Tears of the Kingdom Developers Hint Future Zelda Games Will Keep TotK & BotW Style

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been a resounding success for Nintendo, and fans and critics alike have been heaping on the praise since its release last week. When its predecessor Breath of the Wild released, everyone could see it was a major turning point for the series, and Tears of the Kingdom has shown that Nintendo doesn’t plan to change that anytime soon.

Now, we’ve got confirmation from the series producer Eiji Aonuma confirming what we were all thinking. In the future, more games in the Zelda series will follow a similar style to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, meaning players can expect to see more open and experimental Zelda games in the future.

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Zelda Developers Feel They Have Created a “New Format” for the Series Going Forward

In an interview with Game Informer, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi spoke about the journey to bring Tears of the Kingdom to players and all the challenges and decisions involved. During this interview, Aonuma spoke about how Ocarina of Time created a blueprint that future titles would follow, but felt that, in some ways, that format was “restricting” for the developers. Now with the new gameplay style and openness in the series, Aonuma says players can expect future Zelda titles to follow a similar style to the recent entries to the series, saying they feel they have a “new kind of format for the series to proceed from.”

Despite some evolution in the series, it wasn’t always offering the freedom to players they wanted. Now with the open world and experimental nature of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Aonuma feels it provides the openness and freedom they want to give players.

In the same interview, they discussed trying to retain the “Zelda-ness” quality that the games have. Fujibayashi explains that even with so many significant changes to the core gameplay, they preserved that core of what makes Zelda games what they are, saying they focused on creating a game “that is enjoyable and fun, and then taking that and making sure that the essence of Zelda is still alongside that,” whether that be the puzzles, action, or adventure the series is known for. They also took a moment to praise their team, saying they feel the “unique and diverse” people involved in developing Zelda play a massive role in making their games.

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For a lot of fans, this will be very welcome news. Tears of the Kingdom is a massive game full of content, and the open world is packed with exciting places and characters, and its gameplay and freedom are some of the best in the series. Of course, this doesn’t mean every game will be exactly like Tears of the Kingdom, but if the team uses this blueprint and builds new ideas and styles of Zelda, we could be looking at a bright future for the series.