The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is almost here, and early reviews already call it as a masterpiece of gaming. The game is also the largest Zelda game ever made, which is saying something when you recall how big some of the world have been. However, according to some of the development team, it was originally going to have touch controls via the Nintendo Switch screen.
“When we were developing the game for the Wii U, we had touch features implemented as you have seen,” Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi told IGN. “Once we began to develop the game in tandem for the Switch, we aimed to provide the same gameplay experience across both on Switch and Wii U.”
But, as time went on, they realized there was a problem with doing so.
“In doing our testing without the touch features we noticed looking back and forth between the Gamepad and the screen actually took a little something away from this type of Zelda game,” he said.
So, they did away with the touch ability for the Switch, and as soon as they did that, they felt the game was much better.
“Without the touch features it actually turned out to be a really strong gameplay experience,” he explained. “After more experimentation and testing out, we realized that this is the best way to experience the game. That’s how we ended up with the current gameplay style in the production version.”
While this may seem like a very drastic change, and it was, the team have no regrets. And it seems to have paid off, as the people who have been playing Breath of the Wild haven’t had any concerns about the main gameplay, which may not have been the case if they had kept the touch controls.
