Polygon interviewed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom developers Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi about the future of Zelda and the role of social media.
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.
As soon as players had Tears of the Kingdom in hand, they tinkered with Link’s newfound building powers to delightful and chaotic results. Fans constructed mega bridges and skateboards and, if they were skilled enough, even Godzilla-like kaijus. Outside the world of the game, fans dove into Hyrule and its history; they theorized about what would happen and lamented lost romance. If Breath of the Wild set a new gold standard for open-world exploration in games, Tears of the Kingdom proved all over again that the team could find new ways to delight players. For these, and countless other reasons, Polygon named Tears of the Kingdom our top game of 2023.
Together, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom served as the perfect bookends for one of Nintendo’s most popular and beloved consoles, the Nintendo Switch. Roughly seven months after its release, Polygon was able to sit down with longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma and game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi to reflect on the way social media influences development, the future of Zelda, and what it’s like to say goodbye to the Nintendo Switch.
[Ed. note: This interview was conducted through interpreters. The transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Polygon: As a writer, a large part of my work is covering what people do inside of video games as if it is real news. One article I wrote for Tears of the Kingdom showed that lots of people were making super-long bridges to solve all their problems in the game. Did the team see this, and what are your reactions to this way of playing?
Eiji Aonuma: I was surprised to see what people have gotten up to in the game. For example, linking together tree trunks to try and reach the Sky Islands that are up in the sky from the surface. It’s something that kind of blew my mind. I mean, there are limits to how many objects you can put together. But people really rushed to find out what those limits were, and that was surprising to me.
A big part of Breath of the Wild, and also now Tears of the Kingdom, is that both allow players to express their creativity in the games and then share it with the world. How do you imagine creativity and shareability will play into future Zelda games?
Hidemaro Fujibayashi: When you look at people posting on social media, I think there’s a big overlap of a general audience and then also Zelda fans that [express their creativity]. Breath of the Wild was the first time that, as a development team, we saw this new, added layer of enjoyment that people have in being able to share and talk about, Look what I was able to do, look what I was able to make. I think that’s certainly something that was top of mind or something that we considered when moving into Tears of the Kingdom. This idea of being able to create and share is certainly a very interesting concept. If there is an opportunity to do something in the future, that’s something we’ll at least be considering.
