Legend of Zelda Producer Says He Focuses On Gameplay First, Then The Story

One of the beautiful things about the video game industry is that the only “wrong way” to make a video game is to make a bad one. Sadly, that’s something we’ve seen quite a bit of in the last few years, but we digress. Anyway, developing a video game from start to finish isn’t something that’s simply “start here, then go here, and then do that.” Instead, it’s something that’s shaped by the size of the team and the people running the operation. In the case of The Legend of Zelda, producer Eiji Aonuma and the crew at Nintendo have a different style that focuses on the gameplay first and the story second.

That will seem odd to many of you, as you likely think that the games have to be plotted out story-wise first, and then you have the gameplay “fill in the gaps.” However, in a chat with the Washington Post, Aonuma said that Nintendo has always “gone against the grain” in that respect and focused primarily on the gameplay and then let the story form around it:

“I’ve never really made a game where you think of the story first and then go into gameplay. First when you think of the gameplay, what you’re trying to think of after that is how you can get players to understand that gameplay. The story becomes used as a vessel because it has a beginning and end, and the player moves through it. I think it would actually be kind of difficult to do the reverse and start with the story, then try to match the gameplay mechanics to that.”

The irony to this state is that he has three games in the last seven years that point to this kind of mindset. After all, The Legend of Zelda franchise has had three big titles release across two different genres, and all three had massively different gameplay mechanics that the story was worked around.

Breath of the Wild gave players the first truly open-world experience to enjoy with Link, and that freedom of the world granted the players the ability to do temples in any order.

Tears of the Kingdom was shaped by the Ultrahand and Fuse abilities, which let players build whatever they wanted with the items that they had around them.

Finally, Echoes of Wisdom’s plot revolves around Princess Zelda as the main character, and she was chosen as the protagonist because the Echoes fit her “Wisdom qualities!”

So, as you can see, Aonuma’s way works!