Hyrule Warriors Originally More Zelda-Like, Miyamoto Insisted on Dynasty Warriors Gameplay

Hyrule Warriors is set to debut in North America and Europe this month for the Wii U, thus bringing the action of Dynasty Warriors-meets-Zelda to the English speaking masses. However, at one point, Hyrule Warriors was meant to be more like a classic Zelda title.

This was revealed by Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma in conversation with Nintendo Life. It was Omega Force producer Yosuke Hayashi who came forward with the idea. “At first, when Hayashi-san approached me, he wanted to make this title closer to a Zelda game than a Dynasty Warriors game – that extended to having boss battles in the dungeons and [having] certain characters in the game.

“However, Miyamoto came along and up-ended the tea table, saying, ‘no, that should not be the case. What we’re doing here is grafting Zelda onto the Dynasty Warriors experience’. It was a reversal of the original proposal from Hayashi-san, which was adding elements of Dynasty Warriors onto the Zelda franchise. It ended up being the other way around based on Miyamoto’s direction.”

Hayashi for his part wanted to “strike that balance of making a game that Zelda fans will enjoy that is different from a typical Zelda game, that has enough elements that people will enjoy but also not losing Zelda fans

“We ourselves are Zelda fans as well, so we had to ask ourselves the question of what is it that makes a Zelda game, and how many of those elements do we need to include. Up until the very end, we kept adding different elements to the game until we struck a balance that we were happy with.”

Hyrule Warriors has been reasonably successful in Japan as a result – how will it fare in the rest of the world? We’ll find out in the coming weeks.