According to a new interview with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom producer Eiji Aonuma, the game actually wrapped up development back in March 2022. Nintendo spent an entire year polishing up the game in order to get it up to its standards.
In the interview, Aonuma says that Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom was originally meant to release in 2022. If you remember back to a Nintendo Direct which was hosted around the time, Nintendo announced the game’s delay. However, the delay wasn’t due to the game’s development being far off the mark. It was simply to deliver a full year of polish needed for the experience which you have today.
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Of course, the delay was made public but many of us simply believed the game was struggling in its development. The pandemic taught us to be patient with game development as it was packed with delays across multiple publishers. Even when games were released, they were ridden with bugs, crashes and incomplete features (Cyberpunk 2077).
An entire year after The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom delay, Eiji Aonuma felt as if players still didn’t understand the various mechanics available in the game. He says that players didn’t know where the ‘fun might be”. As a result, Aonuma hosted a 13-minute gameplay deep dive where he showed off some of the game’s features. This debuted back in February.
The interview also touches on Aonuma’s career and his decision to work on a game as ambitious as Tears of the Kingdom. Aonuma says that being 60 years old and working on this project has really pushed him to the limit.
“I found myself at times wondering, ‘should I be doing this at my age? I’m kind of reaching my limit here and I don’t want to push myself too hard. Like a grandpa.”
Aonuma says that working as a wood carver in his previous career was a major source of inspiration for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and its creation tools. The glue, which you see when you stick objects together, was originally going to be scrapped from the game.
The producer claims that he hated the sight of the glue. Even working with wood back in the day, he would try to wipe the glue away as much as possible to avoid the appearance of things being stuck together. However, the design team on the game fought back saying that seeing the glue on the objects was an important sign that it was a creation. He then agreed with them.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom has sold over 10 million copies since its initial launch on 12 May. You can read the full interview with the producer here.
