While I’ve very much enjoyed my time in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, I don’t want this to be the only type of Zelda game moving forward. Hear me out; I promise this take is not as spicy as you might think!
A new interview with Game Informer revealed that director Eiji Aonuma believes the “new kind of format” that Breath of the Wild created for the series will be the one that Nintendo will “proceed from” in future.
Many have interpreted his words here to mean that moving forward, the Legend of Zelda series will probably be a whole lot like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Ironically, despite the gameplay of BOTW/TOTK being the most open and free in the series, I personally feel like a decision to make Zelda games only like this in future would be restrictive in comparison to older titles in the series.
Part of the problem here is that the Nintendo Switch is both a handheld and a home console. Obviously, that’s not actually a “problem”. In fact, it rocks to be able to take a home console around with you!
However, Nintendo consistently having both a handheld console and a home console on the market for years meant that we’d see all sorts of games come into the Zelda franchise. Yeah, sure, Link’s Crossbow Training wasn’t a great spin-off. But Minish Cap rocked!
For full, complete transparency, my favourite Legend of Zelda game is Wind Waker. That said, my point of view here isn’t purely tied to keeping all Zelda games linear, and I do not wish for every Zelda game to be like Wind Waker. That would be silly.
Honestly, I would go as far as to say that BOTW/TOTK looks and feels like a conglomeration of every single home console Zelda game to date mixed with an idealist’s open-world RPG. It’s perfect, right? Right?
But what about Four Swords? Phantom Hourglass? Hell, even the Japan-exclusive Tingle games? What about the titles that nobody really expected, that experimented with the series and took it in a different direction? Will we still get those?
It doesn’t surprise me that Nintendo might be comfortable with sticking to the BOTW/TOTK formula for the foreseeable future considering the 10’s across the board and the Best Game Ever Made labels. But I’m just hoping it’s not the only Zelda games we get ever again.
When I pitched this blog to my editor David, he said it was a ‘spicy and zesty’ take. I don’t think it’s that bad, but I’d love to know what you think!
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