Is Nintendo Planning A Tears Of The Kingdom Expansion? Zelda Dev Sounds Off
The game is a legendary achievement, and it's also absolutely gigantic from top to bottom—literally. There are three layers to the game: the sparsely-distributed sky islands, the surface world of Hyrule, and then the sprawling, darkened depths, an underground nightmare world full of strong enemies and tough challenges. It's easily the biggest Zelda game to date, and while you don't have to explore everything to simply 'beat' it, you're missing out if you don't.
With that in mind, you might think "gosh I don't think that game needs an expansion" and really, we'd agree; your author still hasn't finished it yet, four months out from release. It is a massive title, especially considering the hardware it was designed for. Where Breath of the Wild had so much empty space between activities, Tears of the Kingdom litters the world with many more things to do and sights to see.
Series producer Eiji Aonuma and game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi also agree, apparently. In a new interview with long-lived gaming mag Famitsu, the pair produced a few interesting answers about their latest release. One of the coolest responses is director Fujibayashi noting that the shrine puzzles scattered about Hyrule and the Sky Islands typically have three or more correct answers for any given puzzle, and that's intentional.
Of course, you're here to read about the possibility of an expansion or DLC for Tears of the Kingdom, and as you've probably already gathered if you read the rest of this post, it doesn't seem like there will be any. Producer Aonuma says that "there are no plans" for any kind of additional content for Tears of the Kingdom, and the simple reason why is because "it feels like we've done everything we can to create games in that world."
In other words, Aonuma and Fujibayashi agree that the end goal is "fun," and all of their gameplay design decisions are based on the idea of "is it fun?" to the point that the gameplay informs the story and characters, rather than the other way around. It's a pure video game design point of view rather than being informed by films and other media, and this pure design philosophy is exactly why the game is so brilliant.
Aonuma says that Tears of the Kingdom was created as a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild because he felt like there was more fun to be had in that environment. He says that if he comes up with more new types of play, then it's still possible that the next game will be another sequel, but he notes that whatever his next work is, it will be a new game, not an add-on to Tears of the Kingdom.
The interview is in Japanese, and since it's fairly unlikely (statistically-speaking) that you read Japanese if you're reading this site, you'll likely want to bring a translator along if you'd like to read it. We recommend doing so for fans of the series because it's fascinating to see the genesis of the developers' ideas after you've played the game. Let us know if you glean any insights we didn't cover here.
