Aonuma: Biggest Nintendo team ever working on Zelda: Breath of the Wild
It’s no secret that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a massive project. But its scope is so huge that Nintendo has its largest team ever working on the game.
That’s something producer Eiji Aonuma shared in an interview with GameSpot. He largely talked about that during the discussion, but also gave an interesting answer about seeing and doing everything in the game.
Head past the break for Aonuma’s comments. Definitely check out GameSpot’s piece here as well.
On whether this is the biggest team he’s worked with, and if it’s the biggest team that’s ever made a Nintendo game before…
Aonuma: “Yes, to both questions. There’s a lot of people.”
When we’re building something, we all have to have a shared perspective and goal, and it’s important that everyone has this concrete image in your mind. When you have this many people, you may say the same thing to everybody, but everyone has a different perspective on it. If we made a game with that, we would have a very broken and disjointed game. One of the biggest challenges is making sure we all have a shared vision.
On any risks associated with such a large production…
The biggest challenge against creativity is that staff members get really mad at me. They tell me “you don’t know what’s going on on the floor.” Of course, that’s obviously the case because I’m not in the trenches working, so I see the finished product and suggest the team should do more of this, or more of that, and obviously people come to say that there’s a reason things are done a certain way. I have to say that I understand, but there’s a part of me that wants to make sure this is a good game, so I have to kind of fight that as well. When I go ahead and ask someone to change something, I have ten other people telling me “what are you doing?” There’s a big challenge to make sure everything I’m doing is working for everyone else too.
It just not bad stuff. If I have an initial image or idea that I want to see, and I’m able to really convey that, then the end product turns out way better than I originally imagined. Conveying words is very difficult, because I have to really think and make sure that what I’m saying will conjure up the exact image I have in my head. When I’m really able to take time and explain, and really thoroughly convey that, then you end up with a very good quality product, sometimes better than I originally imaged. That’s the plus side to having a big team.
On how long it’ll take for someone to see and do everything…
In the past, there’s the idea of getting 100 percent%, getting all of the items and armor. Fans of past Zelda games have done that. But I really think it’s going to be difficult with this iteration. At least, nobody on the development staff has done that yet. There may be very skilled players that can do it quickly, so I really can’t tell, but it’s very big.
