[E3 2016] Aonuma: team for Zelda: Breath of the Wild is Nintendo’s biggest to date
There’s still a lot we don’t know about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, like the story, characters that appear in the game, and more. But there’s one thing we do know: the world is big. Really big. In an interview with GameSpot, Eiji Aonuma confirmed that the team for this game was the largest he’s ever worked with, and the largest one ever for a Nintendo game.
Of course, it doesn’t make things easier: everyone has to share the same vision. But even if you say the same thing to everyone, that doesn’t mean everyone will have the same perspective. And if you’re not careful, you can end up with a very broken and disjointed game.
When we’re building something, we all have to have a shared perspective and goal, and it’s important that everyone has this concrete image in your mind.
(…)
One of the biggest challenges is making sure we all have a shared vision.
One of the challenges of working with such a large team is that some staff members tell him “you don’t know what’s going on on the floor.”. Here’s what he had to say about that:
I see the finished product and suggest the team should do more of this, or more of that, and obviously people come to say that there’s a reason things are done a certain way. I have to say that I understand, but there’s a part of me that wants to make sure this is a good game, so I have to kind of fight that as well.
Naturally, there’s also a positive side to this situation: when he’s really able to convey his ideas, the end result sometime end up much better than he initially expected.
Finally, Eiji Aonuma explains that it might be pretty hard for players to 100% complete The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild… in fact, nobody in the development team has managed to do so, so far:
In the past, there’s the idea of getting 100 percent%, getting all of the items and armor. Fans of past Zelda games have done that. But I really think it’s going to be difficult with this iteration. At least, nobody on the development staff has done that yet. There may be very skilled players that can do it quickly, so I really can’t tell, but it’s very big.
Source: GameSpot
If you’re interested in more quotes from Eiji Aonuma, you can check out IGN’s preview of the game, which features several of them. In there, Aonuma talks about the density of the world, getting lost in the game, and more. We even get to learn how the game’s subtitle was chosen!
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U / NX) comes out next year.
