The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Dev Team Decided Early on to Use the Same Setting as Breath of the Wild

gamingbolt.com:

Direct sequels aren’t a common sight in the Legend of Zelda franchise, and follow-ups that use the same setting as their immediate predecessor are even rare. That, however, is exactly what the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is doing. Even though it will feature plenty of new elements in the form of the Sky Islands and changes to the surface world itself, it features the same Hyrule map as 2017’s Breath of the Wild.

And according to the development team, using that same setting and bringing new gameplay elements to it was always a crucial part of the sequel’s vision, as revealed by members of its development team in a recent interview published as part of Nintendo’s Ask the Developer series.

According to series producer Eiji Aonuma, after the launch of Breath of the Wild, the development team wanted to work on a direct follow-up to realize new ideas for how to utilize its setting. When asked if the team ever considered making a game set in a completely new world, he said, “No, not really. Although the previous title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, has its own conclusion, we started to come up with new ideas that we wanted to bring to life in this already realized version of Hyrule, so our direction in making a sequel did not change.”

Hidemaro Fujibayashi, who directed both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, added that keeping the same setting was always a core part of the pitch for the sequel right from the outset.

“Just like somewhere you know inside and out, we understand where everything is in Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and because of that, we believed it was possible to create new gameplay,” he said. “For this reason, in the initial proposal, we clearly