Miyamoto wanted Hyrule Warriors to be less Zelda and more Dynasty Warriors

Upcoming Wii U title was once a far more traditional Legend of Zelda experience.

That all changed, however, once Nintendo’s development boss Shigeru Miyamoto intervened.

At first, when [Koei Tecmo development producer] Hayashi-san approached me, he wanted to make this title closer to a Zelda game than a Dynasty Warriors game,” Zelda producer and supervisor Eiji Aonuma told NintendoLife.

That extended to having boss battles in the dungeons and [having] certain characters in the game.

However, Mr Miyamoto came along and up-ended the tea table, saying, ‘No, that should not be the case – what we’re doing here is grafting Zelda onto the Dynasty Warriors experience’. It was a reversal of the original proposal from Hayashi-san, which was adding elements of Dynasty Warriors onto the Zelda franchise.

It ended up being the other way around based on Miyamoto’s direction.”

Speaking of when Miyamoto stepped in to overturn the tea table”, Hayashi added: It was really trying to strike that balance of making a game that Zelda fans will enjoy that is different from a typical Zelda game, that has enough elements that people will enjoy but also not losing Zelda fans.

I can’t identify just one element that would make a Zelda game a Zelda game. The Zelda world is usually a big adventure, and it’s about many experiences.

One of the things that I think is required by a Zelda game is, for example, the loading scenes, which we kept – like the first scene where you come upon a treasure box and you have Link, or whoever, lifting the item up from the treasure box. But we realized we needed more than just that, so we ended up adding more and more aspects that were Zelda-esque – for example, the sound effects and animations that people are familiar with from the franchise.”