Although The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has received an incredible amount of praise since its launch alongside the Nintendo Switch earlier this year, one thing that gamers have always wanted to do is currently impossible in-game. Scattered around the title's beautiful, wide-open world are several dogs who love Link's attention, but for some reason we've never been able to pet them.

In a new interview with Game Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, the developer revealed why a petting interaction was unfortunately never programmed into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:

"In the game it seems like you can do anything, but what it really is are all these interlocking systems where you actually have a pretty limited number of actions that can do a ton of different things. So if it came down to something like petting a dog, we would actually have to put in a custom action just for petting a dog that couldn't really be used for anything else."

Carrying on, the Director informed the game's heart-broken fan-base that the action just wouldn't fit with how the developer was designing the world. Taking a small number of actions and using them in as many ways as possible was the goal, so a nearly-useless animation that only serves one purpose would be a lot of effort for a very little pay-off.

Of course, the development team over at Nintendo did make it possible to interact with dogs to some degree, and players can bond with the four-legged citizens of Hyrule even if they can't pet them. Dogs can even lead Link to treasure once their loyalty is raised, giving Zelda fans a reason to interact with the animals in-game.

In other Legend of Zelda news, the second DLC pack for Breath of the Wild is available right now, after a surprise launch at The Game Awards 2017. The add-on content, entitled The Champions' Ballad, features a new motorcycle mount as well as some additional story for the best-selling title.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is out now, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.

Source: IGN