Zelda producer: ‘Too many Breath of the Wild DLC ideas led to sequel’

An abundance of ideas for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC resulted in Nintendo opting to develop a full-blown sequel rather than continuing to add to the original game.

That’s according to Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma, who explained the thinking behind the decision to make The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 in an interview with Kotaku.

“When we released the DLC for Breath of the Wild, we realized that this is a great way to add more elements to the same world,” he said. “But when it comes down to technical things, DLC is pretty much data—you’re adding data to a preexisting title. And so when we wanted to add bigger changes, DLC is not enough, and that’s why we thought maybe a sequel would be a good fit.

“Initially we were thinking of just DLC ideas,” he added, “but then we had a lot of ideas and we said, ‘This is too many ideas, let’s just make one new game and start from scratch.’”

Aonuma recently confirmed that Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi has retained the role on the sequel, which was announced for Switch via a trailer shown during the Nintendo Direct E3 2019 broadcast.

He also said last week that younger members of the sequel’s development team had drawn inspiration from Red Dead Redemption 2, while Fujibayashi was playing Skyrim during the creation of the original Breath of the Wild.