The following comes from art book that was released with the special edition of Hyrule Warriors in Japan. Since it seems that the art book will not be released outside of Japan, I decided to translate important excerpts so that Zelda fans can have a deeper understanding of the development of Hyrule Warriors. For Hayashi Yosuke’s thoughts, click here.
I’ve been making (only) Zelda games for the past 18 years. When you have been working on a series that long, you sometimes get noteworthy proposals from outside teams asking to let them make a Zelda game. While I think many of these teams have come up with interesting concepts, when I examine the contents I often say, “Let’s not proceed”. This is because these teams like Zelda, so all the concepts they make are in typical Zelda fashion. If that’s the case then I can make that kind of game myself, so my interest in these outside projects fades. So my request for teams who are interested in making a Zelda would be to come up with a Zelda game that I cannot make myself.
“Hyrule Warriors” is the first game that understands that feeling. We could have just move Zelda into the Dynasty Warriors universe. At the same time, I thought there would be no point to make a Zelda game that I could make, so I asked Mr. Hayashi for his thoughts and advice. He felt the same way, so we continued development pulling ideas from interesting sources. Even with that understanding, Hayashi’s team members would often nervously asked me things like, “Is it okay if we do this?” or “This kind of thing doesn’t mesh well with the Zelda series, right?” even though they made the content and ideas with all of their affinity for the Zelda series, they didn’t think it was good enough. I would always tell them to do what they thought was right.
When you hear something like that it may seem uncommitted, but the staff of “Hyrule Warriors” demonstrated their love for the Zelda series with every word and action they did. I had not doubt from the start of the development that they would create a loving product. I believe everyone who sees this game will be able to tell the teams affinity for the Zelda series, over the amazing visuals. I hope you all enjoy “Hyrule Warriors”.
This is my second draft. Aonuma likes to talk in long sentences; so it was quite difficult to translate this. I plan on fixing this in the near future.
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