After spending a decade trying to find its footing in a rapidly changing industry, The Legend of Zelda came back resurgent in 2017 with Breath of the Wild, an utterly fantastic open world game that ended up elevating the entire paradigm for the rest of the industry. Breath of the Wild is one of the highest rated games of all time, is en route to winning a record breaking number of awards (it won our own), and is tracking to be the highest selling Zelda game of all time.
So of course, the next game will be more like it, right? According to Eiji Aonuma, producer of the Zelda franchise, yes. Speaking to IGN, Aonuma-san said, “You know, I can’t speak to what other people, other companies will do in their own games, but I think for me, especially just in terms of the Zelda series, the incredible freedom that this game offers you and how well that’s been received…to me, it means that freedom, that level of freedom is something that needs to be maintained in Zelda games going forward. My eyes have been opened to how important that is.”
“So one of the things that we definitely consider is that we always wanted to make sure the player could understand what their challenges or what their hurdle is. We always wanted to make sure the challenge could be challenged. So we always wanted to make a linear way of [overcoming] a hurdle,” he added.
“Going forward, I think we would definitely consider that way of thinking when we create something in the future,” he added.
I don’t think anyone will complain about that- Breath of the Wild is a incredible game, and it offers a fantastic base for future games in the series to build on. Let’s hope its inevitable sequel is every bit as great as Breath of the Wild itself was.