Nintendo wants to talk some Zelda.
The Japanese game company announced today that it will hold a panel about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which goes on from February 27 to March 3. The panel will feature game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, art director Satoru Takizawa, and technical director Takuhiro Dohta. It will take place on March 1 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pacific at Moscone Center.
That is just a couple of days before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launches on March 3 along with the Switch, Nintendo’s new home console/portable hybrid system. The game will also release for the Wii U. The Zelda series is one of Ninendo’s biggest, selling over 75 million games worldwide. Breath of the Wild is one of the company’s most important games for 2017.
Breath of the Wild takes a more open approach to Zelda’s mechanics, taking place in a large world that player’s can run, ride, and climb through. The talk will go over the game’s changes and how the developers broke Zelda tradition.
Zelda has been one of gaming’s most important franchises. The original The Legend of Zelda (which came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996) was a non-linear experience (at a time when most games were linear), combining action, puzzles, and exploration, bringing many innovations to the industry. 1998’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 was one of the biggest 3D games of its time, delivering a cinematic and epic experience unusual in gaming at that period. Now, Nintendo hopes that Breath of the Wild can be another landmark entry in the series.
If you can not watch the panel in person, it will appear on GDC’s website the following week.
