Whatever the next game in the Legend of Zelda series is going to be, it’s unlikely to be a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the game’s director has said in a new interview. Instead, the Zelda team will look to “create something new.”
Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi spoke to Game Informer about the highly successful sequel, as well as plans for its future and the future of the series as a whole. When asked whether TOTK’s iconic Ultrahand will return in future games, both were fairly certain that it wouldn’t, explaining that they would rather move on to something new.
“If, for example, there was any continuation of Tears of the Kingdom and we were to bring in, say, Ultrahand, then I think to us, it would feel like, ‘Well, we’re just bringing in Tears of the Kingdom as is,'” Fujibayashi explained. “What we want to do from a game creator’s perspective is create something new. From that perspective, I don’t think we’ll be seeing Ultrahand in every Zelda game or anything in the future.” He also added that “every time we’re making a Zelda title, we want to create something new.”
Aonuma added that the Ultrahand is emblematic of the approach the team took to developing Tears of the Kingdom. “You know, first putting all of our ideas in and then being very selective about what we wanted to remain, removing all of the parts that didn’t make sense or didn’t fit perfectly,” he explained. “This game, then, is the result of that selection process. This time, you’ll see that there is no DLC because of that process. We created what we wanted to create and felt that it was complete in that fashion.”
When asked about whether Tears of the Kingdom would see its own sequel, Aonuma said that it would be unlikely, and explained why. “Well that would be a sequel to a sequel, which is getting a little bit wild when you think about it!” he said. “With Tears of the Kingdom, we were seeking to build on top of the world we created with Breath of the Wild and really exhaust the possibilities of what we could put into that world. I think it is–to use a bit of a term–an apotheosis, or the final form of that version of The Legend of Zelda. In that regard, I don’t think that we’ll be making a direct sequel to a world such as that that we’ve created.”
With Tears of the Kingdom apparently wrapping up this chapter of the Zelda universe, it’ll be interesting to see where the series goes next. The interview also touched on the infamous Zelda timeline, with Aonuma and Fujibayashi explaining how they consider a game’s placement in the timeline during development.
“We realized that fans have a great time theorizing and enjoy thinking about where things fit on the timeline. That’s something that the development team recognizes and it considers, but to an extent. And I say, ‘to an extent’ because if we get too into the weeds or too detailed in that placement, it results in kind of creating restraints for our creativity,” Fujibayashi explained. “We do consider it, but not to an extent where we feel that our development process feels restricted or constrained.”
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