Nintendo scrapped tiny people from Zelda: Breath of the Wild

It’s always interesting to see game ideas that were left on the cutting room floor during development. In the case of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi revealed in the game’s new “making of” video series that the team scrapped something relating to characters.

Fujibayashi and the rest of the team were hoping to include “tiny people”, complete with “tiny-sized towns” and Link himself shrinking. However, “with all these other characters that stand out, we thought it would be difficult for these little guys to be able to live out their own place in the game.”

Fujibayashi’s full explanation:

“We did have times when we had ideas for certain characters but decided not to use them once we got further into development. For example, we had this idea of including tiny people. Since this is a 3D game, we could have all these tiny-sized towns, and Link himself could shrink. We thought it’d be super fun if we had all these tiny characters all over the place… but with all these other characters that stand out, we thought it would be difficult for these little guys to be able to live out their own place in the game. So we really wanted to have them in there for the gameplay, but sadly had to give up on the idea.”

Had this idea been implemented, it would have been a neat reference to one of the earlier Zelda games Fujibayashi worked on. Fujibayashi was the director of The Minish Cap, a title that involved Link shrinking and the tiny race Picori.