Initially announced for Wii U all the way back in 2013, it’s fair to say that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been a long time coming. Much of that comes down to the Big N fostering development of its new hardware – currently bearing the codename NX – allowing Breath of the Wild to be released across both the Wii U and its oncoming successor, the NX.
But as long-time series producer Eiji Aonuma told EDGE magazine (via Nintendo Life), mismanagement at the top end is also to blame for the game’s prolonged stint in development.
Upon reaching certain milestones in development, Aonuma-san revealed that a breakdown in communication meant that the process became much longer than it needed to be. Essentially, it appears the team became caught up in developing for two different systems.
“At one of the milestones, the game was fantastic. There were so many great elements. But at the next milestone, that was all gone. I’d made a lot of comments about what they needed to add, but I never told them what I thought was good about the game at that milestone. So they added stuff that I’d recommended, but they also added some other elements they thought would work well – and that ended up breaking all the good parts of the previous build.”
Aonuma was frank in his assessment, too, even going so far as to accept much of the blame himself: “If I’d managed that well, maybe development wouldn’t have extended quite so much.”
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is in development for both Wii U and NX – it’s a launch title for the latter – and is expected to arrive in early 2017.
