Breath of the Wild Game Director
Breath of the Wild Technical Director
Breath of the Wild Art Director
Nintendo Dream: At The Game Developer Conference, Mr. Fujibayashi mentioned that he wanted to bring back to the modern age the game that the original The Legend of Zelda realized, where you can freely explore a large field and discover and encounter new things as you scroll through it. Where did you start when thinking about how to achieve this?
Hidemaro Fujibayashi: At first, I thought about the actions of "climbing" and "descending" as a set to create an "open-air" and spacious world.
Interviewer (Nintendo Dream): Takizawa-san and Dohta-san, how did you feel when you were first told that you were going to create an open-air space?
Takuhiro Dohta: I thought it would be a new challenge in terms of technology, but I also saw it as a chance to express the excitement I felt with the original Zelda on today's hardware. Everyone, not just me, was very pleased with the challenges involved.
Satoru Takizawa: It was like going back to the roots. When the slogan "create the first generation with today's 3D," was announced, everyone was in high spirits. Of course, I am sure everyone thought it would be a lot of work.
Everyone: [laughs]
Interviewer : So where did this vast map come from?
Takizawa: Very early on, Mr. Fujibayashi asked me for the Twilight Princess terrain data. I remember making a prototype of a huge 3D world that incorporated the Twilight Princess world and telling him "I'd like to do something like this”.
Dohta: That's right. How do you want to make it? While talking it through, I asked [pointing to the package] “What kind of tools and systems should I create in order to express such an art style in the game?” I was thinking about that from a technical side.
Interviewer: So, the announcement at E3 in 2016 that "this game is about 12x as large as the map of Twilight Princess” came from using the Twilight Princess map?
Fujibayashi: Yes, the map was placed there as a size reference. When we were prototyping the field, Takizawa gave us a map of Twilight Princess on the top left corner, which was about 1/12th of the whole size. The rest of the map had the terrain of Kyoto pasted on it.
Interviewer: Kyoto!?
Fujibayashi: Yes. Once I determined the approximate size of the area and the speed Link would move, I pasted in a map of Kyoto. I thought the topography of Kyoto was the easiest way to grasp a sense of scale [ed: Nintendo headquarters is in Kyoto].