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1Nintendo Power Podcast #1 Transcript
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3welcome to Nintendo Power podcast on this first episode we look back at Nintendo's switch in 2017 and discuss the creation of the Legend of Zelda breath of the wild with the games developers my name is Chris Layton and I'll be your host I was editor-in-chief of Nintendo Power magazine for five years back during the wii era but way before that back when i was a kid starting with the very first issue i was a subscriber to the magazine so Nintendo Power has always meant a lot to me just like I'm sure it's meant a lot to many of you and it certainly means a lot to many of us here at Nintendo of America which is really why this podcast exists it's a passion project for many of us here because we really wanted to see the Nintendo Power brand come back in a fun way and we also would love the chance to share our personal views which is you know we just talk Nintendo here all day anyway so it's another opportunity to do that and now the content to start with is going to be a little bit experimental the same with the format and the frequency I'm gonna be trying to figure out exactly what the podcast should be and we would greatly appreciate your feedback you know let us know what you liked what you didn't like so much what you'd like to see more of and I'll tell you how you can share that with us at the end of the episode now in just a little bit we're gonna talk to the producer and the director of The Legend of Zelda broth of the wild and we're gonna get to asked him about a lot of stuff about how the game was made everything from my weapons break to why they added a motorcycle of all things to the game but before we get to that I'd like to look back at Nintendo switch in 2017 with some friends of mine here in Nintendo first we have KITT Ellis who you'll know is the co-host of Nintendo a minute thanks for having me I grew up as a huge Nintendo power fan so this really means a lot right well you are now an honorary Nintendo power member finally and then next we have Damon Baker from publisher and developer relations team hello it's an honor to be on the inaugural broadcast thank you so much for having me well thanks for coming we love having you and as I said we want to talk a little bit about Nintendo switch in 2017 you know it launched in March so it wasn't necessarily the first full year but it's the first calendar year I guess you could say for the system and a lot happened and you know it takes quite a while to go through every beat of a Nintendo switch in the year so what I'd like to do is discuss for each of us what what's the moment what's the thing about the year of Nintendo switch that will remember the most and that will take with us of course I just want to say it has dawned on me that we're essentially the opening act for mr. onuma and mr. fujibayashi which you know if they're like the eight course gourmet meal I'm hoping that we can be like a breadstick at least with a super the sides hell yeah yeah you're talking baby my thing that I would take away from 2017 and there's a lot to choose from but just personally speaking I was really blown away at e3 I've been to many many III s over the years and and you know I always love going obviously if you're if you're gaming fan it's it's it's basically like Christmas in July or June rather and this year you know we had a very interesting booth at Nintendo we had the Super Mario Odyssey design with all the little photo ops and and you know we were fortunate enough to have a lot of people really interested and want to come play the game I was really impressed with how it turned out personally speaking and that's something that when I think back on the year those visuals those memories really come back strongly what is your personal III count at this point what are you up to you know I'm not even sure I could tell you how many of us been yeah it's basically all of them but maybe four there was a short period of time where I didn't go but I was there for the first ones and for most of them so yeah it's been a lot but it's great being great to see how the show evolved and then to see how you know from within Nintendo now how Nintendo evolves its approach every year I always find it very interesting see that process work out you know and this year we had the we were fortunate enough again to have so much attention at the booth that on the second day we it was interesting to see how the team there restructured the lines to make sure more people had an opportunity to play and to the point where we even had to have some Marines on hand to help organize everyone because there was so much interest so you know it's great to just kind of be a fly on the wall and see all that happened and then specifically for me you know being such a big Mario fan myself I was really interested sir mario odyssey and to learn a lot more about that game and when that trailer showed up in the nintendo spotlight and you saw for the first time to capture mechanic and then you heard jump up superstar for the first time which would say stuck in my head for the whole rest of the year that's also another personal highlight moment for me in it it seemed like an extension of the Year previous where we were focused on breath of the wild and we really themed out the booth that game this year it was Super Mario Odyssey and it was interesting to see people you know coming to play the game but then sticking around to just be in this space this this kind of recreation of new dog city that we'd made and we had some you know really fun elements from the game that were brought to life we had a real-life Goomba stack so I learned that I'm about to point seven-five goombas tall myself but I think that's something that is special about the Nintendo III booth it's a place where people come to congregate and of course they come to play but it's just got a really good feel to it yeah whenever I'm participating in e3 it's usually behind the scenes and we're you know doing a lot of meetings with with our third-party partners but it's always telling to me I'd loved seeing these major producers for four franchises like the trying out a game like Super Mario Odyssey for the first time like you can always tell a producer or a game creator because the first thing they do is they like grab the controller and then they press every single button to see what it does and and they're just trying all the mechanics and you might see like a moon in the distance it's like no just go over there and get that moon but they spend like 15 minutes like trying every single possible move scenario that they can conjure up something else I think is really special for us about e3 is you know getting to see the developers you know watching people play their game seeing their reactions of you know being amongst their peers and having some special moments with them and I had one with mr. Yabuki who's the head developer of arms and he's not somebody that I had had much time to spend with previously I knew who he was he was in the January livestream and he's been involved with the Mario Kart series before but we were gonna shoot a Nintendo minute video with him and we were sort of getting ready for that and he's like what do you guys want to do and we were sort of talking through some ideas and he's like how about if I just show you how I play this game and we're like oh this is like a personal tutorial from you know the lead developer of the game yeah we're not gonna pass that up and he was just so warm and so engaging and you know had just this really personal way of showing us how to play the game and we had so much fun playing with him like we each went you know head-to-head against him and he was really you know clearly not pulling out all the stops too because he didn't need to either but it was just you know it gave me so much more insight into this game of you know what he had he and that team had given so much into arms to make it what it was that was a really special memory he really rocked it on stage 2 during the arms tournament when he got up there and mix it up with with the competitors and he was pretty formidable yeah we had that session before the tournament so I was not surprised to see him turn it up when he went out to actually go compete in this tournaments actually or another part that I really enjoyed about e3 this year and and in particular the the huge upset during the splatoon 2 tournament I think everyone expected the Japan team to win because splatoon is such a massive you know there's such a massive community around the original