According to the developers, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is not inspired by other games because they were too busy with development to play and refer to other ideas. Read for more details from their interview.
Tears of the Kingdom Uses Original Ideas
Developers Too Busy With The Game To Play Other Titles
According to Statista, there's almost three billion video gamers in 2023 playing one of any of the five million video games in existence. With such a staggering number of video games, at least two will inevitably share similar features or mechanics. Many developers credit their inspirations directly, such as FromSoftware mentioning that Elden Ring was in part inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or how Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, was inspired by the Touhou series for its music.
But in an interview with a Dutch site RLT Nieuws, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's game director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, and producer, Eiji Aonuma, said that they had been so involved with the development of Tears of the Kingdom that they couldn't play other games. When asked if they had taken any inspiration from Elden Ring, a game that was inspired by their previous work, Hidemaro Fujibayashi had this to say:
"Sorry, but we didn't really have a chance to play the game. We were too busy developing Tears of the Kingdom, so we didn't really get to play it. We had heard about it, though."
"Even if we had time to play games, we wouldn't reuse their ideas. When we make a game, we develop a general concept to develop new ideas based on that."
The answer was followed up with a question regarding whether the games were being developed in a bubble.
"Of course, there are situations where you make something similar to an existing game, but I would never try to put other people's ideas into my real game. I'm too proud for that. I always look for original ideas," answered Eiji Aonuma.
"When I made A Link Between Worlds, you had a 3D system that, when you jumped, it looked like Link was coming at you. When I showed this to then-Nintendo president (Satoru) Iwata, he said he didn't know this was possible.
I was delighted to hear that because, to me, that's the core of game development: figuring out things no one else has thought of."
It seems like The Legend of Zelda games are being fueled purely through the ideas of their developers, outside of any influences. The fact that they can release such highly-rated and beloved games shows the success a passionate team can achieve.
Sources:
Interview met Zelda-makers: 'Scenario geïnspireerd door vaderschap'
Global Video Game Users
