The creativityZeldafans demonstrated immediately onceTears of the Kingdomlaunched this month has been pretty remarkable. It’s also exactly what the sequel’s creators were hoping you’d all do with the game. Gamers managed to be more creative withBreath of the Wildthan its developers expected, and it was videos of those creations in the first game that convinced the Tears of the Kingdom team to build its follow-up around players using their imagination to makeeverything from ATVstoworking podracers.
Speaking withThe Washington Post, Tears of the Kingdom’s director Hidemaro Fujibayashi explained the origins of deciding the game’s core would be mechanics that encouraged creativity from its players. Fujibayashi first showed Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma what was possible in Breath of the Wild by using various parts you can find around Hyrule to build a tank.
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The director further showed Aonuma he wasn’t the only one doing this by taking to YouTube. There, the two of them watched videos of Zelda players creating all sorts of weird and wonderful contraptions in Tears of the Kingdom’s predecessor. If you ever made something interesting in Breath of the Wild and posted the results on YouTube, you may well be partly responsible for the Tears of the Kingdom we’re collectively experiencing right now.
Technically, making Tears of the Kingdom a game in which players had even more freedom to create was the plan all along. However, videos of players doing that in Breath of the Wild confirmed to Aonuma and Fujibayashi that they were on the right path early on in the sequel’s development.
Speaking of Tears of the Kingdom’s development, the latest Zelda game was supposed to arrive a while ago but its arrival was pushed back. However, Aonuma revealed over the weekend thatthe game was technically finished more than a year ago. The delay was made to make sure the game was as polished as possible ahead of launch. More than a year to iron out the finer details, something so many other recent big games would have benefitted from.
During that time,Aonuma played Tears of the Kingdom at least 20 times, so the man knew the game as well as anyone will ever know it before the rest of us even got the chance to play. Odds are the producer made a few wacky creations of his own, although when watching Breath of the Wild videos, I wonder if either he or Fujibayashi ever envisioned the mechanics and abilities in their new game being used tobuild giant mechs with flamethrower penises, not to mention the growing list of contraptions built forthe sole purpose of torturing Koroks.