game in Japan but the u.s. pulled it out and it was a it was a fun surprise and the crowd was really into it and I was in there watching it along with everyone else and and and you know that was just a lot of fun I get to attend a pre-tournament I guess mixer for those players a couple days before the tournament happened and I was really just a fly on the wall but I was really impressed with kind of the sense of community and sportsmanship that they all had you know these were people who obviously from different regions who'd probably didn't know each other at all before and they were just hanging out taking pictures with each other being really friendly you know it could have been a case of like oh this is a serious competition I don't want you know don't don't talk to the other team don't give them don't give away your secrets and I don't think they were they were doing anything like that but everybody was just really friendly having a great time and obviously once the tournament started it got really serious but people were I felt like people were in it for the right reasons I having a great time and enjoying the game that's great to hear just having fun mm-hmm and Damon actually what do you think you'll take most from Nintendo switches first year oh my goodness there are so many amazing moments from this last year and I feel like I've aged like an extra 12 years getting through all of it but it's been an incredible year especially on the third-party side of the business the team over here and publisher and developer relations we've just launched our 300th game and like you mentioned it hasn't even been a full year yet so everybody's been really really busy but in terms of a moment I would just say you know you know third party in general on Nintendo switch and on Nintendo platforms it has been awesome to see the level of support from the publishing partners from the indie community and you know this this goes all the way back to you know the participation in the reveals and those videos and the announcements of the Nintendo switch platform in general and showing the level of support from major publishers but then also I got to say it was it was a privilege to be able to help announce you know the indie support in that week leading up to the launch of Nintendo switch and around that GDC timeframe and I know that there there was a lot of uncertainty in terms of what what is this catalog of content that's going to be coming over to the platform you know that some things had been announced but there was still a lot of stuff under the veil of secrecy you know to make it as impactful as possible and to be able to go out with a an indie showcase and to be able to show off all of these great titles and to see the internet turn positive for 24 hours it was amazing like I was you know you you go to the forums and everything and you expect a little level of trolling or negativity here and there but the overwhelmingly positive response for Nintendo switch and for the type of games that we were bringing out and the the indie developers and the publishers coming on board it was it really felt like not only did we have something special but that we were heading in the right direction from the very beginning so it was a really encouraging way to start it off and been riding that wave ever since it's been awesome and you mentioned 400 games I'm gonna assume you played all of those are there any that really stand out from those that you have played you know as among your favorites of the year well let me correct it was 300 it feels like 400 but we have 300 I've had a ton of fun with with a lot of them in particular you know it's it's games like floor kids that just came out from merge media it's golf story oh my gosh it's so much fun I just had a smile on my face playing through the entire game steamworld dig to was incredible of course launching stardew valley on the system was awesome to see the the great reaction to that playing multiplayer overcooked and making and losing friendships in the process of playing that game that's it's been pretty cool I mean even this last year you know the outreach on Twitter to to myself and you know if it if you know the likes of vertex pop with graceful explosion machine or sidebar with with golf story if they hadn't reached out to me on Twitter and we hadn't started that dialogue that we might not have ever seen those games on the system or at least highlighted and in the way that they were so that's something that when I was looking forward to Nintendo's which and and and you know thinking about you know what I would potentially enjoy with the system that's something that I didn't consider enough I think was the fact that there would be all of these great indie games a third-party content in general but for me specifically personally speaking I've really connected with a lot of these indie titles especially shovel knight treasure trove and as you said golf stories start valley and some others and i found it surprising what i look at you know between some of the you know traditional triple-a titles and a lot of these indie titles i've spent just as much and more time with the indie game so you know i think it's been great to to see the fan community really rally around these these developers and around these games and to the point now where there's its if someone wants to you know test market a potential icon for the for their game for the home menu it becomes kind of a kind of a big moment you know in social media at the game that i played first after i started to wind down with those matilda the wild was mr. shifty oh yeah and it was something that I think I first saw and started to hear about around the time of PAX East and I didn't know much about it and I thought well this might be a fun little you know palette cleanse a fter the hugeness of breath of the wild and act I ended up being one of my favorite games of the year and a lot of different ways a game I really enjoyed and that's what I think it's so so fun is you can go from you know the big sweeping experience of a Mario or Zelda and then you know scale it down to really you know fit your fit your mood whatever you're in the mood for it's a multiplayer game single-player you name it seems like we've you know there's there's a lot of different options out there shell and I it's my go-to game on a plane like I've probably put 75 hours into that game and I'd already owned it for Wii U and 3ds but and then the switch version is also the one that that got my son hooked he's only 7 so this is kind of his after the Mario games his next step up and he got surprisingly good at it it can be a tough little platformer but now he's you know he's we got him a plague Knight plushie doll and and he just wants like a shovel knight birthday party and so yeah it's just a it's just so much great content here to pick from oh it's amazing like you know especially brands like and franchises like shovel knight like you know they're so instantly recognizable now they've grown to be such big huge games that like you know I showed off my switch to some friends that were over and they had a five year old boy and he was freaking out because he was like oh my god you have shovel knight like I let me let me play I was like how do you even know what shovel knight did I mean it's just it just it makes me smile to see people recognizing these games and enjoy and like we do it's cool the other thing I'll say on this topic is it's interesting to see how some of the games that came out first on other platforms have sort of this second breath given the multiplayer focus of Nintendo switch so something that really resonated with me this year was lovers in a dangerous space-time which is a hugely multiplayer focused game but I was aware of before but I thought well it might be tough to round up you know for people to really you know play this in the optimal way but you know I've with Nintendo switch I found myself playing it on my airplane on a trip or it was just so much easier and again that was a game that you know is probably pretty high on my you know personal list of the year of games I enjoyed the most good call man yeah I mean it's been really cool to see some of these multi-platform titles coming over and even if they've been out for a little while on on other systems then to see that they really resonate so strongly and and it's like you said kid I mean you know if a game really embraces the multiplayer aspects of the system or the portability of the system those are those are the games that end up really shining on Nintendo switch my kid what would your big moment from 2017 well I'm gonna be Captain