Zelda: Breath of the Wild devs knew the open-world pivot was "the right direction to head in" after seeing the "amazing" things players came up with

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"It gave us such confidence"

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Breath of the Wild was a massive shakeup for the Zelda series and one of the more successful reinventions in recent memory, but the team at Nintendo didn't fully know it was the right call until they started seeing some of the unexpected ways players were tinkering around with the game's reactive systems.

Hidemaro Fujibayashi, director for Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and longtime series producer Eiji Aonuma looked back on the open-world pivot in a conversation published in Keza MacDonald's new book Super Nintendo (via Polygon).

"It gave us such confidence," added Fujibayashi. “After we released the game and saw what people were doing with it, we realized that this was the right direction to head in . . . We saw that people were exploring how to play."

Jordan Gerblick
Jordan Gerblick

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.

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