The Next Legend of Zelda Game is Under Production
It is official. Even as Breath of the Wild is still racking up honors for 2017 Game of the Year, work on the next Legend of Zelda game is already underway. While this news isn’t exactly a bombshell, it’s exciting to hear that Nintendo are already talking about the next game in the franchise. There is little to no information about what exactly the game will look like, but the producers have dropped some hints as to what to expect from the next Zelda.
Aonuma confirms that work on the next Zelda has already begun. —@PushDustIn
— Source Gaming (@AllSourceGaming) December 18, 2017
Will we be waiting another 6 years like we did for Breath of the Wild?
The long wait between console releases was in large part due to having to build an entirely new engine for the franchise. According to some recent interviews from Aonuma, it seems unlikely that they would scrap the current engine for another one. Theoretically, this should lead to a shorter development time for the next release. In an interview with Eurogamer, Aonuma stated:
“The way the physics engine underpins everything in the world really offers up a lot of new possibilities. For instance, in Breath of the Wild you might have a puzzle where making use of the physics, there’ll be various ways you can solve that puzzle. That really opens up a lot of possibilities so there’s not just one way to progress in the game or just one way to solve a puzzle.”
What kind of game will the next installment be?
Given the success of Breath of the Wild, it is probably a safe bet that we will be playing another open world game similar to its predecessor. Aonuma has went on record in the past saying that “In the future, open world games will be the standard for Zelda”
The creators have also dropped some quotes about other ideas that they are working on or thinking about. In a recent interview about Breath of the Wild DLC, one of the developers said: “I think while we were working on both the main game and the DLC, it was a process of constantly getting lots of different new ideas as we refine the game and finding new things we wanted to do. Even in situations like this talking to people and finding out that people want to pet dogs gives me a lot of motivation, a lot of idea for things that we can put in the game.” Dog petting confirmed!
Aonuma has also hinted at the fact that see will be seeing more DLC in future games. In an interview with IGN he mentions:
“What we learned from the DLC this time around is that it’s almost like raising the world or enhancing the world,” .
“In the past, we always had to start from zero again, to completion.
“Usually we’d be thinking, ‘oh, I wish we could add this, we could do that.’ What we couldn’t do in that game, we would start fresh in a new game.
“But because we did a DLC, we realized it’s a great way to kind of just improve that world, and kind of enhance it, and kind of raise it like your own child.”