Zelda: Breath of the Wild art director on how The Wind Waker HD shaped the game’s art style
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 7 Comments
As you can probably tell, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD served as a big inspiration for the art style in Breath of the Wild. This goes all the way back to when Nintendo was working on the Wii U remaster a few years ago. Breath of the Wild art director Satoru Takizawa spoke about how the game’s style was determined during a session at GDC last week.
When looking to see how different Zelda games would look like in HD, Nintendo took models from previous games and placed them into a development environment to try different mockups. Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, and The Wind Waker were all tested. Wind Waker “stood out” the most “and really captured the imagination of the lead artists on Breath of the Wild”. The team took it from there.
While Wind Waker would end up being used as inspiration, the art style couldn’t be carried over completely. The cartoonish direction couldn’t allow for a certain sense of realism that the team wanted to achieve. Additionally, there was some concern about it being a turnoff for older players.
Breath of the Wild’s final look was ultimately determined based on a slogan Nintendo decided on, which is “refreshing and full-flavored.”
Here’s the full explanation on how the game’s art style came to be from Takizawa:
Zelda: Breath of the Wild team on dev approach, difficulty, speedrunners, concept art, Shrines, bugs, and more
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 9 Comments
The Verge recently chatted with Zelda: Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, art director Satoru Takizawa, and technical director Takuhiro Dohta. Tons of topics were discussed in the new interview. Among them include how the team approached development, the game’s difficulty, speedrunning, the crazy concept, designing Shrines, and making the experience as bug free as possible.
We’ve rounded up notable excerpts from the interview below. You can read the full discussion on The Verge here.
Art director says Link’s iconic hat is missing in Zelda: Breath of the Wild since it’s tough to make it look cool
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 68 Comments
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild breaks many of the series’ conventions. Among these is the lack of Link’s iconic hat, which has long been a staple of the series.
In an interview with Polygon, Breath of the Wild art director Satoru Takizawa told Polygon that due to the rise of graphic fidelity, it’s tough “to make that hat look cool.”
He said:
“As the graphic fidelity has increased it becomes more difficult to make that hat look cool. As the game becomes more realistic it’s difficult to present it in a way that’s appealing.
If you look at Twilight Princess, I really made the hat long, so it would flap in the wind and move around. But because of that people were like ‘What’s he got? What’s in that hat?’ We’re reaching our limits as to how we can make it look cool.”
Takizawa added that with Skyward Sword, he attempted to make Link’s hat diminutive and giving it much less motion, but “we’re reaching our limits as to how we can make it look cool.”
Zelda: Breath of the Wild may have a tribute to Iwata
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 13 Comments
YouTube user Seaniccus may have uncovered a small but lovely tribute to Satoru Iwata in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
We won’t get too much into the specifics just in case there are some of you who want to be completely blind of the game’s smaller secrets and whatnot, but the main idea here is that one of the game’s NPC bears a striking resemblance to the late Nintendo president. Along with that, he tells you about a certain mountain in the game that’s just one letter off from “Satoru”.
For the full video, continue on below.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild – full GDC 2017 panel
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Switch, Videos, Wii U | 1 Comment
The full panel is now online for the Zelda: Breath of the Wild session at GDC 2017. Nintendo’s Hidemaro Fujibayashi,
Satoru Takizawa, and Takuhiro Dohta go in-depth with discussing how some of the convention-breaking mechanics were implemented in the game. Check out the full video below.
Defeating enemies in an unconventional way in Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Switch, Videos, Wii U | 20 Comments
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild lets you do all sorts of neat and interesting things. In battles alone, there are plenty of ways to approach encounters.
One YouTuber managed to come across one humorous way of defeating enemies in particular. This is far from a major spoiler, but we’re putting the clip past the break just to be safe.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild collaboration revealed for Monster Hunter XX
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 6 Comments
At an event in Japan today, Capcom unveiled yet another Monster Hunter XX collaboration. The latest one ties into a big, recently-released Nintendo game. Of course, that’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The new collaboration content for Monster Hunter XX will be available via 7-Eleven spots between April 24 and May 31. It encompasses the following:
– Hylia series costume
– Ancient Weaponry – Bow weapon
– Palico armor: Warm Korok
– Palico weapon Korok’s Branch
– Event Quests: The Legend of Zelda – Trial of Power / Trial of Courage / Trial of Wisdom
– Guild Card Backgrounds
– Titles
Zelda: Breath of the Wild devs on having total freedom, difficulty with the engine, missing Iwata
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 21 Comments
In making The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi tells The New Yorker that the team had total freedom. He told the publication about how Nintendo approached development:
“They said, ‘Change anything you want.’ So we wrote down all of the stress points, the things that make Zelda games less enjoyable, and we replaced them with new ideas.”
The New Yorker also spoke with technical director Takuhiro Dohta about Breath of the Wild’s chemistry engine. This is built on top of the physics engine, and allows for all sorts of antics like cooking, fire spreading on grass, and much more.
Putting it together wasn’t easy though. “At many times in the process, there were things that just weren’t functioning at all,” Dohta said. “We’d have to remove everything and build back up again.”
Zelda: Breath of the Wild Easter egg references the original game
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Switch, Videos, Wii U | 2 Comments
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has all sorts of neat secrets and Easter eggs. Included among them is a small but interesting callback to the first game in the series.
You can find the video showing the Easter egg after the break. It’s not really a spoiler, but we’re trying to be extra careful. Also note that one of the special amiibo outfits is shown.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild Switch vs. Wii U frame rate stress tests
Posted on 7 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Switch, Videos, Wii U | 7 Comments
Digital Foundry put up another video analyzing Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s performance on Switch and Wii U today. For this new one, the team was stress-testing the GPU. The analysis shows that the game does have frame rate dips on Switch here and there, but they appear to be less frequent and not as severe when compared to Wii U.
You can watch the full video below. Note that one of the game’s villages is shown, if you’re looking to avoid all spoilers.
