Baldur's Gate 3's principal narrative designer, Lawrence Schick, has claimed that both the game's players and developers are going to be discovering new things for "years".
08.12.2023 - 17:07 / gameranx.com / Eiji Aonuma
Despite not winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards last night, which may or may not be controversial depending on which side you were on, The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom remains one of the best games of 2023 by a country mile. The game expanded everything in the previous title and added new gameplay elements that redefined what it meant to be Link. Some people spent hundreds of hours in the games simply wandering around, building things with the Ultrahand, doing side quests, and more. But there’s a little sour note that the game’s producer wishes to note.
Producer Eiji Aonuma has already made it clear that there wouldn’t be a follow-up to the 2023 title, but now, in an interview with Game Informer, he went a little deeper into that. He noted that not only would there not be a sequel, but that future games are unlikely to have a sequel due to what it means for the team. He went on to say:
“Well that would be a sequel to a sequel, which is getting a little bit wild when you think about it! But as I’ve mentioned previously, 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.”
That’s a little sad to hear because we know that there have been direct sequels in the past, but they were also ones that had potential for sequels in their own ways. Or, in the case of a certain N64 title, they had about nine months to make a follow-up and just reused much of what they had already made before and built upon that.
Another thing Aonuma noted was that the Ultrahand was unlikely to return for future games. Why? That was part of making Tears of the Kingdom as great as it was. Plus, that would mean making it work for a whole new world and all the items within it.
The team is working on the next title now, so we’ll have to trust that they’ll make something just as grand.
Baldur's Gate 3's principal narrative designer, Lawrence Schick, has claimed that both the game's players and developers are going to be discovering new things for "years".
There were few moments as iconic, during the birth phase of 3D gaming, as the first time Link stepped onto Hyrule Field in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was 1998, and games like Virtua Racing, Doom, Descent, and Nintendo’s own Super Mario 64 had already made epochal strides in graphics technology and the possibilities of 3D space. But this was something else.
Nintendo really isn't vibing with the idea of a Legend of Zelda game done in the style of Super Mario Maker.
There were many things that Tears of the Kingdom “did right” upon its release. Regarding its story, one of its best acts was bringing Zelda to the past and having her interact with Hyrule’s first king and queen. As players would find out, the first king of Hyrule, Rauru, would have a huge role in the story, including saving Link from Ganondorf’s curse and helping him understand his new abilities. Polygon translated an interview with the game’s director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, and the game’s producer, Eiji Aonuma, where the two commented on what it was like to make Rauru and the “two sides” of his character via the time periods gamers met him in. Fujibayashi started with:
Before players meet Rauru in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, they see his arm. At the very beginning of the game, Link doesn’t really know what’s going on, but he wakes up with a mysterious appendage that’s not his — and that allows him to harness incredible powers. It’s not much later that Link meets a spirit version of Rauru, the first king of Hyrule and a character who belongs to a race of creatures called the Zonai. In lending Link his arm, Rauru gave the hero the means to go out into the wide world of Hyrule and realize the carefully laid plans of Princess Zelda.
It is likely that will be the last game to feature its particular version of Link. is a direct sequel to, and because of this, it features and further develops the same incarnation of the famous hero. However, looking towards the future of the franchise, it may soon be time for ’s Link to retire.
In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, players didn’t just play through another story set in Hyrule. The sequel to Breath of the Wild took the previous game’s sandbox elements several steps further, allowing players to use a new set of powers to construct machines, weapons, and tools using items in the world. By introducing this, Tears of the Kingdom encouraged players to be truly creative and push the limits of building in the game.
«It's a feeling of excitement. It's about what will be the new things that we'll be able to do.»
As we’ve noted on the site, long-running franchises sometimes do things like spinoffs to try to “spice things up” and give their fans something they didn’t expect. Mario is legendary for doing this in his franchise, as he’s done sports games, minigame-focused titles, RPGs, and even had his companions lead games like Peach and Luigi. But for The Legend of Zelda, they’ve done considerably fewer spinoffs in the past. The ones they did do were incredibly focused or were meant to coincide with a certain console property, such as with a certain crossbow game. Fans may wonder if something bigger in the spinoff realm could happen soon.
The Legend of Zelda and its protagonist, Link, reached new heights this year — literally. The hero soared through the skies and plunged into the deepest depths of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The game’s developers took their risks, too: This time around, players wouldn’t just explore but also construct devices with Link’s new set of powers.
Nintendo has said the nature of Link and Zelda's relationship in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is open to interpretation, after months of discourse on whether the two characters are dating or not.
Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has said he believes that traditional linear series entries are “games of the past” and called requests from some fans to return to the style “nostalgia”.