It’s interesting how, despite it being out for months, people can’t stop talking about The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. The game is one of the frontrunners for the upcoming Game Awards in the “Game of the Year” category, and those with taste know why. It’s an expansive title that gives players so much to do that it can take hundreds of hours to finish in the best ways. Just as important, it builds off of what the original game in this set did and didn’t simply rest on its laurels. An excellent example of this is the monster selection in the game.
The last title had numerous foes that could easily tick you off, including the Lynels, the Guardians, and more. But Tears of the Kingdom cranked that up to eleven with the Gleeok’s return, the Doom Hands’s arrival, and more. In an interview that was translated by Nintendo Everything, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi noted that the team added the new monsters in Tears of the Kingdom based solely on how they would help the gameplay:
“For example, we wanted a monster that could rival the Lynel from Breath of the Wild in strength for the new sky areas, so it’d need wings to fly, be large and look strong… and as we thought about that, we remembered the Gleeok.”
And then, when there weren’t creatures from the past that they could bring in to suit certain sections, they just made up new ones to help fill the gap. Such as a certain monster that would fill up the caves you visited:
“Since there wasn’t a monster that had that characteristic in previous games, we created the new monster Horriblins. Gameplay-wise, it’s possible to make weapons with long reach using the ‘Fuse’ ability, and monsters like Horriblins let that feature shine.”
Or, if they needed to make slight adjustments to monsters in the previous game, they would do that, too. It’s nice to see that they weren’t just about “making the game harder,” as other franchises have done in the past, but they wanted to work within the natural universe and make something that would help make the world feel alive and the gameplay more useful.
That’s part of why the title felt so grand and fun when it came out on Nintendo Switch. It was a world that felt alive from top to bottom. They even put in a lot of work to make Ganondorf different from before!
