burden of selling customers on another piece of Nintendo hardware. But Breath of the Wild is also the biggest thing to happen to the Zelda series in years, a bold reinvention that mashes the franchise’s iconic structure with a vast open world to explore.

Last week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, art director Satoru Takizawa, and technical director Takuhiro Dohta gave a presentation revealing some insights into how the game was made. Among other things, some early and wild concept art for series hero Link. On stage, Fujibayashi explained that his goal with the game’s more open nature was to allow players to “truly experience freedom in an expansive playfield” while offering them “a new sense of adventure.” Dohta added, “I really want players to relish those moments where you do something and think ‘Oh my god, I’m a genius.’”

A day after their talk, I sat down with Fujibayashi, Dohta, and Takizawa to talk all things Zelda and Breath of the Wild. Read on to find out what Kyoto and Hyrule have in common.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

All of you have worked on the series in some capacity for some time. What was it about now that made you want to go in this new direction? Was there something that spurred the decision?

Hidemaro Fujibayashi: It’s not really about timing or the fact that it’s now. After working on Skyward Sword, we took in a lot of the feedback from fans, as well as what [producer Eiji Aonuma] had been thinking, along with myself. And then we came up with this concept of really breaking conventions, and also we were looking to create the next iteration of Zelda. It all kind of lined up to create this new direction.

When you started in this direction, there are obviously a lot of established aspects of Zelda, but were there things that you thought of as intrinsic to the series, that couldn’t be changed?

Fujibayashi: One thing that I knew we didn’t want to change was the aspect of discovery and exploration, and the joy that you get from discovering something new. There’s also the idea of puzzle solving. You think about it, you try some ideas, and when you’re finally able to solve a puzzle, that joy and sense of accomplishment is something that I think speaks really truly to the Zelda franchise. And I wanted to make sure that that was still intact in the game.

When you’re really close to something, having worked on the franchise for many years, is it difficult to recognize when you need to change, in the way that you did for Breath of the Wild?

Fujibayashi: In terms of change, actually creating something new is definitely a challenge and a difficult task. But the idea of change was not something that was difficult. When you’re changing something, you’re able to put a lot more exciting things, a lot more fun things into the game. So as a creator it’s something that I enjoy very much.

One of the things that struck me the most while playing the game is the lack of direction, the idea that it doesn’t usually tell you what to do. Was that a difficult concept to pitch to your producers?

Fujibayashi: When you talk about Zelda, there are people like [series creator Shigeru Miyamoto] and Mr. Aonuma, who have a lot of ideas, and have a lot of involvement with the series. And they’ve been part of the development all along. We’ve been making Zelda games together. So in that sense, when it came to changing Zelda, what we wanted to change and our perspective aligned. And so when we tried to explain to them that we wanted to make this kind of Zelda, one that doesn’t have one set path, I think we all had the same vision of what that would look like when it came to fruition.

Was there ever any concern internally that this direction would make the game too difficult? One of Nintendo’s big goals as a company is to reach a broad audience, and introduce new people to games. Was there ever concern that this direction would conflict with that?

Fujibayashi: No actually, not particularly. I really think that comes from two things. One, is the experience that we’ve gained from working on Zelda these past few years. And then also we did a lot of monitor testing and playtesting. And the data we got from those monitor tests confirmed that this was the way we wanted to go.

There’s one other interesting piece of information. There’s a development tool that we use that takes all of the data from this monitor test, and it centralizes it in one location so that you can see that data in real time. It shows how many hearts people have, or where people have died, or what path they’re taking. And it’s kind of on this one singular timeline so that you can see in real time where people are struggling, where people are really dying a lot, what path they’re taking. So we took all of that into consideration as we tried to balance the game out.

Were there any particular points that you found people were having a hard time with or getting stuck on?

Fujibayashi: Yes, there were definitely places. One of which was that a lot of people were falling off the towers, and a lot of people were dying when falling off the towers. So we tried to balance and change the base of the towers so that it makes it a little more easy to play. But when we saw that, we also didn’t see it as something negative. There’s actually kind of a fun to be had from falling and dying. You learn to be careful and to be cautious. And we felt that that gave a lot of players the emotional preparedness to take on the rest of the world. So we ultimately decided that we should let them die.

Satoru Takizawa: They fall, they learn.

One thing that I experienced in Breath of the Wild that I haven’t in more recent Zelda games is that I will get lost. Is that a feeling you want players to have?

Fujibayashi: Yes, I think it’s a very positive thing.

How do you know when you’ve struck the right balance between giving players freedom and still guiding them so that it’s not just frustrating?

Fujibayashi: That part is based on some of the feedback from the testing, as well as the gut feeling of the leads on the team, including myself. I try to sound cool, but what this means is that I had an idea of maybe it should be this way, and people say, “No, no, it should be this way.” And basically people correct the way and that’s how we form how it should be.

