The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been available for several years now, and it even has a sequel on the way that fans are hoping launches sooner rather than later. Yet players on the Nintendo Switch continue to learn new things about Breath of the Wild month to month. The latest example comes in the form of leaked media from a closed-door developer presentation. During the presentation, a form of Breath of the Wild was shown that's dramatically different from what players know.
Twitter users Pixelpar and RazorOfArtorias were discovered to have shared off-screen photos from a development build of Breath of the Wild from a presentation that Nintendo held in 2017 during CEDEC. This behind-closed-doors "The Making of Breath of the Wild" presentation was done months after the game had already launched and featured footage from early versions of the game, while the developers were experimenting with scale.
Within the developer build, there were key landmarks that look a lot like Japanese architecture. Pixelpar explains that Nintendo started development with a 2D map of Kyoto in order to establish scale within the game. Some Japanese landmarks, like Himeji Castle, were then were "built up into basic 3D models." The map gives a sense of what a wide-open world would be like, while the 3D models give a sense of verticality to the world.
Screenshots shared by RazorOfArtorias show the "city" in better detail, but more importantly from a better angle. Their tweet shows a feature that the team used initially to better explore their early pre-alpha world for Breath of the Wild. That feature being skydiving, a feature ripped from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for use in the development of the new game.
Obviously, skydiving was not an actual feature in Breath of the Wild. And there's no reason to believe that it was ever planned to be. This is simply a developer build of Breath of the Wild used specifically for development purposes, whether that be asset generation or coding gameplay sequences. Just like the Kyoto modeling, skydiving was just useful for any purpose the developers might have. Gliding works perfectly fine as a replacement, though full-on skydiving would be great, too.
It just goes to show that even early on Nintendo was planning for a huge open world in Breath of the Wild. It's exciting to consider the huge Breath of the Wild world started with such humble beginnings.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available now on Nintendo Switch.
Source: Destructoid (via Nintendo Everything)
