The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Latest official blog post (Midna’s Helmet)

Today, Nintendo published a blog post about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the official blog of the Legend of Zelda portal in Japan. This time, the post is from Satoru Takizawa, the Art Director of the game. He’s here to talk about the first DLC pack (the Master Trials, releasing on June 30th), and more precisely Midan’s Helmet

Midna’s Helmet is one of the elements you can get from the 1st DLC Pack for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

As you probably already know, Midna appears in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on GameCube, Wii, and Wii U (with the HD remake), and is featured on the Wolf Link amiibo figure.

Satoru Takizawa explains that creating a buddy character that would stay by Link at all times, even fighting at his side, was a first for the Legend of Zelda series. It’s only after a trial-and-error process that they finalised the character, and more specifically her shape, facial expressions, actions, etc.. As you can imagine, they spent a lot of time fine-tuning her facial expressions.

Fun fact: in early prototypes, the developers used Tetra from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker as a placeholder for Midna. Just imagine Wolf Link with Tetra riding on him! Unfortunately, Satoru Takizawa didn’t share any picture of that early prototype…

Satoru Takizawa also reveals that before The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nintendo was considering working on a secret project. That project would have had a goblin/devilkin character, and Midna ended up inheriting the character profile originally meant for that that character.

Here’s some of the notes for that project, that are quite reminiscent of Midna:

• “the appearance looks like a monster or a child”
• “can’t tell if she’s enemy or ally”
• “can’t really tell what she’s thinking”
• “sometimes selfish, but sometimes cute and naïve”

It’s for this reason that the initial sketches for Midna looked a lot like this “goblin” character from that mysterious project.

In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Midna’s Helmet is actually the physical manifestation of the extremely powerful shadow magic passed onto the members of the Royal Family of the Twilight Realm. In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it adds “Guardian Resist Up” to Link’s defense (giving you more armour options when dealing with Guardians).

For as authentic an experience as possible, try wearing the Helmet while exploring the world with Wolf Link!

The next blog post will be from Mari Shirakawa (Game Design), who will share a few works on Tingle’s outfit!

Previous blog posts about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:

• Post 1 (locations)
• Post 2 (outfits)
• Post 3 (animations)
• Post 4 (landscape)
• Post 5 (interiors)
• Post 6 (sound effects)
• Post 7 (main theme)
• Post 8 (Memories)
• Post 9 (Zelda’s VA interview)
• Post 10 (Koroks)
• Post 11 (Phantom Armour)

Source: Nintendo