Was there a specific moment when you realized this direction worked, that it was the right thing to do with the series?

Fujibayashi: When I definitely got that feeling was when we put out a playable demo at E3 last year. When we watched people play at E3 we realized that they were playing in the way that we envisioned, and when we saw that and people were reacting positively, that’s when I said, “Alright, this is the right direction.”

Even though you’ve been working on this for a long time, do you ever find yourself surprised by the things players are able to do with this system you’ve built?

Takuhiro Dohta: Yeah there have definitely been times like that. In those monitor tests, one of the things that would happen is that I’d be watching people play, and I would see things and say, “Ah I didn’t know you could do that!” And these things really happened frequently.

Are you excited about what will happen when speedrunners pick this up and see what they can do with it?

Fujibayashi: We’re all looking forward to it, very much so. We’re really excited to see people who are able to figure out things we weren’t able to figure out. Because we made the game so that, even though you can do things that we weren’t expecting, it’s not a bug, it’s all part of the game mechanics and game logic. And once we decided to make it so that you could basically go to Hyrule castle after seeing it from the beginning of the game, we immediately thought, “Oh, we’re going to have to wait and see if someone actually figures out a way to do this.”

One thing I found really interesting is the Sheikah Slate [a tablet-like accessory that Link uses in the game], which seems like a feature that was created with the Wii U in mind. How did you find the process of integrating that into the Switch version of the game, and not making it feel like it was missing something?

Fujibayashi: First of all, I think it’s exactly as you said, we did have the Wii U Gamepad in mind when we created the Sheikah Slate. When we had to create it for the Nintendo Switch, and also make sure that the players had the same experience [on both platforms], we had to do things like remove the touch controls and adjust the button assignment a little bit.

Honestly, it was a little bit concerning for me. But when we started testing it out, and trying different configurations, we realized that it actually works better if you can keep your focus on the TV screen, rather than going back and forth between the second screen and the TV. As we started to flesh this out, it really turned out that this was the best way to enjoy the game.

What was your first reaction when you found out you had to put the game on Switch as well as Wii U?

Fujibayashi: Being part of the team at Nintendo, we knew of the existence of Switch, that the hardware was in development, and we thought that it might come our way. It wasn’t actually the shock that people might imagine.

Of all the changes and additions you’ve made with Breath of the Wild, if you had to pick one that had the biggest influence on the game, what would it be?

Fujibayashi: In terms of impact, that one thing would probably be wall climbing. When we thought about making an open-world game, and a game that really focuses on freedom, we had to overcome the challenge of walls. Because those walls are usually places where you can’t go, you can’t pass. We had to change that into a place where you could engage with the game. That was what we needed to think about.

On top of that, there were a lot of other challenges that we needed to overcome. When you have this big field, you have to fill it with lots of gameplay and fun. There are all of these challenges, and when we started thinking of the challenge of overcoming walls along with the rest of the challenges we were facing, we were able to come up with this unifying answer to that problem.

What that answer was, was when you’re actually climbing a mountain or a wall or whatever, when you’re at the base of the mountain and you look up, you want to know what’s at the top. When you think of that, you have to think of how you’re going to get up there. You have to think of certain paths so that you can make it up without becoming too tired. And there’s also the idea of using food or medicine to make it up there.

So when you think about that, then you have to think about creating a method to create that food or medicine. So you go to hunting and gathering. And then you fill the field with lots of ingredients and lots of animals. So it started to create this overall game cycle where you prepare yourself for the climb, then you climb and you come to this reward. And it ended up solving a lot of the challenges that we were confronted with, and created this idea of a game cycle.

When you first started out, do you think you understood just how big the game had to be in order to accommodate this new style of play?

Fujibayashi: Yes, sort of. That’s actually the first thing that we really considered. When I first started looking at this game, I had Link in an empty game field and I would just walk around and try to map out and get a feel for the distance and where landmarks should be. What helped me with this was my hometown Kyoto. I took a map of Kyoto and overlaid it on the game world and I tried to imagine going to places that I know in Kyoto. I’d think it takes this much time to get from point A to point B, so how does that translate to the game? And that’s how we started mapping out the world in Breath of the Wild.

Takizawa: One thing that made it really easy is that there are so many tourist spots in Kyoto. You have all of these famous temples and shrines and whatnot. If I’m going from famous spot A to famous spot B and it takes me this long, it made it really easy to envision how that would translate to the game map. That’s why Kyoto was such a good city to choose for this world.

So if I visit Kyoto will it feel familiar?

Fujibayashi: I don’t know. [laughs] The Kyoto that we overlaid is definitely gone now. But internally, when we were talking to the staff and saying, for example, the distance from this point to the next tower is just like the distance from these points in Kyoto, it made the conversation go a lot smoother and faster.

