What’s old is new (and in this case, also went from green to blue).
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, technical director Takuhiro Dohta, and art director Satoru Takizawa talked today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco about the anticipated open-world game, which comes out on March 3 for the Switch (as a launch game for the new console) and Wii U. It’s one of Nintendo’s most important games in a long time, as it represents an attempt to create a large, freeing world that gives players room to explore and experiment. It’s also the biggest game launching with the Switch.
During the talk, the designers showed off the first prototype for the game, which actually looked a lot like the original The Legend of Zelda, which came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. You can see it above.
For comparison, here is what the original The Legend of Zelda looked like.
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Above: Sprites!
So, what could Nintendo learn from such a simple test? While it looks 2D, Nintendo actually created the project in a 3D environment that enabled them to test some of the physics and gameplay designs it was planning. This included things like how fire would interact with objects, or how Link could interact with his environment by cutting down a tree and then moving a log
Above: Moving logs in the alpha.
Which looks like this in the final game:
Above: Moving logs in the actual game.
Neat! That’s a fun way to test a game early in development.
