There were many things that made The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom so special. But one of the biggest ones is that there are three distinct sections of Hyrule to visit. There’s the Sky Islands, the mainland of Hyrule (albeit one that is drastically changed thanks to Ganondorf’s resurrection), and then, there’s The Depths. Many gamers were surprised by the including of The Depths due to how different it looked and the different gameplay loop of sorts you go through within it via lighting things up, getting ‘corrupted’ by blight, and more.
During an interview with Famitsu, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi noted that while The Depths were surprisingly robust, the process of making it didn’t take that long:
By the way, in fear of being misleading, the Depths were made in a surprisingly short period of time.
More specifically, the “base” of The Depths didn’t take long to make. The Director noted that he wanted a kind of “inverse” to the land sections that Hyrule had, and once he talked to the team about certain things, they were able to make a prototype in no time flat:
Of course, from there it took a long time and many adjustments for it to take its present shape, but the time to build up the base itself was not long at all.
The team also revealed that the seamless transition from the Sky Islands to The Depths wasn’t possible until the very end of the game’s development. Be sure to check out our Tears of the Kingdom review!