Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Producer Says the Blockbuster Game Was Planned to Have Breath of the Wild Map From the Start

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a beautiful-looking title which is pretty close to its launch now. Fans are eagerly awaiting the game to finally reach their hands. Many have no qualms about how this new Zelda title looks or its similarities with its prequel, Breath of the Wild.

But some have pointed out that Nintendo has, indeed, recycled most of the first game’s map for this anticipated sequel. For some, this reusing of the same location makes sense, for others, it does not.

Seeing all this commotion, the Japanese giant recently decided to break the silence!

Nintendo always had plans to recycle Breath of the Wild’s map for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

When Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom got its first trailer, it did not even have a name. Nintendo called it a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Visually, the game looked just like the first installment. It was pretty evident that they were going for a very similar aesthetic.

A couple of years later, when the game got an actual name, it was still a direct sequel to its predecessor. It expanded upon the world of the first game greatly, and it looked slightly better than the original. Hence, it was pretty evident that this game would feature the map from BOTW. However, this map has been heavily altered, and it features various new areas as well. There are the sky islands that Link can explore, and then the rumored underground places too.

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Some people called using and expanding upon the same map a lazy design, but the makers have a different opinion. In a recent interview published by Nintendo, producer Eiji Aonuma was asked if they ever planned to create a sequel that was set in a new Hyrule altogether.

Aonuma’s answer was: “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.” Making it pretty evident that no matter how different the game would have been, it was always going to be set in this world itself.

Meanwhile, the game looks pretty different from its prequel in a number of other ways. So far, the trailers have shown a lot of attractive details. It will be interesting to see how the fans react to the complete title when it’s out later this week.

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