Hyrule Warriors Dev Challenges Players To Beat The Game With Only A Ladle
The Nintendo Switch game Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is out today, offering a new take on the world of The Legend of Zelda and providing plenty of musou hack and slash fun, according to critics. Now, a new interview in Polygon with producer Yosuke Hayashi and director Ryouta Matsushita reveals some of the challenges and considerations in making this The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild prequel. And it includes a directive for players: Beat the game using just a ladle!
When asked if the game could be won with just the single, not-very-sharp weapon, Matsushita responded, "I think there's value in that play style! I encourage people to take on that challenge!"
The soup ladle, of course, is not an implement unique to the new Hyrule Warriors game. Breath of the Wild introduced the tool first. The ladle can often be found near cooking areas and is described inside the game this way: "A kitchen implement often used for serving delicious soups. It was carved from the wood of a sturdy tree, so it actually packs quite the wallop." You can equip a ladle as a one-handed melee weapon (with a base attack power of 4) or use it as a torch.
Battles have been won in the kingdom of Hyrule with just a ladle (albeit upgraded), so getting through the game with a weak weapon like this might not be out of the realm of possibility — but it would be very difficult. Still, it would certainly be interesting to see someone try this. Any takers?
Along with this challenge, Hayashi and Matsushita revealed a few other interesting aspects of the title's development. They acknowledged that fan feedback played a role in the new Hyrule Warriors, since work on it began after Breath of the Wild was released in 2017. They also said that Princess Zelda was the hardest character to get right.
"While she also serves as the most important representation of the Zelda series as a whole, her character always has to have a sense of delicacy in all of her scenes," Matsushita said. "It was a difficult challenge for us to figure out a way to get that character to do Warriors-style action sequences."
The developers also noted that there was one specific part of Breath of the Wild they wanted to bring to Age of Calamity: the paraglider. "While it would break the gameplay of advancing tactically across a battlefield, it does appear in another, different form from what players met in Breath of the Wild," Matsushita hinted. "The keyword concept is 'attacking from the air.'"
The two refrained from giving out any information about the new title's time travel mechanic and also denied any difficulties in game development caused by differences in vision between Tecmo Koei and Nintendo, who collaborated to bring out this title. They did note, however, that a priority for them was to create a game you could enjoy, even already knowing that "the story would end in tragedy."
As for how they did that, you may just have to fall in line with Hayashi's appeal: "Please go and find out with your own eyes!"