Aonuma talks about playing non-Nintendo games while working on Breath of the Wild
In an interview with Game Informer, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma had a chance to speak about non-Nintendo titles. He told the magazine that he didn’t play a ton of games in the past, but has changed that. Aonuma played the likes of Far Cry, The Witcher, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in research for Breath of the Wild, but passed on Grand Theft Auto due to it being a bit too violent for his tastes.
Aonuma told Game Informer:
“In the past I didn’t play many video games. But then I realized, this isn’t right, I have to. So nowadays, I actually play a lot of overseas titles.”
“While playing those games, I do find some ideas, but it’s not that it connects directly to Zelda to where I would take something and use it in Zelda, but it’s more of something I keep in the back of my head while developing the game.”
Aonuma also spoke about The Last Guardian, which he did have a chance to play last year:
“I was too busy in 2016, so I couldn’t play a lot of games [laughs], but I did play The Last Guardian. [Fumito] Ueda and I go back, so when he completed that game he sent a copy to me. It was actually a really busy time so I shouldn’t have been playing the game, but I just couldn’t resist, and it was really good.
“Flying in the sky (in The Last Guardian) is very similar to paragliding in Breath of the Wild, so it kind of made me feel like, we’re friends, and we’re kind of doing a similar thing.”
