How the Depths in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came to be

Nintendo has spoken about how the Depths in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came to be, including how it was formed late in development. It also turns out that the area came as a surprise to producer Eiji Aonuma. Once again, this information comes from the recently-released art book in Japan.

Outside of Aonuma, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi also participated in the discussion. You can read our translation of the excerpt below.

On the subject of verticality, I have heard that the Depths was an area that was created later. How did this come about?

Fujibayashi: It’s true that we didn’t have a concept for the Depths in the initial stages. However, once we started actually playing with the diving mechanic, we thought we wanted more distance both up and down. So during the time when we didn’t have an underground area, we were thinking about digging out deep, vertical caves instead.

It does feel like there are deep holes and caves all over the map.

Fujibayashi: However, we thought that caves weren’t enough to surprise players in the way we wanted. We thought if it were possible to make an underground area the same size as the overworld, that would be really interesting. And if we could make an underworld, that would also link to a more interesting story, and even deeper and fun gameplay. At that time, I actually thought we didn’t have the time to make a whole new expansive area from zero.

The original map for Breath of the Wild had been designed with rivers as boundaries, so if we used the rules of reversing the rivers to make high walls and dropping the high points of the map to low points in the underground, switching the whole map, not only would it be interesting, it would also be creatable with a realistic cost. So I then discussed it with the programmers who quickly created a prototype of an underground area using the rules. With that we could evaluate if gameplay in the depths was worth the cost, and with the good response we got, I went to discuss it with Aonuma.

Something like, “I’m thinking I want to add in a whole underground area”?

Aonuma: ‘What? Really?!’ (laughs) I already knew the sky was being made into an expansive area, so I was really surprised!

Fujibayashi: So in order to convince Aonuma I told him, “If we have an underground, we can show the world like this,” with which I presented an appealing video I had made.

In case you missed it, we also previously reported on the early ideas Nintendo had for the Depths, which you can read about here. The developers also revealed that Tears of the Dragon was strongly considered as the game’s title.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on Switch. You can order the new art book here.

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