Obvious and talked about Super Mario to see and the legend of zelda breath of the wild and obviously you know a lot of people have been talking about these games this year but I think if I were to look back on them and kind of what they meant for me it's how they reshape my perception of those two series individually and we can start with Zelda and to be honest you know I would you know people always say like how are you more of a Zelda person or more of a Mario person I would always identify more on the Mario side just because that sort of you know freedom of platforming that that openness of movement is what really you know has always drawn me in tomorrow but I think with with Zelda you know this is really the Zelda game that I have always wanted and that it's got that open aspect of the exploration and it's really about making your own adventure and you know as I think about it you know I've always considered you know the jump from super mario world to super mario 64 to be just incredible as far as you know how they you know the team took what was previously a 2-d game and translated it into 3d in a way that really you know you know established a lot of the conventions for that genre going forward you know it feels like there was something similar going on with breath of the wild where you know the Zelda series had been on a path for a number of games and it you know breath of the wild was in some ways a lot of a reboot where they were starting over introducing new mechanics new systems and in some cases which were you know risky if you think about it like a cooking system or a climbing system really introducing new things that hadn't been a huge focus of the game before so just thinking about that and thinking about you know how people still to this day are finding new things in that game you know there was so little hand-holding so to speak in that game I for me it really kind of transformed the way that I think about the series yeah for me that the launch of Nintendo switch in March is is what I remember from that the most is really the stories everyone was sharing from the breath of the wild how everyone was playing the game in a different in a different path different pace everyone you know had their own weird things that happened to them while playing and it was fun just coming to the office in here what you know you tried those stories find out what happened you then I might try to go home and see if I could recreate that myself and I don't know that I've felt felt that from a Zelda game to that degree since the very first Legend of Zelda on the NES and and I know we've talked and the developers have talked about how that game was in some way an inspiration for this game and I really think and in the best possible way it got back to that freedom of exploration that idea that you couldn't necessarily guess what was going to be coming up next and Super Mario Odyssey I mean you know I would agree with you that you know usually Zelda and Mario for me are neck-and-neck in terms of my favorite series and Mario more often than not edges it out a little bit but one thing I'll say about about Mario Odyssey is that for someone like me who's played you know so many more games all the Mario games essentially to be able to have those moments where if it's something that's maybe is an obvious callback like the the festival and you dog city where you just feel that that love and that that appreciation for the whole history of the franchise going all the way back to Donkey Kong even to even something that's less obvious maybe like when you first start cascade Kingdom the second Kingdom and you hear that that music that really just feels like you're starting a grand adventure and it's not the same it's a very very new type of game and very new features but I got that same feeling and in that area of the game that I got when I first started playing Super Mario 64 this this kind of adventurous spirit this freedom of movement but not in the in the exact same way because you know Odyssey brought so much new to the table yeah oh can I jump in please I what I loved about the SuperMario Odyssey was also kind of a tetra on what Chris was saying is that sense of nostalgia like there were all of these callbacks whether it was the different costumes and outfits or whether it was the 2d pixelated gameplay elements to it I mean it was like all of these instances that that would call back to your childhood and and and was always like almost like a mental pointing out of like oh my god I remember that or oh I remember doing this when when I was a kid or seeing this and and it was it felt really engaging and that it was it almost felt like it was just for you while you were you're playing through the game yeah your porn on Mario both of your points yeah that is the thing that stands out for me is the way that the game was able to balance nostalgia with things that were truly new to the series and and I can kind of challenge what people expected from this series so I think new Don City is the perfect example you've got Mario in this realistic setting people are saying well if that's a human what is Mario you know we all went through that phase I think around III but once the game came out I started to play through it you know I started to see that other sort of layered element to it of you know there's that one part where you go into a theater and you go into the pipe and you are doing it you are playing Super Mario Brothers world 1:1 as this group of people in New Dong City are watching I thought wow this is meta this is kind of crazy and this is a cool callback and then the new dog city festival I got about halfway into that once you go through the pipe and literally had tears coming down my face because it was just such a beautiful callback to really the whole history of Mario and everybody's personal connection with the character in the series from the very beginning with Donkey Kong and then you had the song playing and it was you know with the beautiful graphics and new dog city I just felt like this this you know culmination of everything that the series had gone through and it's one of those things where you know once you get a little bit into it and you realize like this is not meant to give me a challenge this is really a celebration and something that's meant to be savored and I think there's a number of examples around the game that that sort of you know feel that similar way of just balancing callbacks to things that you know and really again challenging what you would expect from a Mario game there's there's a boss fight that I thought might be a spoiler so I'm not gonna call it out but it's it's definitely not something that you would expect to see from a previous Mario game and it's done in a style that is different from what you've seen in the Mario game but then again there's always just these callbacks of these memories and it's like wow I I really am happy for Mario as a character to see him kind of evolve over the years I don't I don't have you know adult children but I imagine for those people who do it might be a similar feeling of watching this person kind of grow over time and really mature that's kind of the feeling that that it must feel like for these you know for Mario and for Zelda - yeah I agree I'm wondering why it took us so long to see Mario's nipples in a way like talk about challenging expectations that was that was incredible awkward silence and with that I want to switch gears just a little bit it was great hearing everyone's comments about 2017 I'll definitely want to talk to you guys as we get into next year and find out what new you know moments really stand out for you but before you go I wanna have a little fun really quick and actually you know have a little quiz with you guys know a Nintendo Power magazine there used to be a section called warp zone where we would take a look back at games that came out 10 20 or 30 years ago so I'd like to do that now and see if you guys can actually guess which games came out ten twenty and thirty years ago so to start with we're gonna look at ten years ago now this would be December 2007 so this is this is we days right this is we des RDS days what you're getting ahead in the clues alright so the first clue is Sega published a long awaited sequel for Wii that feature two kids and what looked like a flying purple jester any guesses I know the series I don't know the exact name of the game I'll give you a half point idea that's correct night's journey after here we go it was the only sequel ever made to the original nights into dreams for Sega Saturn alright twenty years ago and a little harder now December 