11 Video Game Locations You Never Knew Were Based on Real Life

Kyoto – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

As revealed in an interview with The Verge, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s version of Hyrule is based on Kyoto in Japan. Director Hideomaro Fujibayashi talked about the process of creating the world, which involved overlaying Kyoto’s map onto the game world and imagining places to travel. “I’d think ‘It takes this much time to get from point A to point B, so how does that translate to the game?’ And that’s how we started mapping out the world in Breath of the Wild.” Art director Satoru Takizawa also noted how the various tourist spots fit well with adding key points of interest. “You have all of these famous temples and shrines and whatnot. If I’m going from famous spot A to famous spot B and it takes me this long, it makes it really easy to envision how that would translate to the game map,” he said. It also doesn’t hurt that Nintendo’s headquarters are in Kyoto, making it that much easier to explain the distance between certain points in real life in relation to the game.