Aonuma:
So we eventually decided that the setting of this game would involve lots of large, mysterious rifts appearing in Hyrule. We had to come up with something that wasn’t a monster but something that would make a princess think, “This is bad! I have to do something!”.
A princess is a daughter of the rulers of a country. So I thought that the motivation to fight is that the world of Hyrule is being destroyed and changed.
Sano:
Even after we decided to make rifts a part of the game’s setting, the design was still a challenge. The story is that inside the rifts lies the Still World, where people and things go when they’re swallowed up. No one has ever seen a place like that.
It’s easy to say, “The ground cracked, and below that is a world of void”. But the designers from Grezzo who had to develop those ideas into visuals were scratching their heads with questions like, “How does the rift expand?”, “How deep does it go?” and, “How do we show the transition between the game field and the world of void?”. (Laughs)
Terada:
And, since they appear in various places around Hyrule, they need to be able to be placed anywhere, including on the ground, on top of buildings, on water, or in lava, etc. We had to keep in mind that the placements of rifts could change based on level design or that the rifts could appear or disappear at any time at different points in the story. It was extremely difficult to create something visually new under such restrictions.
There’s a mysterious space inside the rifts that’s different from the regular world.
Aonuma:
I didn’t want to depict anything too cruel in a world where the main protagonist isn’t a fighter per se, but I still needed to deliver a sense of danger approaching Hyrule. It was quite challenging to create that.
Sano:
We also had a hard time developing the scene in which the king is swallowed by a rift, which is one of Princess Zelda’s biggest motivations for setting out on her journey.
Terada:
Though creating the initial world setting was difficult, we also thought about what role Link would play in the game. What would happen to the sword if the gameplay focused on echoes? Can this character even exist in this game? The Legend of Zelda series has a grand historical lineage. How should I put it? How far should we delve into the lore of The Legend of Zelda?
There is certainly a history of Hyrule that ties the entire series together. If you take too many liberties, you have to be careful whether it’s still “Legend of Zelda-like”.
Aonuma:
Right, it’s very difficult to balance how much to add or change. At first, we were intentionally leaving any parts that might delve into Hyrule’s history vague, but partway through, we just couldn’t find a way forward that way… So, around last summer, we decided to hold a boot camp and work out the story there.
Terada:
It truly was a boot camp, indeed.
Aonuma:
Even there, Grezzo didn’t offer any in-depth suggestions about the story at first. So, I went back to the hotel, quickly wrote a script that would work, and brought it with me the next day. Then, we all contributed various elements that often occur in The Legend of Zelda series to the script. Using this method, we eventually completed the game’s story.
Sano:
Over a few sessions, we spent nine days at the boot camps in total, working from morning until night. (Laughs)
Aonuma:
These days, even for us, it’s not easy to touch on the lore of The Legend of Zelda series. When you address the history of The Legend of Zelda, you naturally have to be conscious of how things have been expressed previously in the series. But when we think about a new game, we need to think about new developments while being mindful of the past games in the series, so the scope of what you can do becomes increasingly narrow if you think in the same way every time.
On top of that, because the series has been running for a long time, players are interested in its history and lore. So, when we’ve adopted a game plot that was not in line with the other games in the series because we prioritised the gameplay, we’ve been told by our fans that it didn’t make sense. We realised that even if the developers didn’t intend to make nonsensical changes, players could interpret otherwise.
I see. So the developers need to take those kinds of player reactions into consideration when creating a story.
Aonuma:
Even with this title, we had no intention of establishing any new theories in the series’ lore. Link goes on an adventure every time and experiences many things. But Princess Zelda has always had to take a step back in The Legend of Zelda series.
But this time, Princess Zelda is on her own adventure, so the story takes on a different perspective than before. I think that’s why we were able to create something new in terms of the story as well.
Chapter 4: That authentic “Legend of Zelda-like” feeling – Coming September 25th
[This article originally appeared on Nintendo UK]