1997 I do appreciate that you're doing the math for us there the math comes pre-baked in the nintendo power podcast so Midway published a side-scrolling action game for the n64 that was a fighting game spin-off featuring a really cool character any guesses as to what that game about legend sub-zero close oh wait no it's not mortal kombat mythologies sub-zero i'm really racking up the half points here all right here we go final chance i want a bonus point for say it was cool spot every answer is just cool spot so 30 years ago december 1987 clues capcom published a classic side-scrolling action game for the NES that had some of the most infamous box art of all time it has to be big of an one but there you go Mega Man 1 it's only the third party guy could deliver I still think they should bring that box art back yeah it's it's gone beyond bad and come back around to exquisite hmm well thanks again so much both of you a kid and Damon for being on the first episode and now let's switch over to my interview with the developers of The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild I'm joined by two people who know quite a bit about The Legend of Zelda breath of a while first I'd like to welcome the game's producer mr. Eiji Aonuma thank you for being on the show yeah oh and next to the game's director mr. haynam otto fujibayashi thank you for coming no at this point a lot of players would spend a lot of time with The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild so I'd like to go behind the scenes a little bit and find out how the development team came up with some of the games features characters and other things there may be some minor spoilers here but we're not going to give away anything big any big story points or the final boss fight or anything like that now to get started first I'd like to ask what it's been like for the development team to see the game get such a positive response from players and critics so first things first I am just very happy that breath of the wild is positively reviewed by players and as a developer it's the best thing we could have for oh no you know mother so obviously we've been working on the Zelda series for a long time but with this game what we tried to do was break up a lot of the long-standing conventions of the series and so we had questions about you know how will fans reacted to that and will be able to attract new fans and it was very scary because perhaps people would have hated the game but in the end we managed to garner a lot of support and seeing that support has just been absolutely amazing starting with some of those new things I'd like to start with these new versions of link and and Zelda both from the way they look to the way that they the role that they play in the game they're quite a bit different than what we've seen before and I was hoping to find out where those ideas came from for them this time and what the goals were with these characters do you couldn't kind of show up we wanted to be a make link look a lot cooler in design than sky resort but also we wanted everybody to be be able to relate to link to like be able to like him and no matter what kind of forum so we designed him that way as for Zelda we kind of portrayed her more like a sister like figure and not necessarily mage but just kind of that maybe a woman that's a little bit older or matured in close actually I think the first time we really kind of solidified the link designer for this title or we started to solidify it was when we first showed a trailer for the then not yet titled breath of the wild it was just new you new Zelda game but you have that moment where you know he's facing off against the Guardian he jumps off the horse and he pulls the arrow back and shoots it and he he has an expression on his face that's kind of kind of troubled it's kind of sad we initially were like going to have him have more of a triumphant look on his face and we thought that doesn't really fit this link he should look you know more kind of consternated I suppose and you know when we figured out that oh that's the face he has to have a lot of other things for this link and his design and like who he should be really started to fall into place yeah yeah not he said two years ago but actually three years ago I'm getting old link is not just a character that portrays justice but we also wanted to incorporate that he has history in the past he has something dark side to him so we didn't want to just portray him as a go-getter we wanted to have him have kind of a secretive past and so did all of that the idea of that the tragic past and then kind of the what happened 100 years ago and that extra weight on linked shoulders really come about from from the work that was done on that original teaser trailer in terms of the kind of specific story beats in the setting we had had it designed we had had that planned and figured out then it was more a matter of you know since he has that in his background how do we need to make him look so it was more does the setting influencing his design I thought then one alternate boat so at that time we already had the story be and the story ideas of link being someone who's waking up from the past doesn't know who he is and coupled with that having him be someone who was just kind of like go-getter who's thinking oh yeah let's go do this let's let's get this taken care of wouldn't really fit with that that background and that story idea so it was really the relationship does the the story beats and the story ideas we already had with his design that ended up influencing the design and we ended up with the link that we have continuing this theme of new changes for link obviously his actions in the game expanded quite a bit this time most notably he's now able to climb anything in site and he also can soar with the paraglider and I wonder at what stage of development did those ideas come about and and what were the original kind of inspirations for those and in the goals for those abilities and will you guys do so when we think about the zelda series we first think about Link's actions and so when you ask what at what part we started think about it it would be from the beginning and that's when we start considering link climbing and paragliding since this game has an open air and the world is so open we wanted to make sure that when the player controls him what controls link they could press the forward control stick and can move forward constantly and so we had that in mind while we were designing Kuakini copy god when we were making prototypes first we've had link go into the wall and then jump over the walls or anything and it just didn't feel right so then we thought hey why don't we just make link climb and also when he climbed up the walls or mountains he would we would he would have client tried to call him down but we also thought that didn't really feel right so then we had him just jump down and that's how we kind of decided on doing that action so in terms of those actions of being able to climb walls and then you know glide places the parasail those are I mean those are kind of actions that have actually already existed in mr. Fucci Bashi had created for the previous title Skyward Sword but they were there were kind of separate actions in terms of how the game system worked and what we really wanted to go for here was just something where you know if the players out in the world and they push you know the control stick forward for movement they just go they can just go they can just go forever they can climb something up and then they can jump off and sail the parasail like they never have to stop moving and it just becomes one kind of consistent movement so it was those two things disparate things kind of coming together to become one flowing movement and you know you know me watching from the pretty the producer angle you know I didn't totally understand it but I I was able to see that mr. Fujie boss he had you know he'd done this thing in a previous title he tried it once and you know he he still felt that there was something there it was worth visiting and then for you know for him to come back to this title and then you know succeed in this way by you know kind of refining you know what he tried before I I think it it owes a lot to what we did on previous titles yeah I can definitely see the connection with Skyward Sword now that you mention it one thing though that as far as I can remember doesn't have roots in any other zelda title is cooking I think that was a brand-new addition to this game and I wonder where the idea for that came from when we talk about cooking when we're thinking about the