It turns out The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a development tool that attaches the identity of an individual developer to specific changes made in the game world.
Back in 2006 for the ‘Iwata Asks’ series of interviews, Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto recollected instances during development where he would become angry when finding rogue stones placed throughout the world which were sometimes disruptive to environmental development for various reasons. Miyamoto said he would demand to know the culprit, but everyone would just point fingers.
“‘Who put this stone here?'” Miyamoto said in the 2006 interview. “Somebody must’ve put it there! When I try to track the culprit down, it always comes back to the director. ‘The designers and programmers didn’t do it, so it must’ve been the director! Who’s in charge here!’ This happened quite a lot.”
Well, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, it seems Tears of the Kingdom now has a tool that lets the overseers at Nintendo see exactly who’s responsible for things like placing down stones. As observed by Japanese game developer Nikaido Range, a slide shown during a recent CEDEC 2024 presentation seemed to reveal the tool in a Tears of the Kingdom development screenshot.
宮本茂氏がゼルダ開発中に「この石をここに置いたのは誰や？」って尋ねたけど結局誰も名乗りを上げずに怒った、みたいな話が記憶に残ってる。たしか「責任や意図がない」みたいな話だったかな？それはそれとして、今回のCEDECティアキン講演では石を置いた人が誰か分かるような機能が搭載されてた。 pic.twitter.com/HEDzsPCnapAugust 24, 2024
Again, there’s no hard evidence to confirm this development tool was added to appease Miyamoto, but there is a strongly implied connection between that classic anecdote and the discovery of a tool that sure sounds like it would’ve made Miyamoto’s job a lot easier back in the day. At the very least, it’s hard to imagine a world where Miyamoto didn’t at least give this feature a big thumbs up when it was pitched.
Although I personally would rank Twilight Princess much higher, the official GR+ ranking of the best Zelda games is more than respectable.
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