Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity brings together The Legend of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors yet
again, as Nintendo collaborates with Koei Techmo to create a prequel to Breath of the
Wild.
Unlike the previous Hyrule Warriors titles, this is intended as an extension of the classic
Zelda experience, with Nintendo and Koei Techmo working together closely.
In the past, these games were designed largely by Koei Techmo, without much input from the
Zelda team.
This kind of close collaboration, and the chance to make a “proper” Zelda experience,
is exactly what the developers at Koei Techmo wanted all along.
It seems that they had to prove themselves worthy to Nintendo before they were given
this chance.
Koei Techmo are known for doing one thing extremely well.
They single-handedly rule the musou genre of games, which pits the player against waves
of hundreds, if not thousands, of easily defeatable enemies.
While this formula is most famously applied to the studio’s Dynasty Warriors series,
they’ve also made many other games in various franchises using the same gameplay concept.
Several have been released for Nintendo consoles, so the two companies had a healthy relationship.
As successful as these musou games might be, a team at Koei Techmo, led by Yosuke Hayashi,
wanted to do more than stick to the traditional formula.
They wanted to make a Zelda game.
They put together a pitch, with many of the standard Zelda tropes – dungeons, puzzles,
and large, spectacle-filled boss fights.
But, because it’s what they do best, they also wanted the game to feature plenty of
their famous musou gameplay.
Yosuke presented this to overseer of the Zelda brand, Eiji Aonuma, saying: “let’s rethink
our preconceived ideas of what we can do with a Zelda game”.
In truth, Eiji didn’t have much experience with Dynasty Warriors games – but, he was
playing one of Koei Techmo’s other musou games at the time; One Piece: Pirate Warrior.
He started thinking of the game’s core mechanics, of epic battles and base management, and began
pondering how they could fit into Zelda.
He said, “This is not something that had been in previous Zelda games, and so it was
a very exciting idea for me to connect with”.
Development progressed well for a while – the plan was to allow Koei Techmo to create a
more-or-less traditional Zelda game, infused with some of the gameplay elements from their
own series.
Then, Shigeru Miyamoto caught wind of the project, and stepped in to intervene.
(This is something of a theme this week.)
According to Eiji Aonuma, Shigeru “up-ended the tea table”, objecting to the game playing
so much like an ordinary Zelda title.
He said: “No, that should not be the case.
What we’re doing here is grafting Zelda onto the Dynasty Warriors experience.”
And so, the project changed directions.
A lot of Koei Techmo’s work on traditional Zelda dungeon gameplay was scrapped, with
the team giving a larger focus to the Dynasty Warriors-style battles.
The resulting game was a fun exploration of the world of Zelda, but it wasn’t beholden
to any specific canon, and a lot of the new ideas came from Koei Techmo, rather than Nintendo.
While it might have been nice to see the originally planned version of Hyrule Warriors, the finished
game certainly proved popular, and everyone at Koei Techmo and Nintendo were pleased with
their work.
From here, Koei Techmo moved on to work on various other crossovers, flexing their development
skills and proving that they could handle more than the Dynasty Warriors gameplay.
For example, when the team built Persona 5: Scramble, their collaboration partners at
Atlus wanted the opposite approach to Hyrule Warriors.
Koei Techmo were told, “If you want to make it an IP based on the Persona series, you
want to bring out the “Persona” quality more than usual.”
Atlus pushed for a lot of RPG elements from the Persona series to be included in the game,
so that it was more than just a hack-and-slash.
While working on the sequel to Breath of the Wild, Eiji Aunoma approached Koei Techmo again.
For Age of Calamity, he envisioned something that felt more like an extension of the seminal
Zelda title.
A game which used the musou gameplay to show huge battles that were only hinted at in Breath
of the Wild.
Thus, Koei Techmo were able to make something a lot more like the Zelda game they’d always
wanted to make, working closely with Nintendo to create a fitting prequel to Breath of the
Wild.
The moral of the story is that sometimes, it can take time to convince people to trust
your creative vision.
Koei Techmo needed to prove themselves to Nintendo before they were given the chance
to make the kind of Zelda game they’d wanted to.
Trust yourself, and try your best.
With time, others will recognize your talents.