game action and also the scenario we definitely wanted to incorporate a feel of adventure and in that big world in the big field we were thinking what could kind of portray that and one of the things was camping the survival and so we thought it would be a great element to add in if we could incorporate cooking so initially when we were think about breath of the wild it the cooking system was much more complex but we wanted to make it easy and fun so in the final version we kind of ended up with that pot system where people could throw in ingredients into the pot dude so I need someone she's didn't while she's doing good so also definitely details to the looks of the food when for example when Lynx eating or you know the food when it pops out after just a cloud we just wanted to make it look delicious and for players to be excited when they're venturing to see these delicious foods and use them and we also didn't want to make it too realistic for that reason but yeah it's just made we wanted to make sure that the visual was also there to be there so obviously in this game cooking is one of the main ways are really the main way that you restore your health and previously know in zelda games you know he was cut grass and there just be hearts and then your hearts would get refilled and now in this game you know that's turned into you have to you have to cook which is obviously you know a very big change to talk a little bit about how that became you know the healing system initially we had they Klee a hunger system in the game where link would move around and he would just continuously get more hungry and then he got too hungry wouldn't be able to move anymore and then you would need to cook something and eat something and it was just a bit annoying to play because you know you would you'd move around a lot and then you'd be like oh I have to cook now so I'm able to keep moving around so it became more more of a chore than anything else so we kind of thought about well how can we make it fun and make it something that people want to do and that's how I ended up making it the healing system and I think you know if we just say all right in this game you're gonna cook to heal yourself it kind of makes you think why did it end up like that but when you look at like you know the development process it ends up just being kind of a natural conclusion to you know the process of trying to get the cooking system in the game it also seems that it gives players a little more flexibility to because of some of the stat bonuses to approach things in different ways or maybe even for more beginner players a way for that to help them overcome some of the challenges so I imagine that that was a goal as well okay any more sugar you got there so as for stats we were thinking um you know a lot of the times we didn't want to add explanations so when people need the food we were hoping that they would find no new knowledge by cooking the food and seeing these bonuses or you know maybe imagine what when they cook Oh perhaps this is what you've kind of effect that this food will happen so we wanted P players to keep on finding new things or in finding new information and another new element of the game that I believe was new to breadth of the wild were runes obviously there were items and weapons and past games but runes were handled quite a bit differently I mean in one aspect of that was the fact that you get them straight at the beginning of the game and I wonder how you came about with or rather how you settled on the selection of runes that are in the game and what that trial and error process was like in getting those just right it hoist you up so initially we were thinking about perhaps getting items like in the older dildos just an order but when we considered that this world was an open world in a free world where players can go anywhere we thought perhaps providing them with what they need from the was important and especially if players are gonna play not in order or not in a specific sequence at the we thought it would be very important to have these tools from the beginning and so when we were thinking about items or ruins we were thinking of perhaps doing that from the early stages of the development I think I'm John now mister fujibayashi talked about this with cooking a bit as well but you know we had a very strong kind of principle of this game that we didn't want to tell players what they could do with what they had we just kind of give them the systems give them the items you know and you get them and you think well what can I do with this and then you go out in the world and you and you encounter different things and you can you try different things out and then you kind of realize you know what you're able to do because you get those those brooms right at the start and you think okay well what are these and then you got in the world and you travel around and you encounter lots of different things and those take out the rooms and you try lots of different things and you know kind of you get your own hypotheses but you sort of test in the world and then you get that feeling you know when something works it's like oh I was right I could do that I thought I could do this and I was right and we wanted people to have that experience over and over again just like constantly having things to test and then you know realizing oh that's what I can do I was right so continuing on the theme of new elements to breath of the wild that weren't in previous zelda games this is the first time where Lynx weapons could actually break and you couldn't reuse them endlessly and of course there were many many more weapons that in this game and I wonder what the goal was with this new mechanic and how the idea came about looking you guys demo about weapons we considered that this world is a big open field and then we wanted players to go on an adventure and we actually called it a term as gravity as to pulling players into that world and so if we were thinking especially because it's a big world but with we just let players just do whatever they wanted they won't really know what to do so one of the things we thought about is for example if we place an enemy that dropped a certain weapon then the player will be M what feel like they want to go defeat that enemy because if it was really truly free and players could do whatever they would probably just avoid it so instead they would be more inclined to go defeat that enemy and once they defeat it they would get a certain weapon and that was scattered all over the world so that was one thing that we consider when we were doing a thinking about weapons I mean in terms of you know obviously you know making Zelda titles figuring out how to make combat fun has always been a huge challenge and how do you know how do we let players you know do what they want in combat how do we make it fun you know I mean just pressing a button to swing a sword is you know obviously the most it has the kind of right kind of reactive kind of feel but it's also very simple so we thought about ideas of like alright what if you have to do you know kind of more complicated button inputs to do different you know different attacks or things like that but it just sort of became too complicated and naturally not very fun so when we came up the broken sword I the idea of like weapons breaking you know if you have this nice weapon but you know it's going to break after a certain number of users you'd have to start thinking about when am I gonna use it what what enemies am I going to use it on and that was really the way that we were able to make you know the simple action of sorts swinging a sword in this game you know a bit more strategic a bit more fun a bit more in-depth even though you're just you know pressing a button to swing a sword and I think this has always been a big challenge in Zelda titles is how to make enemy combat fun and I think you can kind of see you know just throughout the history of the Zelda titles how I ended up here is is kind of it's a conglomeration of all these like little different challenges that we ever come we've overcome over the years of developing the different titles and along with a wide variety of weapons there's also a wide variety of armor which are different types of costumes essentially and in previous zelda games you know link always had one or maybe a few set looks I believe in past games it was possible to change your outfit or maybe the color of your outfit but this is much more than that and I wonder what was the inspiration for that change and also I'd like to ask if each of you have a favorite costume in the game clothing we