Tears of the Kingdom devs are amped for Zelda’s post-Switch era
The Legend of Zelda and its protagonist, Link, reached new heights this year — literally. The hero soared through the skies and plunged into the deepest depths of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The game’s developers took their risks, too: This time around, players wouldn’t just explore but also construct devices with Link’s new set of powers.
As soon as players had Tears of the Kingdom in hand, they tinkered with Link’s newfound building powers to delightful and chaotic results. Fans constructed mega bridges and skateboards and, if they were skilled enough, even Godzilla-like kaijus. Outside the world of the game, fans dove into Hyrule and its history; they theorized about what would happen and lamented lost romance. If Breath of the Wild set a new gold standard for open-world exploration in games, Tears of the Kingdom proved all over again that the team could find new ways to delight players. For these, and countless other reasons, Polygon named Tears of the Kingdom our top game of 2023.
Together, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom served as the perfect bookends for one of Nintendo’s most popular and beloved consoles, the Nintendo Switch. Roughly seven months after its release, Polygon was able to sit down with longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma and game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi to reflect on the way social media influences development, the future of Zelda, and what it’s like to say goodbye to the Nintendo Switch.
[Ed. note: This interview was conducted through interpreters. The transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Polygon: As a writer, a large part of my work is covering what people do inside of video games. For Tears of the Kingdom , I wrote about how people
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