Zelda's Creator Loved Climbing Trees in Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available now on both the new Nintendo Switch and the Wii U. The game has been a long time coming but the wait seems to have been worth the while as it has received great reviews and has gone down very well with gamers.

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In an interview with Kotaku, Breath of the Wild’s director Hidemaro Fujibayashi stated that when he first showed the game to Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto, he spent over an hour simply climbing trees.

“When we first presented this to Mr. Miyamoto, he spent about an hour just climbing trees,” Fujibayashi said. “We left little treats like Rupees on the trees, but we also left other things in other places we thought he might go. But he just kept climbing trees. Up and down. And so we got to the point where we go, ‘Do you want to look at other stuff?’ But he just kept on going. Once [he] got out of the Shrine of Resurrection, he spent an hour just within a 25-50 meter radius outside of that cave just climbing trees.”

Hidemaro was presenting the game for the first time to Miyamoto and Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma, and was very anxious about what they’d think.

“My response to Mr. Miyamoto and Mr. Aonuma was: You can do everything,” Fujibayashi said. “But I had to sell it to them. [And show] how we’re going to make this happen. And I felt like the best way to convey this idea to them was to show them that you could climb walls.”

The team decided to build a small section of the game and filled it with trees and placed currency and other items up the trees and in other places they hoped Aonuma and Miyamoto would explore.

“We put Rupees at the top of the tree to let them know that this is something we’re taking into account, but I didn’t tell them,” Fujibayashi said. “All I did was say, ‘Here, play the game.’ So the first thing [Miyamoto] did was start climbing, and he climbed the tree, and once he was able to do that and see that he can go anywhere within this small field, he got how this game will play out and that’s how I presented it to him.”

It’s clear that both Aonuma and Miyamoto were impressed as the game was greenlit and has since been huge triumph and a worthy entry in the Zelda franchise.