If you’re anything like us, you can’t stop talking about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This bold reinvention of the classic Nintendo series stands as one of its finest entries, and the perfect excuse to invest in a Switch. So it goes without saying that Nintendo’s release of three great Breath of the Wild making-of videos comes at the absolute perfect time.
The first video, “Story and Characters,” delves into how Link, Zelda, and Ganon—the series’ core characters—underwent a transformation to match Breath of the Wild’s new approach. If you think switching from green to blue amounted to a drastic change to Link’s outfit, wait until you see some of the more outlandish ideas pitched for Breath of the Wild. This video also features some abandoned concepts from the game, like a race of tiny people inspired by The Minish Cap.
The second video, “The Beginning,” mainly focuses on The Legend of Zelda’s shift to an open-world format, and how different its approach is from past games. But the most impressive section of this video features a 2D prototype of Breath of the Wild built with assets from the original Legend of Zelda. It’s definitely interesting to see just how Breath of the Wild’s highly interactive world plays out via the means of blocky, 8-bit graphics.
“Open Air Concept,” the third—but hopefully not final—video, shines a spotlight on Breath of the Wild’s “open-air” design. (Meaning its open-world format.) The developers go into the various decisions made to make playing in Breath’s world so fun, and even how this new take on Zelda changed their approach to sound and music. It’s definitely worth a watch for anyone who’s spent hours wandering around in Breath of the Wild.
At this point, it’s unclear if Nintendo will be producing more of these making-of videos, but we can only hope. With the sudden and recent death of former President Iwata, their “Iwata Asks” series has come to a halt, leaving no real outlet for behind-the-scenes information. These videos may not be quite as in-depth as pages upon pages of text-based interviews, but they still get the job done. And hey—you can even watch them while you play Breath of the Wild!
http://fandom.wikia.com/videos/fandom-reacts-zelda-secrets-breath-wild-creators