If you haven’t played Breath of the Wild, but you’re thinking about picking up Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, don’t worry, as Nintendo says you don’t need to.
In the latest Ask the Developer interview that Nintendo regularly hosts regarding its games, a number of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom developers spoke about the upcoming RPG, including Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. Interestingly, according to Aonuma, you don’t even need to play Breath of the Wild to be able to enjoy Tears of the Kingdom.
Talking about how some players might think that they won’t be able to enjoy Tears of the Kingdom without playing the previous game, Aonuma said, “…the new gameplay ideas we packed into this title are all things that can be solved intuitively, so I think first-time players can rest assured that this game is easy to get into.”
Fujibayashi said something similar of the game’s story, noting that the team “put in some effort to make sure that it feels comfortable for both first-time players and those with experience of the previous game.” Apparently there’s a character profile feature that players are able to look at in the game, which helps them understand the relationships between different characters.
In the second part of the interview, the selection of developers also shared that “hands” is a major theme in Tears of the Kingdom, noting how Link uses his hand to solve puzzles, and that the game includes “scenes that use hands when opening special doors. This “hands” theme also crops up here and there as a key element as the story develops.”
Technical director Takuhiro Dohta also shared an anecdote about when he was working on the programming for Wuhu Island during Wii Sports Resort’s development, noting how Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to “turn the actual stages of games into characters.” Dohta explained that Miyamoto meant he wanted to “create one island and use that as a base to add various kinds of gameplay in different games. The idea of having new discoveries in the same setting was striking to me. I’d been wanting to try this idea with other titles, and I supposed this game would leverage that kind of approach.”
While you might technically not need to play Breath of the Wild in order to enjoy Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo did still recently release a recap video just to catch you up to speed.
