The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi says he was too busy working on the game to play FromSoftware's Elden Ring. The comment came in response to questions about whether Elden Ring might have influenced The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
The comparisons between Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring might seem odd on the surface, but they don't come out of nowhere. Both games are open-world games and have some similar mechanics. Meanwhile, Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki cited Breath of the Wild as one of his inspirations, alongside Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and Shadow of the Colossus. Given that, it wouldn't be too surprising if the inspiration flowed both ways, and Tears of the Kingdom developers borrowed some ideas from Elden Ring.
This question arose during a recent interview with Tears of the Kingdom producer Eiji Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. However, Fujibayashi denies taking inspiration from Elden Ring, saying he didn't even have time to play the game while developing Tears of the Kingdom. He went on to say that even if he had played the game, he wouldn't have taken ideas from it. Instead, he says that when Nintendo makes a game, the studio tries to come up with new ideas instead of looking at what other studios are doing.
Responding to a follow-up question from the interviewer, Fujibayashi acknowledged that Zelda games are not always the first to do something. However, he would never deliberately take something from another game. Fujibayashi says he's "too proud" to do that and always looks for original ideas. That includes not taking too many ideas from earlier The Legend of Zelda games, with Fujibayashi saying any similarities between Ocarina of Time and Tears of the Kingdom are coincidental.
As an example of what he's talking about, Fujibayashi cited a 3D system in 2013's The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, where it looked like Link was jumping at the player. This had surprised Nintendo's then-President Satoru Iwata, who told Fujibayashi he didn't know that was possible. "I was really, really happy to hear that," said Fujibayashi, "because to me that's the core of game development: figuring out things that no one else has thought of."
That isn't to say that Tears of the Kingdom was completely free of outside influences. Fujibayashi talked about how he drew from his own life experience rather than from other works. Specifically, he spoke about how being a father influences his work. He wanted the game to have an underlying message, and he says his parenting influenced the screenplay he wrote.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out now for Nintendo Switch.
Source: RTL News