thought about the cycle of the game and how there should be new findings in the world and also another thing to consider was how to adapt to the world because the world consists of areas that were like cold or high we thought that there would be a good clothing would be a good way to adjust to that and also one of the things that we did want to make sure was that it was just not one way to get to a certain area for example if it was the cold area we wanted to make sure there were different ways to adapt to that climate for example we could use P players could use food or they could use clothes and by doing that there were just many ways to adapt to that and also we thought you know many looks would be fun for players to get to choose from so when we were thinking of clothing that's how we kind of thought about it and so my favorite outfit is the Hyrule soldiers outfit my reasoning is it kind of looks cool like you know ah another guy has some I'm actually is Laurel armor I think it's probably my favorite um I think it's because it's so kind of cumbersome you know there's all these really cool-looking outfits and armor in the game and then there's this thing that just you know looks like you're wearing a bunch of metal on your body but I really like the way that it kind of impacts how you play the game and like it kind of looks like difficult to walk and move around and so I feel like that that kind of impact of it is really cool alright you know that takes me to the fact that in lots of previous Zelda games we'll all of them really there's always a very memorable characters that you meet along the way in this game however there's I think some very special characters in the champions and I was wondering what the inspiration work for these individual champions how they were created and and also to follow up on the last question if you have a favorite champion as well we're thinking about champions we were thinking about the scenario and first we thought you know Hyrule isn't consistent just the Hyrule people it's with other races so when we were thinking about a big enemy like the calamity we thought perhaps Hyrule and these other races work together and perhaps the leaders of those each races would represent and work together with zelda representing Hyrule and Link as the hero and we thought that concept in that storyline would be a beautiful way to illustrate this game so especially when we're thinking about the races we thought maybe Goren's are strong how would they be at this point and the in Hyrule how about the Gerudo chief and that's how we kind of draw our inspiration and that's how the champions were born there buddy she's obviously in the Zelda series you always have link is the main character and that's how you control but he's going on this huge adventure and you know it's kind of lonely if he's by himself you know he doesn't have anyone to help him so you know when we're making the game to always think okay well who's gonna who's gonna help link who's going to be his friend back actually when I was directing Zelda titles I had this idea that there would be you know four different you know strong warriors or Knights in in Hyrule and I actually kind of thought about like calling him Hyrule or it's been interesting to see that you know we sort of ended up in this game having that same sort of idea come about and I didn't talk about that with mr. Joshi at any point it just kind of naturally happened you know it's it's funny that I think you know people working on the Zelda titles we're all kind of sometimes thinking about the same things into out of you have a favorite champion or is it too hard to pick I've been saying or Bosa it's because she's strong she's kind and beautiful so she meets that try factor and considering that she's my favorite I mean my favorite was or both as well but you know now that DLC the second DLC is out I think you know it's based on what happens in that story I think I actually liked the best now I think just kind of based on you know what you learn in that DLC you know how she ended up as the symbol that she is with in the game you know I think if people play it they'll understand yeah she's my favorite now now closing out this theme of things that changed in breath of the wild compared to previous Zelda games I'd like to ask how you arrived at the combination of shrines and divine beasts obviously in past Zelda games players might be more familiar with I guess what you would consider more traditional dungeons or you know labyrinth type areas in the games which you still get a lot of the same puzzle elements in shrines and divine beasts but it was a quite a different approach and I wondered how that came about I won like one dungeon was very very long and because this game had a very wide feel to explore and one of the themes that we had was finding things and so we were thinking about what the ratio is for you know finding shrines while players a wander around the field is good and when we calculated that we kind of ended up with 100 or more shrines and as for size we thought about perhaps making it long our big dungeons but then that would take long and players would dedicate their time too long in the dungeons so we thought perhaps one shrine is probably maybe 10 minutes or the gameplay would be a good amount and when we considered that each shrine would take around 10 minutes we thought that maybe for a Zelda title you know it wasn't enough it wasn't meeting that dungeon feel for the game so we thought maybe for this game we could incorporate a big dungeon and perhaps one that moves or one that incorporates kind of a gravity the new movement or system and so we considered a big dungeon and that's how we thought about the divine beast and so initially when we were thinking about the divine beast we thought about something that could be seen from afar and maybe like a humanoid form ER but then because these champions were controlling divine beasts we thought well maybe it would be interesting if the divine beasts themselves were a dungeon and so then that meant the requirement of a moving dungeon and also something that could be seen from afar and that's how we kind of came up with the idea of the divine beats wonderful thing that about the shrine is that obviously when you discover a shrine that then becomes a war point for you it's a place you can work back to which is obviously very important when you're you know have this huge game world to have you know areas that are able to warp - and the reason we put that in is because if you discover a shrine but you're not able to finish it and you think oh I'm just gonna have to walk all the way back here at some point that that's kind of a disappointment to players so we decided okay well we've got to have them be war points you've got to be able to work to there and the way we came about you know decisions like that was you know we didn't just like have all of this down on paper and then you know then make the game just based entirely on you know the design we had at the beginning you know you know we would we would put things in the game and we would actually you know walk around the game world to try it out and then you know realize you know as if this was like oh we've got to have that as a war point or else you know people would just be annoyed so that was really the spirit in which this game was made just like ask us actually playing it and decide and realizing oh this needs to be in there - I'd like to talk a little bit about a couple of monsters and to start with dragons when you first encounter a dragon it's a very unique moment in the game and not at all what you'd expect based on what you've seen from dragons and past games normally if you come across a dragon you can expect a big fight or maybe it's a tough fight you have to run away from but this is almost when you encounter a dragon and breadth of the wild it's almost peaceful and it's a very unique experience and I wondered what the inspiration was behind the use of Dragons in this game like as I spoke just earlier we wanted to incorporate something that could be seen afar kind of like the divine Beast and so we thought we definitely accomplished that with the divine beast but we also thought we could incorporate a little more and that would be great and so we wanted to incorporate something that was a little bit romantic and maybe it's because I'm Japanese or the team was Japanese but instead of having that battle scene or something kind of adrenaline that will have gentleman rush we thought something mystical maybe something serene and kind of a different experience would kind of make the adventure for the