And when you’re talking distance do you mean the literal physical distance, or the feeling?

Fujibayashi: It’s the actual distance. Whether it’s walking to a certain place, or riding my motorcycle, or driving a car, I’ve done those things in real life in Kyoto, so I know about how much time it will take.

Were there any big issues with regards to creating this open world that you didn’t anticipate when you were just starting out on the game?

Fujibayashi: Actually, most of the challenges that we face were ones that we were expecting to face.

Dohta: It might be better to say that we included the unexpected in our expectations.

How different was working on Breath of the Wild compared to Skyward Sword or other Zelda games you’ve worked on in the past?

Fujibayashi: From a planning perspective, you look at Skyward Sword and it’s kind of an extension of the Zelda conventions that we’d established in the past. So it was easy to explain what the concept was to the rest of the team. However, with this one it’s a completely new idea, and we’re trying to show the staff, to explain to the staff, something that hasn’t existed before. That was a challenge and was difficult to do.

Dohta: Working on Breath of the Wild was, for me, the first Zelda that I was involved with from the beginning. I was programming lead on Wind Waker HD, and so in that experience I was able to get some knowledge from people who had worked on the series about the way Zelda had been made up until this point. But I was a bit more of an observer of that previous process, and I brought that experience into making Breath of the Wild from the ground up.

Takizawa: For the artwork, I think the most straightforward answer is the ridiculous amount of volume compared to previous titles. Our creation process didn’t actually change. It was more “Okay, now how do we handle this demand for this high volume, and how do we create stuff that’s — as our art slogan became — refreshing and full-flavored.” I remember having a lot of discussions about that theme.

You showed some wild concept art ideas during your presentation. As the art director, why is that exercise valuable? How does creating a motorcycle-riding Link or Link in a spacesuit help with defining the look of Breath of the Wild?

Takizawa: The examples we showed yesterday — biker Link, and tracksuit Link — even the people who came up with these ideas weren’t really doing it with the idea that these were going to be implemented in the game. It was more of a way for them to rethink the conventions of the series and expand that creative thinking. It was almost like a creative exercise in which they said, “Do whatever you want, it doesn’t matter how crazy,” and it really opened them up to new expressions.

You can take the example that we showed with a UFO and space invasion. If you take that idea, and sort of layer it over Breath of the Wild, you can perhaps envision the ancient civilization in Breath of the Wild having some sort of giant ship that Ganon is controlling, and from that shooting out the guardians and populating the game world. It’s a technique for us to come up with new ideas.

Open-world games are often really buggy, because there’s just so much going on. But I experienced very little of that in my time with Breath of the Wild. How did you pull that off? Was it just a really extensive QA process?

Dohta: There’s two points I’d like to underscore. Once we realized we wanted to go about filling the world, or linking the world, with a set of rules, as opposed to filling the world with a number of handmade objects, I think one of the positive effects we got was that the world was kind of stabilized by those rules. And that cut down on a number of bugs.

There was another point that we developed during our QA process. We came up with a number of scripts that would basically allow the game to be played automatically, and allow Link to run through various parts of the game automatically. And as that was happening, on the QA side of things, if a bug did appear I’d suddenly get a flood of emails about it. That was one tool that we found to be really handy.

What was the design process like for the shrines? There are so many of them, and they can be very different, it seems like it would be a big idea suck. Did you just have a lot of people pitching ideas and designing puzzles?

Fujibayashi: Actually it didn’t take as many resources as you’d think it would. One reason is that we have puzzles that are based on physics and chemistry. Initially we knew that we would have to make more than 100 shrines to make it work, but instead of trying to create a specific puzzle for each of these 100 shrines, we used the physics and chemistry engines, the rules that were already in the game, and then mass-produced these puzzles.

Did you find it more challenging, or was it easier, to design puzzles with multiple solutions, as opposed to more straightforward Zelda puzzles?

Fujibayashi: Once you get the hang of it, and you figure out how it is to actually build these puzzles, then it becomes easier.

Do you think the process of making this game has made you more open to trying new ideas and going in new directions?

Fujibayashi: This time around, the world we’ve built, just has a lot of potential, and a lot of engagement and fun to be had. So after we fully develop the game there’s still new ideas. And so that doesn’t mean that maybe at this moment we want to come up with something completely different. We want to explore more of the potential that this gameplay has.

How has the idea of expanding Breath of the Wild with downloadable content changed the way you view the game? Do you see it as something you can expand on and exploring new ideas with even after it’s already out?

Fujibayashi: Yes, but in the sense that we want to be able to provide new and more expansive ways to play and engage with this current game. It’s easy to keep adding new stuff, but we have a lot of ideas on how we can expand the experience of making this game.

What are the chances I’ll be able to buy the Minish Cap as DLC?

Fujibayashi: Your chances are slim at this point.