Learn a ton about the making of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in a special series

Nintendo has released a three-part series known as “The Making of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” teaching us a bunch about the creative process straight from the development team.

We’ve played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild extensively. We can honestly say that it’s one of the best games of all time. Even with numerous critically acclaimed games in the Zelda series, this may be the best one yet. It must have been a challenging task for the development team. In a new three-part series, we hear from them about creating this incredible game.

The first video talks about the beginning. Before development even began, they were already thinking about what they could do differently. The main catchphrase that they modeled the game by is “breaking the conventions of the Zelda series.” For example, because of certain technological limitations, they were forced to create a somewhat linear world in most of their games and were never able to expand on it. In the current era of gaming, they were able to do so. That was just one of the many conventions they wanted to break.

Obviously, they still wanted to make it feel like Zelda. They did such a good job combining those two elements. Check out the first clip below and learn more about the beginning of development:

The second clip explains the characters and the story. In most Zelda games, the story is present from the very beginning. Like producer Eiji Aonuma says, “the storyline would come to you in a predetermined way as you play. It’s different in Breath of the Wild. The story is still very much there, but it isn’t thrown at you from the start. It’s up to the player to figure out certain story elements by the decisions you make and the places you decide to visit first.

In Breath of the Wild, the characters are unique. We learn that the “triangular relationship” between Zelda, Link, and Ganon is very present in this game. We also see the return of familiar races like the Zora, the Gorons and the Rito. The introduction of voice acting definitely adds a certain flare to some of the characters. They’ve never felt so real.

Check out the clip below to learn even more about the story and characters:

The third and final video focuses on the open world. In this game, one of the main goals was to create an environment where the player can explore the world extensively. For example, in Skyward Sword, the world was very linear. There wasn’t much room for exploration. They wanted to make sure that wasn’t the case in Breath of the Wild.

Learn more in the clip below:

Next: Why console launch scarcity is a bad idea

We highly recommend you check out all the videos. It’s a great series and it’s extremely informative about the game and how everything came to be.