player be more exciting and that's why we decided not to make it necessarily like a battle and just kind of addressing the kind of the idea of how Japanese people portray dragons we kind of wanted to incorporate that feel of like godliness or maybe something more serene and so just in lots of kind of Japanese folklore there's often stories where you know dragons are basically incarnations of God so I think that might be part of the reason why we incorporated that in this game now the exact opposite of a serene feeling is when you encounter a Lionel in the game which is very tense almost like a boss battle in fact they can even be quite a bit more challenging than certain bosses I think and I wonder what the inspiration there was and was this meant to be a kind of an ultimate challenge for the player because we definitely wanted to incorporate a strong enemy but also we didn't want to make it so the player goes to a room and then there's a boss fight kind of a set up scenario we wanted to make sure that in breadth of the wild it was an adventure so players would randomly encounter these and suddenly have to be adjusting their situation and have that feel of adventure and so when we're thinking of strong enemies we remember that in the first Selda game Lionel's were known to be the strongest one and Lionel's never appeared in other Zelda games so we thought we would refine the design and it would be a perfect fit for a breath of the wild now there's a a character in the game who isn't a monster himself his name is kill ttan but he apparently really really loves monsters and and even will will sell monster parts and some other weird items and he's such a unique character that I thought there has to be a very unique story about how he was created okie-dokie doctor so we were thinking accountant so actually we the planner that was designing I mean had someone to sell unique items so apparently it was kind of based on that planner and so I think the designer probably made a sketch of the planner and then that's how maybe perhaps it kind of got to become kilted that's great I guess if you're on the team you have to be careful that you don't end up in the game yourself actually we're thinking of designing NPCs we had modeled kind of after a new Messiah and Musa initially as just townspeople and we just had like bunch of young little sounds everywhere now changing a little bit to talk about some some of the locations from the game obviously there's many many places that players can go but there are two in particular that I think are very unique even amongst the rest of the locations of the game in the first is Eventide Island which is a place where Lincoln find himself and it's quite a mysterious place but you know up until that point you spend so much of the game gathering items gathering armor becoming stronger becoming more confident as a player to take on bigger challenges but then suddenly when you arrive at Eventide island all of your equipment is removed and it's almost as if you're starting over again and it prevents a very fresh challenge in the game and I wonder how that idea came about and and what the goals were with that with that location when you start breath of the wild Link wakes up naked and the first weapon you ever have it's probably a tree branch and so like when I started the game I definitely felt that adventure and survival when starting the game and as the game progresses it definitely feels a lot more safer because you have so much armor and equipment so in the mid game of course you could get to this island at any point in the game but probably around mid maybe the middle of the game we wanted to kind of go back to that initial feeling of survival and kind of a pressure and not knowing what kind of enemy you encounter and so that's why we implemented that island for in the game there was something like that in Skyward Sword as well too wasn't there yeah I like to reset players from the begin now another neat unique location is a town called Tarrytown and what's unique about this town is link actually takes an active role in helping this town come together and be populated by other characters and and and to add different buildings and such to the town it gets built up over time through various side quests similarly link also has a house that he can purchase and outfit the way that he sees fit and attain a village so I wonder what was you know the goal with with these areas and if if there was something specific in mind and actually turning over kind of the responsibility of these locations to the player originally we wanted to make something that players can build on their own the backside of that story is actually when we're creating the game planners wanted to create a part of a game or a challenge that could use game design tools and not rely on the programmer so that's how Tarrytown and also the house came about now like I said building up those towns I guess you can consider our side quest and the game has many many side quests you know little adventures that link can go on to help people in addition to the main story and I wonder if either of you have a favorite side quest in the game shield surfing down the snowing mountain is my favorite why is because it kind of matches just the theme of breadth of the wild where you have to reuse your resources and usually you would use like a snow board but in this case you would be using your shield your items and I thought that really represents how breadth the wild is and how you have to be resourceful and also it's fun so something that was particularly memorable for me is I think it's in a haughty no village but there's a there's a there's a girl there who wants I forget exactly why but she you have to catch a bunch of crickets just a bunch of crickets and I was so there was actually a time in the develop as a game where basically the crickets weren't working like you couldn't really find them in the game and that was the case when I was trying to do this side quest completely unbeknownst to me I was trying the entire day looking for crickets and I couldn't find any and then someone on the team told me oh yeah that's not working and the build right now and I was like what so what it was finished did you go back and have the satisfaction of finding all those crickets stunned this guy I did go back and I was able to complete it but even when they're there that the crickets are hard to catch so it was pretty frustrating now the game is filled with little Easter eggs and and and references to to past games in the series you know for people that have played a lot of the other Zelda games I think they can spot certain things that seem a little familiar maybe a little different and I wonder if if either of you have any if any of those standing out to use your favorite references in the game a lot of the location names are actually kind of based on past Zelda titles but also we did think about when we were thinking hills and mountains near Hyrule Castle and we thought we would name them after kings of Hyrule and so you know it's kind of if people are interested it would be kind of a interesting thing to look at and perhaps think about why that is named that way and so that might kind of add a different perspective while you play just to talk about you know I'm not note about the music I mean obviously we've all Zelda titles we kind of have just kind of Zelda style of music different like bits of melody that come back and are recognizable to fans of the series of this game we really did something totally different and I think you know there's a lot of people who probably play the game and they think when am I gonna actually hear that that kind of tempt something I recognize from the Zelda music kind of catalogue and there are but there are moments in the game you know that come at different situations where you get just a little bit of flavor of that and one of them is you know when you get on a horse you'll hear like just tiny like a little bit of it and I think you know finding that that kind of like musical Easter egg is something that's fun for people too now this game as we've discussed has many many new systems it's a very very big expansive world and then when you bring in all of the different play mechanics I imagine this must have been a very challenging game to test and balance throughout development and I wonder how you went about that Africa beginning we knew that this was going to be a big scale project and so we thought about adjustments from the very beginning and so what we did was we would all the players data from their PC collected into one and have it analyzed and so once we collected