Anyone who has played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can likely appreciate the incredible amount of detail that went into the game's massive world. Breath of the Wild's open world concept catapulted the somewhat stagnant franchise into the future, and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi's vision for the series helped create a strong game of the year contender that also buoyed a thin launch line-up from the Switch, clearly having an impact on that console's incredibly high demand.
Now, however, months removed from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's initial launch, talk of the game has now moved towards its future, with the first DLC for the game coming later this week. To commemorate the new content, Nintendo has promised to provide one blog post on the game for the next five days, with each post providing insight into the development of Breath of the Wild's DLC. Today's update, written by Fujibayashi himself, also offered an interesting fact about how the concept of Korok Seeds developed:
"There are many suspicious locations in this vast world of Hyrule. So during development, we started saying things like, 'It would be fun to discover something if it were placed at a location like this, don’t you think?' Initially, we placed some random rocks in spots like these, just as an experiment. But as development continued, we concluded that simply placing rocks somewhere isn’t intriguing or challenging enough to be rewarding, even if you were to find them. Instead, we suggested hiding some small creatures there for the finding. So that’s how these Koroks, who would normally only live in Korok Forest, ended up scattered across remote areas of Hyrule."
The discussion about Koroks stems from Breath of the Wild's first DLC, which will include the Korok Mask, a brand new item related to the creatures that have frequently served as Breath of the Wild's unofficial and adorable mascots. It isn't a stretch to suggest that the exploration and discovery involved with hunting down Koroks and their Seeds around Hyrule was a major addition to the longevity of Breath of the Wild, so the change made during development by the team behind the game was a significant one.
Fujibayashi also discussed how the Korok Mask will be more than just an aesthetic choice for Link. The Korok Mask will cause hidden Koroks to shake whenever Link is around them as long as he is wearing the item, an ability that will be appreciated by many players looking to complete all of the game's content at their own pace without the use of guides.
Of course, that's not all that's getting added in the game's DLC update this week, and the new content will offer additional gameplay as well as a new Breath of the Wild hard mode. Whether or not players complete the more difficult version of the game while rocking a masked tribute to Breath of the Wild's cutest critters, however, will be entirely up to them - although we highly recommend doing so, for style points.
Source: Nintendo