Why BOTW Zelda is Playable in Age of Calamity But Not Smash
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2020-11-27

When asked which Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild character gave the team at Koei Techmo the most trouble during development, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity director Ryuota Matsushita has stated in several interviews that Princess Zelda herself provided the biggest headache.

How do you turn a scholarly, delicate character such as Breath of the Wild's Zelda into a warrior? How do you make it feel natural for her to carve a path through a battlefield, only to drop everything to bend over and stare at a rare flower?

This is a challenge that Nintendo developers have faced before. Initially, Masahiro Sakurai and the team at Zora Ltd had been planning to include BOTW Zelda as a playable character in Super Smash Bros Ultimate. When Sakurai actually played a prototype of Breath of the Wild, though, he quickly realised that this particular incarnation of Zelda wasn't a good fit for a fighting game.

So apparently, Ocarina of Time Zelda and Twilight Princess Zelda are the most eager to get their hands dirty...except for Tetra, of course, who's clearly just too OP to be a fair inclusion in Smash...

So how did Koei Techmo justify Zelda's inclusion as a playable warrior in Age of Calamity? Well, according to Matsushita, it took a lot of trial and error to find the right approach. The team knew that Zelda had to be at the centre of the story (after all, Link's personality is a little too weak to hang a game on, especially one with dialogue!), so how could they make her an active part of the fight against the Great Calamity?

The solution, apparently, was to make Zelda the game's primary "wizard" character, in classic musou Dynasty Warriors tradition. Her ranged magic attacks cover all the iconic Sheikah Slate abilities that appear in Breath of the Wild, meaning that, while she's playable, her moveset is based around her ingenuity and intelligence, rather than her skills with weapons.

It's a clever way to solve a tought problem, and it just goes to show that just because an idea seems so impossible that even Masahiro Sakurai wants to give up on it, it doesn't mean you can't find a solution that works.

Lots of love,

BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)

Sources:
https://www.4gamer.net/games/528/G052831/20201112110/
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/hyrule-warriors-age-of-calamity-developers-discuss-the-games-music-and-more/
https://www.gameinformer.com/interview/2020/11/20/why-the-hyrule-warriors-age-of-calamity-team-made-a-breath-of-the-wild-prequel
https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2020/11/20/21583107/hyrule-warriors-age-of-calamity-interview-nintendo-switch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aqVlLlKkcg