Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom devs talk early Depths ideas

The developers behind The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have shared interesting details about the early days of making the Depths. This comes from the new art book that just came out in Japan.

The Depths are one major area of the game alongside the sky and Hyrule itself. However, things didn’t come together immediately. Art director Satoru Takizawa seemed to initially have an idea in his head about “a Cretaceous Period-like world with dinosaurs or the mythical underworld.” The team did actually make an experiment based on this. Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi also indicated that the team played around with the brightness, noting that “there was a considerable amount of trial and error” before the final level of darkness was decided.

Here’s our full translation of Takizawa and Fujibayashi talking about the early ideas for the Depths in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom:

Visually, what kind of world did you consider making for the Depths?

Takizawa: When I hear ‘the underground world’, what comes to mind is an old sci-fi movie on Earth, where underground there is still a Cretaceous Period-like world with dinosaurs or the mythical underworld. It is a very natural association for my generation (laughs).

We did an experiment in which we created a Cretaceous Period area with large plants and animals walking around in it, but ultimately I thought the art would change based on the gameplay.

Fujibayashi: We had to wait a considerable time until the Depths’ gameplay was decided to make the artwork. We did various experiments, including with the brightness of the Depths. It feels like you can see a dimly lit ridgeline, or a desolate desert stretching out until the end. We made a dark world in the end, but there was a considerable amount of trial and error to get there.

Takizawa: So we had to confirm the playstyle of the Depths before we could create specific art, but this “activating the lights” was thankfully extremely compatible with our first fantasy of a Cretaceous-style large-scale world. The moment you activate the lights, suddenly before your eyes things like large plants and animals or statues shockingly appear, it is a bit of a scary and creepy sensation, but I thought it would make a sense of wonder and surprise for players too.

As a result, the first idea remained, and we decided on the framework of an ancient world with dinosaurs meeting with the image of the underworld.

Fujibayashi: Because it worked well with Zonai devices and other vehicles, we thought a large world would be good. You can attempt things like using a rocket when you want to climb up. Then, there are many mushroom-shaped trees that you are supposed to use to Ascend (laughs).

Something else revealed in the art book is that Tears of the Dragon was strongly considered as the game’s subtitle. We have a translation for that here.

Translation provided by Philip Proctor, SatsumaFS, and Simon Griffin on behalf of Nintendo Everything.