All sorted out? We will then continue…
The specific area that Aonuma had hoped to make it to BOTW was an underground cave system — something the developers confirmed is available in Tears of the Kingdom.
The game’s technical director, Takuhiro Dohta, stated that the team initially decided that flying would not be an option in BOTW, arguing that it was too much for the limitations of the Wii U. At risk. Having lost this mechanism, Aonuma stated that if flight was not available he believes Link would be able to operate underground instead. The team settled on the more user-friendly option of developing the Wii U and adding a flight mechanic instead of trying to create a whole new layer for the world:
Dohta: Actually, the previous title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was originally developed for the Wii U, so there were limitations in development. There were a lot of ideas we wanted to implement during its development, but we made a clear decision about what we wanted. will not do in that game. For example, we decided that it would not involve flying. Then Aonuma-san kept saying, “If I can’t fly, I want to dig underground!”. And we’ll say, “Oh no! Please stop making us develop that!”.
Dohta went on to explain that the development of TOTK started with the team compiling all the things they wanted to do in the previous game. According to Aonuma’s wishes for BOTW, this includes the implementation of caves.
Tears of the Kingdom art director, Satoru Takizawa, goes into a bit more detail on what we can expect from the upcoming title’s cave system, and it seems the focus is once again on Encourage discovery:
I think players who find a cliffside cave in this game might start to wonder, “Is there one in that cliff over there?”. When a place – even a familiar one – is added with something of value, you begin to see the world in a different light. Even as game developers, we started to see the landscape in a different way when working with games. I believe the way players explore Hyrule will also change.
This third installment of the Ask Developer interview continues to discuss a range of topics (beyond the cave), including how Tears can be seen as a return to “traditional Zelda”, the development of Explore the islands in the sky and the way the game’s music needs to be adjusted for these new classes. You can watch the full interview on Nintendo’s website.
