Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom devs on using original ideas and not copying other games

The developers behind The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t take any inspiration from Elden Ring or any other major titles for that matter. That’s according to Hidemaro Fujibayashi, the game’s director and Eiji Aonuma, the producer of the series.

FromSoftware previously said that when the studio was developing Elden Ring, it was influenced by various titles including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, it sounds like the team at Nintendo was too busy to play that game – or at least that goes for the developers at the top.

Outside of not having a chance to play Elden Ring while making Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Aonuma spoke with Dutch site RTL Nieuws about originally. He said that “there are situations where you make something that’s similar to an existing game, but I would never try to put the ideas of others in my game.”

Our full translation is as follows:

The hit game Elden Ring is said to be inspired by Breath of the Wild. Was that game also a source of inspiration for you last year?

Fujibayashi: Sorry, but we didn’t really have the chance to play the game. We were too occupied with the development of Tears of the Kingdom, which resulted in us not really being able to play games. We did hear about it, though.

Even if we had the time to play games, we wouldn’t reuse ideas from them. When we make a game, we come up with a general concept to come up with new ideas based on that.

That is pretty interesting, because with many games from other studios, designers often talk about their inspiration from other titles. Is Zelda being made in more of a bubble?

Aonuma: Of course there are situations where you make something that’s similar to an existing game, but I would never try to put the ideas of others in my game. I’m too proud for that. I’m always looking for original ideas.

When I made A Link Between Worlds, you had a 3D system when you jumped, which made it look like Link was coming right at you. When I showed this to former Nintendo president (Satoru) Iwata, he said he “didn’t know this was possible”. I was very happy to hear that, because to me that’s the essence of game development: figuring out things no one else has thought of.

Aonuma and Fujibayashi were also asked about the possibility of returning to the traditional Zelda formula. You can find their comments here.

Translation provided by TheBrasem on behalf of Nintendo Everything.