that data it would just display on one screen and I think I mentioned this before somewhere but we had 300 people play tests a game and that information with their name and how many hearts they had or how many times they died would be just shown on this screen speaking about this broadly so we would also be able to look at where these players went so initially you would see a cluster a lot of people at the gray plateau but then they were dispersed and then we could take take a look where they died or we would also see some people just taking a completely different route than we expected but it made the process very easy too because we were able to see where players went in just one screen yes whatever and interestingly the the hero's path that was released that function it was released in the DLC you know that's actually something that was initially a development tool for us to be able to you know track a player's progress see you know what happened to them where they went and what they did that we ended up you know kind of changing into a fun feature for players and releasing in the first DLC speaking of the DLC we now have two DLC packs DLC pack 1 and DLC pack 2 and they add a lot of new functionality to the game a lot of different things and I wonder what was the process like for determining what would be given or rather provided as DLC and and how did those concepts come about for TLC 1 we consider the people that have been already playing the main game and we thought perhaps now they kind of want more of a challenge and that's why we decided to release that one first and for DLC - we thought players would probably want to know more about the story the historian depth and so we thought why not share this untold stories about the champions and so therefore in the champions ballad we decided to kind of incorporate that the other scene on that dining on there I think for me the most interesting thing in LC 2 is the bike the motorbike which is actually a hobby of mine but I think it was when we were just about to start work on the first DLC pack and I sent an email out to mr. fujibayashi and some other people on staff saying oh man I'd really love to write a motorbike through that world and their response everyone kind of just came back and said no you can't do that that's crazy and I thought oh well and sort of gave up but when we got to making the second fact the second installment of DLC I got to thinking you know we need to have some sort of reward there needs to be something that we give the player when they overcome all the challenges in this new DLC and hey couldn't we just give them the bike we give him a motorbike and mr. Khrushchev ah she came back and said well link never had his own divine beast and you know this is not a divine beast but maybe it could be something like a design beast for her link and you know that kind of that kind of got him into the idea and so finally I got the bike in and so I'm very happy about how packed you turned out so you're breaking the conventions of Zelda all the way until the end right desk is right across from mine so every now and then I'll just hear the bike and so then I was like okay fine how about how about perhaps maybe a final reward in the game that might be a bad idea a lot of what we've talked about has been our from the perspective of someone who has played many Zelda games and then come to breath of the wild and I wonder if you've heard from players who for them breath of the wild is their very first Zelda game and what that reaction has been talking about personally a lot of family friends that usually don't play games came to me and told me and it's a great game I really enjoy it and especially because I was considering oh you know um Zelda is a hardcore game but also you know we wanted to incorporate like cooking and adventuring having people tell me that oh it was really fun makes me really happy for me I mean I have a lot of friends who are definitely Zelda fans but their parents and they they had they have kids who are not necessarily into the Zelda series but I've heard a lot of stories of you know maybe dad is playing Zelda and then his kids see it and they look what he's doing anything I want to try that too and then they're really amazed at like you know what they're able to do in the game and all the different things that you're able to do in it and I think you know there's a lot of you know kind of situations where other people like maybe it's brothers and sisters or parents and children like people can see people playing breath of the wild and get a taste of it that way and I think you know if you just see commercials or you just hear people talking about it I think I think breath of the wild really shines when you see someone else playing it and you kind of see what's possible in the game so I I hope people you know and I'm about they take out the switches and play breath of the wild in front of people so again give them an idea of you know what the game is because I think that's really a good entry point into the game for people before we go I'd like to ask now that the the DLC is done what does it feel like to finally finish your work on this game and and what will you remember most about this project well they seem like done but honestly I have so many new ideas and as a creator I just keep on wanting to add more and so that's always on my mind but the thing that really sticks with me is just how the process went of just creating breath and wild lots of staffs incorporated many of their ideas and that became one thing and the product and so it was great to hear these ideas that we came up with for example cooking or venturing being positively received by players and just that hard work of everybody I'm only here to represent but just all the people that work together made this product and just seeing that blossom is a really really satisfying deer to see to know we're in the DLC at I mean this is the first time I've ever made DLC for a game it's the first time you know a Zelda game has it was very interesting me kind of trying to think about like what's a dlc be and you know how do we you know how do we add something to a Zelda game how do you make DLC for a Zelda game in it it really felt like a process of just continuing to nurture the same game rather than to just be ending you know you're still you're still working on it you're still raising the same the same baby in a sense and I thought that was actually a really great feeling and I think for me the thing that's most memorable the whole process is you know we just did so many things that you know we've never done in as before just haven't been done in games in general before and you know seeing that from a producer's perspective you know I kind of think that's that's pretty risky you know we're doing a lot of risky things but you know I wasn't really worried about it during development because I looked at the development team and even though we were taking all these chances and doing things we've never done before everyone was having fun everyone was having fun working on the game everyone had smiles on their faces and I think I think when you do things that are risky you know when that risk pays off you're just that much happier and I think that's the feeling you get playing the game as well like you take risks in the game and they pay off you know you try something you've never done before and it pays off in the game and so I think it's really cool that you know we had that same sort of feeling making the games and then the people playing the game have that same feeling as well you know we're kind of in the same position we kind of have the same joy and happiness for making the game and playing the game as well and that's that's something I'm really grateful for well mr. onuma and mr. fujibayashi thank you very much for your time and thank you very much for sharing your stories about the Legend of Zelda breath of a while thank you thank you that's it for this first episode of Nintendo Power podcast once again I'd like to thank our guests Damon Baker KITT Ellis mr. al Newman and mr. fujibayashi now like I said at the start of the episode you can really help shape the show and we would greatly appreciate it if you would send us your feedback let us know what you thought of this episode what you'd like to see in future episodes and you can shoot us those emails at Nintendo Power podcast at NOAA Nintendo comm also it would really help if you would leave us a review that helps us get discovered by more people and be sure to subscribe so you get the episodes as soon as they're ready thanks for listening and keep playing with power you