Eiji Aonuma, the franchise director of Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda franchise, says The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was in fact ready for launch over a year ago, but was held over for polishing to make sure nothing disappointed fans at launch.
In a revealing interview with the Washington PostAonuma says his development team was caught off guard by a perceived lack of enthusiasm – a remarkable observation given the level of anticipation for Tears – in response to the second gameplay trailer Nintendo released in February. This resulted in a 13-minute demonstration (led by Aonuma himself) at the end of March.
“People had no idea about the gameplay elements or where the fun might be,” Aonuma tells the Post. And a big reason for March’s Nintendo Direct was to explain Tears of the Kingdom‘s signature machine-making gameplay mechanic, where players build their own devices to solve puzzles and progress through the game.
That emerged from the metagame Aonuma observed in players of 2017 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as they went back into the game years after release to develop creative resources to conquer boss fights or traverse the game’s vast open world.
There are other details from the discussion worth reading, but in short, it’s interesting because Aonuma understands (as good software developers do) that he’s not his user; in games, a creative builds things to respond to audience interest, even if they may seem whimsical. And maybe Tears of the Kingdom could have launched in March 2022, but a subpar release, given the attention paid to this franchise and the passion of its fan base, would have been devastating.
Polygon then also spoke extensively with Aonuma and game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launched on May 12, and the two mentioned many of the same themes: it’s a game of big swings, but one that still takes them very seriously and very carefully.