We've had some new information regarding the development of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and clearly, it hasn't been an easy task putting it together.
There is no denying that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was a huge success. This sequel was able to meet the expectations of the community, going so far as to surpass them. So obviously, sales followed, and whether it was the public or the critics, we mainly heard praise about it. Of course, not everyone liked it, and that's normal. Tastes and colors. We can never truly achieve unanimity. However, sometimes the debates become heated. Especially when the game is called an expansion to Breath of the Wild, or BOTW 1.5. However, when we see the development of this sequel, we realize that this is really not the case. Particularly in view of a very specific argument.
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Zelda Tears of the Kingdom developers speak out
During the Game Developers Conference, three major figures from the Tears of the Kingdom construction site took the floor to talk about behind the scenes of development. In the lot, we found Takuhiro Dohta, the technical director, Takahiro Takayama, the chief engineer in charge of the physics of the game, and Junya Osada, programmer in charge of the sound. Our three friends returned to the complexity of putting together a game like Zelda TOTK. Their words quickly make us understand that it was a colossal task.
We thus learn that the idea was to take up two of the main themes of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Namely the notion of a “Hyrule vast and open”and one “multiplicative gameplay”. For this last point, it refers to the physics of the game combined with alchemy thus giving rise to new solutions to advance in the adventure. From there, development could begin. The main mechanic that posed its share of problems was obviously the one that allows you to merge objects together to create something new.
This is where we understand the full scope of the developers' work, and where it proves that we are not dealing with a copy and paste of its predecessor. Takayama says it himself: “we knew it was going to be a great game when we saw the prototype, but also that it was going to be very complicated”. There were even doubts, because they knew full well that it was going to be “chaos”. And that was the case, with an example to boot. A clip of Zelda TOTK at an early stage of development has just been revealed. Takayama explains that “the world was falling apart, as they could have expected”.
A bold, but risky concept
On paper, the idea was good, but the execution was a different story. Our developers then went into more technical details. But the message remains generally the same. This fusion mechanic caused chaos during the construction of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. So, after a while, as soon as a bug at that level was detected, like an object going to the other end of the map or breaking, Takayama ended up saying: “ I know, we'll deal with that later! Just focus on the gameplay”.
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In the end, a solution was found. We had to make the entire world of Tears of the Kingdom run by physics. As a reminder, this was not the case with his eldest. Of course, that didn't solve everything, and there were other complications. However, it clearly shows the most reluctant that this Zelda is not a simple copy of Breath of the Wild with a few new features here and there. Otherwise, the development would not have been so complicated, far from the same.