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After Breath of the Wild soared the charts and took fans by storm with its sheer capacity for creativity, Nintendo realized there was still some untapped potential – and that's how Tears of the Kingdom came about, according to the now-beloved games' leads.
Speaking in a recent interview with Polygon, producer Eiji Aonuma recalls when Breath of the Wild first launched. Folks were surprisingly creative with how they approached its world, and this showed developers that the new "style" of Zelda game worked – and it worked well.
"After we released the game and saw what people were doing with it, we realized that this was the right direction to head in," he admits. "We saw that people were exploring how to play."
Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi expands on this thought, explaining how devs themselves were using Breath of the Wild to birth fresh concepts for in-game construction and tools (think the Zonai abilities, like Ultrahand).
"After completing Breath of the Wild, we were using the same development environment, coming up with new ideas using those same tools," describes the lead, going on to detail some of their process.
"There were these gears that moved on their own, so we tried attaching them to a board, and we realized you could make a car. Another thing you could do is create four boards to create a tube and use the remote control bomb to create a cannon to make objects fly."
It was this sort of experimentation that inspired Fujibayashi and fellow devs to improve upon Breath of the Wild with a sequel and create Tears of the Kingdom.
"We thought there was a lot of potential even just using what was already in Breath of the Wild," as the director says. "That's where I came up with the idea that we could continue to make Breath of the Wild even better. That's why I thought a sequel would be a good idea."
He concludes that, "In that sense, Aonuma and I were aligned." Both devs wanted to take the foundation Breath of the Wild laid out to the next level with a follow-up title.
I'd argue they definitely did so, and then some. I mean, just look at some of the creations we got out of Tears of the Kingdom. There's the fan who recreated a Metal Gear Solid 2 aircraft, for instance – and that's only the tip of the iceberg, really.
Searching for more to enjoy after Tears of the Kingdom? Here are some of the most exciting upcoming Switch 2 games to look forward to and wishlist now.
