Games Radar+ recently had an opportunity to talk with Breath Of The Wild Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. They spoke about rethinking the conventions of previous Zelda Titles and why they decided on this new path for Breath Of The Wild and how the 300 strong team all took time to play test the game from start to finish which not only helped morale of the team it helped them find ways to improve the game further and boost the motivation of the team. You can find the interview below.
Fujibayashi on Rethinking the conventions of Zelda:
“And then we thought, ‘Oh no, why do we actually have to do that?’ And a lot of that was re-thinking things specific to Zelda. You know, ‘Zelda games have always been like this so we have to make it like this.’ But thinking about it from the user’s perspective, we wanted to give them more creativity and freedom, thinking, ‘Well, no. It doesn’t actually have to be like that.’ We definitely learned a lot from that whole process. And hearing how people have reacted to that makes me very happy.”
Fujibayashi on the whole team taking time to playtest Breath Of The Wild:
“When they hear the story about 300 people testing the game at the same time, I think what a lot of people misunderstand is [in thinking] that the big leaps ahead came from all of the data we got out of that. And obviously we did get a lot of data out of it. But I think what was even more important was just the fact that people were able to see exactly what they were working on in the game, and also what the people next to them were working on in the game, and figure out, ‘Well, what can I do to make that part of the game better?’ Getting that group understanding of how everything was working together really leveled up the staff’s work, and I think that’s a big part of how we came to the level of quality that the game has.”
Aonuma on the whole team taking time to playtest Breath Of The Wild:
“Initially I thought if we did this we wouldn’t have enough time to finish the game, but as we did this more we realized, ‘Oh, the staff’s motivation is really up too!’ And so we realized that we needed to do this to the end.’”
You can find the rest of the interview via Games Radar’s website here.
Source: Games Radar+
