Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild producer, Eiji Aonuma was recently interviewed by GameReactor at Japan Expo in France, earlier this week.
In his interview, Mr. Aonuma revisits the work that was done for Breath of the Wild and speaks on features he would’ve liked to implement for the Switch version of the game, including HD rumble.
During the last four months of the game being released, Mr. Aonuma mentions that the team has been hard at work in developing DLC for Breath of the Wild and how they’ve taken into consideration the feedback they’ve received from fans.
Mr. Aonuma also speaks on the upcoming DLC for Breath of the Wild – The Champions’ Ballad and how players will get more insight into their backstory.
The next Zelda is currently not in development as the team is still working on DLC, however, they do plan on integrating HD rumble for the next sequel.
We’ve included the full interview, courtesy of GameReactor:
What is your assessment of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, given the four months that have passed since its release?
Excellent obviously. But I realise that during these four months I have not stopped working on the DLC, so we kept our nose to the grindstone and we never felt like our work was done and that it was time for us to review it. One thing is for sure: for the last four months, we have focused on the player’s feelings, analysing their feedback and possibly changing via the DLC what they did not like. That said, we are still very cautious with fan-service, because too much fan-service can make the game tasteless. What I enjoyed during these four months was seeing the players and the sometimes unique and unexpected ways in which they play our game. Because the truth is we designed a game by saying that they were going to play as we wanted, or at least we knew how they were going to play. But when you see on YouTube how some people use the content we’ve created, we’re extremely surprised. We really did not expect that type of use.
Will completing the game in Master mode (part of the recent DLC), modify some elements of the game, or even result in a different ending?
No, it won’t change anything about the end or that kind of stuff. The new difficulty mode will simply make the game harder. On the other hand on the next DLC we will tell stories about the champions in the game, to discover some of their backgrounds. What made me happy is the reaction of people. Many players have become fans of some of the champions, and it’s really nice. And then we will add the Amiibo as we go along.
This game was developed for the Wii U, and you recently said you regret not being able to use the Switch specific features. What features were you thinking about in particular?
To give a concrete example, there are what are called ‘HD vibrations’ which are specific to the Switch and which allow you to almost experiment what the character feels when it touches something, for example when you take an object in hand you can feel it thanks to the vibrations. It is a rather interesting approach, it adds more realism too, simply it would have been necessary to develop scenes around that. The real problem that made it impossible to use this technology is not so much a matter of time problem but rather that we were going to have too many differences with the Wii U version and they both had to be identical games. But now that we can free ourselves from this connection, this constraint, since the Switch is developing well, we will be able to use this in the next Zelda.
Regarding the next Zelda, is there a schedule settled on yet? Could you give us any exclusive insights into that?
No, you will not get a scoop! Sorry, my dear friend [laughs]. We have no plans for a future Zelda, we are still far from all this unfortunately for you. Today, I’m at a stage where I’m trying to gather a number of ideas for a sequel, but I cannot do it alone. It’s a lot of work that will have to be done over a long period of time, and we’re still far from having planned anything. Leave us a little time…
Could you introduce some gameplay changes to adapt to the portable side of the console?
It’s hard to bring the specifics of old portable consoles. For example, for 3D, everything that was typical of the mobile games with a 3D effect will not be possible to duplicate. Each [piece of] hardware is different. That being said, few changes are possible. For instance, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, which were originally games for home consoles, went smoothly onto the dual-screen DS, and it allowed us to show a map on the lower screen, which made the game more accessible and comfortable. So these kinds of changes could find their way to the Switch if you find the way to do it.
Source: GameReactor
