The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom It's a phenomenal game, praised for being able to improve and iterate Breath of the wild. In the weeks following the game's release, it was written about with all kinds of praise as people wondered how Nintendo managed to create a game that seemed to surpass the technical capabilities of the now seven-year-old Switch hardware.
For developers, the game seemed magical. But during a talk at the 2024 Game Developers Conference, Nintendo shared that it wasn't magic but rather a distinct, well-executed development strategy that nonetheless seemed magical.
During the talk, Takuhiro Dohta, technical director of Tears of the Kingdomexplained that the game had two main guiding principles: “a vast, fluid Hyrule” and “multiplicative gameplay.”
The first was relatively simple. “We wanted players to see things in the distance and go there,” Dohta said. This philosophy was inherited from Breath of the wild, with the new challenge of perfectly connecting the sky, surface and subsurface. We can see how that integration worked in Tears of the Kingdom in Link's free fall pose as he descends from the sky to the surface and again between the surface and the underground. The action unites the three different worlds of Hyrule.
However, Dohta cautioned that creating a large, interconnected world doesn't mean it's inherently fun. The fun, he explained, comes from the second principle: the multiplicative game.
Dohta defined multiplicative play as a system by which players combine actions and objects to create their own ways of playing. The developers, Dohta explained, didn't want to create fun through discretely designed moment-to-moment gameplay events, but instead wanted to create a system that “allows the fun to happen.”
The seeds of this “let the fun happen” system first sprouted in Breath of the wild and his Octo Balloons, a monster part that Link could attach to heavy objects to make them float in the air. For Tears of the KingdomThe developers expanded that idea to encompass joining all types of objects, resulting in the Fuse and Ultrahand abilities, powers that allow Link to combine objects to build weapons, items, and structures.
But for multiplicative gameplay to really work, every interactive object in Hyrule had to behave in a specific, predictable way. This required what Takahiro Takayama, Tears of the KingdomThe Physics Programmer, described as “a completely physics-driven world.”
One of the first problems to arise was the clash between what Takayama called physics-driven objects and rigid-body objects. Rigid-body objects are objects whose properties (mass, velocity, weight, and more) are specifically designed regardless of their appearance. early in Tears of the KingdomDuring development, the various gear mechanisms in Hyrule were rigid body objects. Meanwhile, the physics-based properties of an object are governed by physics; the large metal boxes found on the Sky Islands above Hyrule are an example.
Takayama explained that although rigid-body objects were easy to manufacture, they created all kinds of problems when mixed with physics-based objects. Like matter and antimatter, when a physics-driven object interacted with a rigid-body object, the world broke apart. One example involved rigid body gears that engaged through a metal box that had been inserted between them. The solution to this problem was simple. “Everything, without exception, based on physics is necessary to make multiplicative play a reality,” Takayama said.
Since everything is physics-driven, every interactive object in Hyrule would behave the way the player expects: the metal box now prevents the gears from turning.
Hyrule then becomes “a world where players can express their creativity without (fear) of collapse,” Takayama said. “A world where anything can happen depending on the player's imagination.”
Takayama said making everything physics-driven eliminated the need for what he called a “dedicated implementation.” This would involve creating a program for each function and interaction. Without a physics-based system, Link's every action would require its own custom program to work. If the developers want Link to drive some type of vehicle, they would need to create a dedicated program that regulates the vehicles.
Although making every object in Hyrule physics-driven was a technical challenge, it alleviated the need to create so many dedicated programs in the development cycle.
“Instead of creating a vehicle program,” Takayama explained, “we created a system in which vehicles could be manufactured.”
The distinction may seem subtle, but that subtlety is where all the “magic” of Tears of the Kingdom places. when the developers scared by Tears of the Kingdombridge physics, wondering how they programmed bridges to behave correctly without failure, the truth is that they created systems that govern each individual component of a bridge: its slats, links, and even the various forces, such as wheels, that would interact with it. Even the game's music made use of this modular approach. Junya Osada, Tears of the KingdomThe sound designer explained that the game's chariot sounds did not come from his team going out and recording a horse-drawn cart.
“There is no cart sound to be heard except the sound of wheels, chains and squeaking joints,” Osada said.
These systems facilitated the emerging types of play that made Tears of the Kingdom Such a special game. Players were able to use them in ways that the developers themselves had never imagined.
An example of these systems at work is the humble Zonai wearable. In Breath of the wild, cooking was done in exclusive places, but with the portable pot, Link could now cook anywhere. Because everything, including cooking ingredients, was driven by physics, the developers faced a problem: if Link decided to cook on the side of a mountain, all of his ingredients would slide out of the pot.
With a dedicated implementation, the pot would simply cook no matter where it was placed and nothing more. However, the multiplicative gaming philosophy ensured that no matter where the pot was placed, the cooking surface would be oriented horizontally so that the soup would not spill. That gave the pot a greater purpose beyond cooking, allowing it to be used as a ball joint that leads to all kinds of extravagant creations.
Nintendo Tears of the Kingdom The panel explained that the game's success was due to the idea that players should create their own fun backed by a robust physics system applied to every object in the game. But the conversation included another unspoken reason that contributed to Tears of the Kingdom be on all the Game of the Year 2023 shortlists: Nintendo maintains its talent.
In an industry where Average career length is measured in single digits., each and every speaker worked for Nintendo for at least 10 years. That kind of retention is a huge factor in Nintendo's continued success. Institutional knowledge is preserved and teams can work together more easily with limited disruption from turnover. Although Nintendo It is by no means a perfect company.apparently understands that the best way to get good games is to employ and retain good people.
“Working alongside game designers and artists who understood the vision,” Dohta said, “was essential to bringing this vast world to life.”