Later this year, the team-up of Omega Force, Team Ninja, and Nintendo will return in the
form of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, a prequel to Breath of the Wild.
They originally started out on 2014’s Hyrule Warriors, a celebration of everything Zelda.
So let’s take a look back on the success that inspired this new title.
Here’s 5 things you need to know about Hyrule Warriors.
For the 3DS release, titled Hyrule Warriors Legends, they introduced Linkle, a female
version of Link, wielding two crossbows, and having her own separate, yet parallel adventure.
The original draft of this adventure featured a scene where Linkle would enter the Temple
of Souls, where Link is being held captive by Ghirahim.
Lana and Darunia show up and challenge Ghirahim to a dance-off.
At the end, they discover that it was never Link being captured, but Tingle instead.
In the end, Linkle wakes up and discovers it was all a dream.
In the end, they decided to cut the scene due to it being too comical, and not having
much development time left.
Shame.
Linkle’s appearance itself was prompted by fan reaction to her concept art in the
artbook.
At the time, she didn’t appear because they couldn’t work out how she’d fit in the
story, but thanks to fan support, she appeared in the 3DS game.
In general, the games have been focused on what fans would want.
Tingle was specifically kept out of the original release because series producer Eiji Aonuma
thought American fans wouldn’t like him, until the game’s producer pushed for him
to feature in DLC.
And the Zelda fans at Koei Tecmo pushed internally for the introduction of Skull Kid.
The purpose of the game was to act as a celebration of the series, so it was important that fans
got to see all their favourite characters.
By the end, the Definitive version on Switch featured 29 playable characters.
When Koei Tecmo approached Nintendo about creating a Zelda Musou game, they had one
big advantage that they couldn’t have expected.
Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma was coincidentally currently in the middle of playing a Musou
game himself.
He was playing One Piece: Pirate Warriors and was enjoying the strategic elements of
it.
So when he was offered a Zelda version, he jumped at the chance, since this is a type
of Zelda game we’ve never seen before.
Omega Force creates plenty of Warriors games with anime franchises like Berserk, Gundam
and One Piece.
But Hyrule Warriors was their first time they were creating a spinoff from another game
franchise.
Therefore, in creating this game, they originally were aiming to make something way more like
a traditional Zelda game with puzzles and dungeons.
But it took talking to Shigeru Miyamoto for the game to change direction to what we see
today.
He reckoned that there was no point in Koei Tecmo creating a Zelda game, when they’re
already so good at creating the satisfying combat of a Musou title.
So in the end, it’s more Warriors than Zelda.
The team ended up spending a surprising amount of time with Hyrule Warriors.
In 2014, they released the original game for the Wii U.
They then spent the next year releasing DLC with a bunch of costumes and 3 new characters.
In 2016, they released Hyrule Warriors Legends on the 3DS, which had 5 new characters.
They then released more DLC with 4 more characters.
And finally in 2018, they released Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition.
Better visuals, all the DLC, and costumes from Breath of the Wild.
At this point, the staff were confident that they’d created the festival that truly celebrated
the Zelda series.
There was nothing left to be done, and so they prepared to move onto new projects.
That is, until Eiji Aonuma approached them yet again, this time to work closely with
the Zelda team on creating a prequel to Breath of the Wild.
Age of Calamity.