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Eiji Aonuma

Two of the biggest and best games this year were made by Nintendo. We’re of course referring to Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey.

Recently, IGN caught up with developers of both games to hear about what they think about each other’s games. Super Mario Odyssey producer Yoshiaki Koizumi plus Zelda: Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and producer Eiji Aonuma shared their thoughts.

Famitsu published a new interview this week with Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma. It was pretty interesting, with Aonuma talking about Breath of the Wild winning “Game of the Year” at The Game Awards, including his mindset at the time and why he started out by saying “Thank you America!” He also spoke about The Champions’ Ballad DLC, and confirmed that development on the game has concluded.

We’ve prepared a translation with the most notable parts from Famitsu’s interview. You can read it below.

Breath of the Wild was a complete reinvention of the Zelda formula, and many past staples were either discarded or reworked. One example of this is the dungeons. Whereas past Zelda titles featured long, unique dungeons with and a particular item to obtain, Breath of the Wild instead mostly has a ton of smaller Shrines scattered throughout the world and a few Divine Beasts that are thematically similar.

Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and Breath of the Wild directed Hidemaro Fujibayashi commented on Nintendo’s approach to Shrines and dungeons in the debut episode of the Nintendo Power podcast. We’re first able to hear from Fujibayashi, who explains that big dungeons would mean that players would spent too much time there.

Nintendo delivered Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s second DLC pack last week. Now that the game’s development is truly finished (at least that we know of), fans can’t help but wonder what the future holds for the franchise.

As you would expect, Nintendo isn’t ready to delve into any specific plans just yet. However, Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and series producer Eiji Aonuma did talk about their mindset going forward.

Nintendo has published the latest parts of its interview with Zelda: Breath of the Wild director Hideomaro Fujibayashi and series producer Eiji Aonuma. Once again, the discussion focuses mostly on The Champions’ Ballad DLC. The two talked about how they went about approaching new story content this time around, dungeon design, the new outfits, and more.

You can read the discussion in full below. Nintendo warns of spoilers, but there’s not really anything that’s discussed in terms of the story scenes or sequences specifically. Still, keep that warning in mind before proceeding.

Earlier in the year, Nintendo revealed that the hookshot was scrapped from Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The hookshot has previously appeared in a number of Zelda games, but didn’t make it in for the Switch and Wii U title.

Nintendo spoke more about the hookshot in Zelda: Breath of the Wild and why it wasn’t a fit as part of a new interview with IGN. Series producer Eiji Aonuma started out with the following:

Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a special treat for those who clear the game’s new DLC. After completing The Champions’ Ballad, players will be rewarded with the Master Cycle Zero. Yes, Link can ride through Hyrule on a motorcycle.

At The Game Awards on Thursday night, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi spoke more about the DLC. The two developers explained how the Master Cycle Zero came to be, and also discussed the new horse gear.

Back during the summer, French website Jeuxvideo interviewed Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma. Although it had some interesting comments, the discussion largely went unnoticed. We decided to follow up with a full translation since we felt that it was a pretty worthwhile interview.

Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and art director Satoru Takizawa were the participants this time around. The two were asked about the game’s difficulty in relation to The Master Trials, why Hero’s Path Mode wasn’t in place originally and was instead added as DLC, timeline talk, and even the possibility of Zelda II remake – plus more.

Continue on below for our full translation.

Nintendo of France has uploaded a video of the full Master Class – The Art of the Legend of Zelda Series panel from Japan Expo to Youtube. Eiji Aonuma (producer), Eiji Nakano (illustrator) and Satoru Takizawa (art director) talked about what it was like creating the art of Breath of the Wild and several other Zelda games. Note that the panel was held in French (and Japanese), so you’ll have to understand either of those two languages to get the full experience out of this.

At Japan Expo this week, GameReactor caught up with Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma. The discussion included talk about Breath of the Wild and Zelda in general.

Regarding Breath of the Wild, Aonuma reflected on the game’s reaction and those who say that the final boss was too easy. He also spoke in (very) vague terms about the next main Zelda – wanting to include HD Rumble, but it’s a long way off. Also, Aonuma basically said that Link is ambidextrous.

We’ve included what we feel are the more notable comments from Aonuma below. The full interview is on GameReactor here.


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